Sustainability Assurance Practices Among Public Listed Companies in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In response to increasing stakeholder expectations, an increasing number of companies are reporting on their corporate social and environmental performance in addition to their normal financial measures. This trend will continue as will the need for providing assurance of this additional information and the systems and processes used to generate it. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of sustainability assurance practices in Sri Lanka among the listed public companies. Data collection and analysis was carried out in two stages. First, the published annual reports of the companies listed in Colombo Stock Exchange as of March, 2015 were analyzed. Then unstructured interviews were carried out with assurance providers. Even though sustainability assurance is little practiced, there is an increasing trend for companies to obtain assurance from external assurance providers to ensure the credibility of the published reports. Furthermore most of the companies have obtained sustainability assurance from audit firms rather than from specialized consultants. Assurance providers mostly use SLSAE 3000 as the basis to provide these assurances. None of the companies were qualified enough to obtain reasonable assurance on sustainability reporting and only limited assurances were obtained. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge of sustainability assurance practices in developing countries, taking Sri Lanka as the case.