SOCPA Comments on the First International Standard Draft Reporting Sustainability, "General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-Related Financial Information".
International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) published the first international standards draft reporting sustainability "General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information." After consulting with the stakeholders, the Accounting Standards Board of the Saudi Organization for Chartered and Professional Accountants (SOCPA) prepared a comprehensive viewpoint of what was contained in the standard draft.
Among the issues that SOCPA has drawn to the International Council's attention, is the necessity to consider the applicability of the standard's requirements to ensure a consistent application and at reasonable cost. This requires an agreed upon definition of the term "sustainability" in the context of the proposed international standards, which sets boundaries for risks and opportunities that need to be disclosed. Moreover, it is not clear whether there is a distinction between the entity's impact on its environment and the sustainability of the society, and the impact of the entity’s environment on its operations and on the sustainability of the entity. SOCPA suggested that to begin an era of organized disclosure of sustainability-related information, is to have a set of general topics related to sustainability for the standards focus on rather than requiring companies to disclose all sustainability-related topics.
From its point of view, SOCPA indicated that it is not obvious why the proposed objective of this standard is different from the objective of financial reporting as set out in the Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting while the primary users of sustainability-related reporting, according to the standard draft, are the same as those of financial reporting and since the required disclosures are specifically about Financial Information.
You can view the draft published by the International Council by clicking here,
and the detailed SOCPA's viewpoint by clicking here.