THE country’s corporate regulator is ramping up initiatives to further boost the local business environment, on Monday launching a program aimed at promoting sustainable practices.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Sustainable Enterprise Collaboration Network, or eSECnature, seeks to link companies, government organizations, and civil society groups to deepen corporate participation in sustainability initiatives.
The move also aims to accelerate the country’s attainment of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Members of the network will collaborate in knowledge-sharing activities and policy advocacy initiatives to help one another in integrating and adopting sustainable practices in their operations.
“Through this network, we aim to unite organizations, both in the public and private sectors, to collaborate in developing best practices, new ideas, and successful strategies toward our vision of a sustainable capital market and business sector,” SEC Chairman Emilio Aquino said.
The network will work toward ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of business operations and advocacies, reducing carbon footprints, and supporting the government’s digitization, zero-contact and paperless initiatives.
“We believe that the adoption of sustainable practices will have a significant impact in improving the state of our capital markets and, more importantly, the economy,” Aquino said.
“As we see more companies comply with ESG (environmental, social and governance) standards, we can look forward to the entry of more investments into the country that can further drive our economic growth,” he added.
The SEC, which last week issued guidelines for the eSECURE system that will integrate all its online services, is embarking on another wave of digital reforms aimed at raising business standards in the country.
Initial platforms launched by the regulator include the Electronic Simplified Processing of Application for Registration of Company (eSPARC), its subsystem One-day Submission and E-registration of Companies (OneSEC); the Electronic Filing and Submission Tool (eFAST); and the Electronic System for Payment to SEC (eSPAYSEC).
A second wave included the Electronic SEC Universal Registration Environment (eSECURE), Electronic SEC Education, Analysis and Research Computing Hub (eSEARCH), SEC API Marketplace, Electronic Registry Application for Market Participants (eRAMP), and SEC Check App 2.0.
These digital initiatives are estimated to have reduced the SEC’s carbon footprint by over 3,500 tons from 2021 to 2023, saving more than 10,000 trees, equivalent to about 85 million sheets of paper that would have been used in manual transactions.
The SEC is slated to launch five more new digital initiatives this week to further make stakeholders’ transactions easier and aligned with sustainability efforts.
This Wednesday, July 17, it will be launching the SEC Zuper Easy Registration Online, or ZERO, which aims to simplify and expedite the company registration process.
ZERO will be part of the enhanced eSPARC system and will integrate seamlessly with the existing eSECURE and Electronic Submission Authentication Portal (eSAP).
Its features will include digital authentication, paperless process, automated certificate generation, and global access.
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