Assessing the level of environmental information disclosure by listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam

Abstract

The environmental information disclosure of enterprises listed on Vietnam’s stock market has been mandated by the Ministry of Finance of Vietnam according to Circular No. 155/2015/TT_BTC. Therefore, enterprises need to be responsible for announcing and interpreting financial and non-financial information about the environment to meet the needs of the Government and stakeholders. However, the level of environmental information disclosure depends on their business, company characteristics, compliance of the board of management, etc. This paper investigates and assesses the level of environmental information disclosure of the listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam. The study was conducted with 170 listed companies on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) and Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE) through descriptive statistics and value testing methods and an in-depth interview. The research results have shown that in Vietnam, the level of enterprises announcing environmental information disclosure is still low. For example, materials and construction industry, food and beverage industry have less than 55% of enterprise disclosing environmental information. At the same time, the enterprises from environmentally sensitive sectors such as materials and construction, electricity, petroleum, gas, chemicals, etc., have more environmental information disclosure than other industries, and the environmental information published only focuses on the environmental debt, the amount of resources consumed, the number of environmental violations, environmental policies and objectives, etc.