During the OECD COP 29 Virtual Pavillon Event, Miriam Koreen, OECD Senior Counsellor on SMEs and Head of the SME and Entrepreneurship Finance Unit at the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities, has moderated the interventions of speakers from different backgrounds on the topic of sustainability reporting by SMEs. This issue is fundamental to SMEs since it can hinder access to bank funding and constitute a cumbersome bureaucratic obstacle in the green transition.
As pointed out by Cyntia Azavedo (Banco Central do Brasil), SMEs find numerous difficulties in respecting sustainability reporting requirements due to non-standardized regulations and high observance costs, given that not always they have at disposal experts to carry out these assessments. On these two points, Gerhard Huemer (SME United), added that there is an urgence to create a well-designed taxonomy which may clarify the categories and the subsequent legal frameworks that the different enterprises should observe. Moreover, Huemer stresses the importance of simplifying the reporting system in order to make it more accessible and understandable for SMEs’ staff.
On this last point, namely, accessibility and simplification, Navina Balasingam (Capital Markets Malaysia), shows a best practise from her country where the organisation for which she works, has developed a guide to illustrate and disclosure in a gradual way the more complex parts of the sustainability reporting process. The relevance of more simplified and widely standardized reporting requirements becomes even more evident when an international perspective is adopted. Indeed, as stressed by Ana Fiorella Carvajal (World Bank Group), not only regional, but also bilateral programs should be designed to target the needs of each entrepreneurship sector at a global level.
Source: INSME Secretariat
