Lankan firms record marginal improvement in corporate reporting: TISL

• JKH, ComBank and Dialog Axiata record highest overall scores in assessment
• JKH, which is ranked first for second consecutive year, becomes only firm to obtain full overall score for transparency in disclosure practices

According to the Transparency in Corporate Reporting Assessment (TRAC) 2021 publication compiled by Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL), companies in Sri Lanka have been deemed to be moderately transparent in corporate reporting.  The TRAC report, which was unveiled this week, assesses the top 75 public limited companies on the Colombo Stock Exchange (as per market capitalisation on June 1, 2021) on the level of transparency in the disclosure of information.  
The assessment, which is being conducted for the second consecutive year, scores and ranks companies on three different thematic areas crucial to fighting and preventing corruption: reporting on anti-corruption programmes, transparency in company holdings and disclosure of key financial information in domestic operations. 

 The research found that companies on average are moderately transparent in corporate reporting, with a score of 6.93 out of 10, where zero is the least transparent and 10 is fully transparent. 
The average score of 6.93 is slightly higher than the score obtained in the previous assessment (6.73) conducted in 2020. The 2020 TRAC report assessed 50 companies.
John Keells Holdings, Commercial Bank of Ceylon and Dialog Axiata are the companies which recorded the highest overall scores in the assessment. 
John Keells Holdings PLC ranked first for the second consecutive year, being the only company to obtain the full overall score for transparency in disclosure practices. 
The TISL said the companies were scored and ranked based on publicly available information pertaining to the company. Information was sourced from the latest annual reports (2020 or 2020/21) published by companies, company websites and other publicly available company documents.  
It is important to note that the TRAC report does not assess the implementation of companies’ anti-corruption policies or programmes. Therefore, a low score does not necessarily mean that a company does not have strong anti-corruption programmes nor does it indicate any wrongdoing on the part of the company. Likewise, while a high score may illustrate strong disclosure systems, it may not necessarily reflect operational and implementation success