Pwint Thit Sa 2020
Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) and Yever launched the sixth Pwint Thit Sa/Transparency in Myanmar Enterprises (TiME) report on 21st December, 2020.
2020 Report – English version
Executive Summary in Myanmar
Presentation of the results
Press Statement – English Version
Press Statement – Myanmar Version
The 2020 report assesses online disclosure on the corporate websites of 260 Myanmar companies, including listed, public, private companies and State-Owned Economic Enterprises (SEEs). The assessment also includes all banks, to reflect the higher standard of corporate governance required of banks in Myanmar. This makes it the most ambitious public report ever published about the state of corporate disclosure (CD) in Myanmar.
In 2020, the three Myanmar companies which score highest are uab bank, City Mart Holdings Group (CMHL), and Shwe Taung Group. While these companies have consistently featured in the Top 10 of previous Pwint Thit Sa reports, Pwint Thit Sa 2020, like in Pwint Thit Sa 2019 shows that all of them continue to improve their disclosure on an annual basis. Other companies scoring highly are Yoma Bank, First Myanmar Investment Public (FMI), Max Myanmar Group, Kanbawza Bank (KBZ), Myanmar Thilawa SEZ Holdings, TMH Telecom Public and Dagon Group.
On the other end of the spectrum, 98 companies (38%) of the 260 companies assessed this year do not have corporate websites. This is nevertheless a 12% improvement from last year – in Pwint Thit Sa 2019, 108 (44%) of the 248 companies assessed did not have a website.
The leading SEEs for disclosure are Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation (YESC) and Myanmar Shipyards, the only two SEEs to score (just) above the overall average mark of 2%. While all the average scores improved in 2020, scores for SEEs went from 3% in 2019 to 2% in 2020, which is mainly attributable to their not expanding or updating data, while being scored against a more challenging scorecard.
Methodologically, Pwint Thit Sa adopts the same approach adopted as in 2018 and 2019. It assesses online disclosure of information on Corporate Profile, Corporate Governance, Sustainability Management, and Reporting, and incorporates criteria from the ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard (ACGS). However, in the 2020 report, the scoring system was slightly adapted this year to distinguish the performance and practices of companies on sustainability and reporting.
Listed and public companies with over 100 shareholders were assessed against 143 criteria. Private companies and state-owned enterprises were assessed against 113 criteria, but 30 criteria could be earned as a bonus for disclosing information that listed/public > 100 shareholder companies are required to disclose. This year, a new sliding scale (0,1,2) was used for some criteria relating to policies and sustainability to reflect how closely commitments were genuinely aligned to the business and to reward companies that embraced a more holistic and comprehensive approach to disclosure instead of a compliance-driven approach. Furthermore, additional criteria were added on governance of philanthropy, and SDGs.
The report is intended to support the objectives of the 2018 Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan and Myanmar’s achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals – in particular, SDG16. During 2021, MCRB and Yever plan to support interested companies to improve their policies, reporting, disclosure and website accessibility, including for persons with disabilities, complementing the training provided by the Myanmar Institute of Directors on corporate governance.
MCRB and Yever plan to publish the next Pwint Thit Sa report in 2022.
You can find our own assessment here.
Presentation on the scoring process shared during the Webinar (14 May 2020)
MCRB and Yever held a webinar on 14 May to explain the scoring process so far. Companies who wish to discuss their draft score are invited to contact transparency@myanmar-responsiblebusiness.org or transparency@yever.org
Results of the preliminary assessment
Letters and emails have been sent to the companies (where we have contact details) to provide them with their draft scores and invited them to disclose more information to increase their final score – which will be based on websites at 31 August 2020.
In the preliminary scoring process, it was found that 161 out of 277 companies (58%) have functioning websites (up from 56% in 2019). For the first round of assessment, the overall average score was 5%, as it was in the 2019 report. However, only 30 companies have updated their websites in the last year. Average draft scores for companies in different categories are:
| Number of companies | Average scores (2019 final scores in brackets) |
|
| Top 10 | 10 | 47% (50%) |
| Publicly listed companies | 6 | 29% (32%) |
| Financial Institutions (*) | 36 | 8% (11%) |
| Privately owned companies | 182 | 4% (4%) |
| Public companies | 66 | 3% (3%) |
| State-owned enterprises | 23 | 2% (3%) |
(*) Financial institutions are also included in the scores for listed, private and public companies, and SOEs, as appropriate.