Meeting to present the National Action Plan for Colombia towards developing high quality sustainability/SDG reporting by companies

UNCTAD and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombia organized a meeting to present the draft of the National Action Plan for Colombia towards developing high quality sustainability/SDG reporting by companies, one of key outputs of the UNCTAD’s Development Account 11th Tranche Project titled Enabling policy frameworks for enterprise sustainability and SDG reporting in Africa and Latin America. The meeting took place virtually on 15 July 2020.

 

Opening the meeting, Mr Lucas Gomez, Director of Economic, Social and Environmental Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Colombia said “With the presentation of the Action Plan, the country will continue to consolidate its leadership regarding the 2030 Agenda and will serve as a model for the implementation of sustainability reporting in the region". Ms. Jessica Faieta, UN Resident Coordinator in Colombia stated : “The UN in Colombia and UNCTAD will collaborate in the development of practical tools to enable the private sector to make decisions that will have a positive social and environmental impact towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda”. In addition, Ms. Tatiana Krylova, Head of Enterprise Branch at  UNCTAD highlighted that: “The meeting will pave the way to start implementing activities of the Action Plan to further strengthen the sustainability/SDG reporting infrastructure in Colombia and enhance comparability, quality and reliability of enterprise accounting and reporting on ESG issues in alignment with financial reporting principles and SDG indicator monitoring framework”.

 

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the activities proposed in the Action Plan and develop consensus on the way forward.  The proposed Action Plan is based on the results of the assessment of the national sustainability/SDG reporting infrastructure conducted by UNCTAD based on its Accounting Development Tool, and inputs from key national counterparts and stakeholders. The meeting was attended by 80 participants from 36 institutions representing  national institutions involved in the implementation of the SDGs and working in the areas of financial and non-financial accounting and reporting, including the Department of National Planning, the Ministry of Commerce, Tourism and Industry, the Superintendence of Finance, among others.

 

As a first step, a capacity building activity on core SDG indicators took place virtually on 17, 21, 22 and 23 of July. It was based on UNCTAD’s Guidance on core indicators for entity reporting on contribution towards implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (GCI) and a newly developed Training Manual on its implementation.