Daily Tribune‘What is important is the motivation for companies should not be about profit. It is more about the community so they’ll be able to sustain their best practices slowly; we are not expecting that overnight’
Securities and Exchange Commission
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched the Sustainable Enterprise Collaboration Network (eSECnature) that would link stakeholders to help them strengthen their sustainability initiatives.
“What is important is the motivation for companies should not be about profit. It is more about the community so they’ll be able to sustain their best practices slowly; we are not expecting that overnight,” SEC chairperson Emilio Aquino said in an interview with reporters at the sidelines of the ceremonial launch.
Members of the network, composed of corporations and members of both the public and private sectors, will push for partnerships in knowledge-sharing and policy advocacy to integrate and adopt sustainable practices in their operations.
Likewise, they will also work toward ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of business operations and advocacies, reducing their carbon footprint, and supporting the digitalization, zero-contact and paperless initiatives of the government.
The eSECnature Campaign focuses on digital enablement to reduce the corporate sector’s overall carbon footprint.
Since 2020, the SEC has pursued sustainability through digital transformation.
Digital platforms unveiled
The first digital platforms launched included the Electronic Simplified Processing of Application for Registration of Company (eSPARC), its subsystem One-day Submission and E-registration of Companies (OneSEC); Electronic Filing and Submission Tool (eFAST); and Electronic System for Payment to SEC (eSPAYSEC).
Last year, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. himself launched the second wave of SEC digital initiatives, which 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.
The Commission’s sustainability initiatives have significantly reduced its carbon footprint, saving over 3,500 tons from 2021 to 2023.
According to the SEC, these initiatives have also resulted in the preservation of more than 10,000 trees, equivalent to approximately 85 million sheets of paper that would have been used in manual transactions.
To further enhance sustainability efforts and simplify stakeholder transactions, the SEC plans to launch five new digital initiatives this week.
