| Put Your heart Into Business
By
Sanjay Suri
THE COMMONWEALTH will set up a new global
index to measure socially responsible investment at a business
forum in Abuja later this week.
The forum is being held to promote business
with an eye on sustainable development ahead of the heads
of government meeting in Abuja.
The move to link business with goals of sustainable
development and social responsibility – for long the
domain of civil society and do-gooders – has got several
governments interested. As many as eight heads of government
are turning up early in Abuja to attend the business forum.
“We have studies that show that many
giant companies and pension funds prefer to invest in businesses
committed to socially responsible development,” chief
executive officer of the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC)
Mohan Kaul told TerraViva. “But 97 percent of that investment
goes into the developed world.”
The new index will link factors such as the
gross national income (GNI) of a country, its purchasing power
parity (PPP) index and the investment it is drawing. The index
will show up what is being done or not, and also suggest what
is possible by way of investment in developing countries among
the Commonwealth.
“We are talking to a major fund manager,”
Kaul said. “There already is an index like FTSE 4Good
but we will create our own index.” The CBC index will
have a greater focus on good that comes to the developing
countries among the Commonwealth – and that means 50
of its 54 members other than Britain, Canada, Australia and
New Zealand. The Commonwealth is a grouping of countries that
were once a part of the British Empire.
“But while a lot of the investment is
not going into developing countries, it is also true that
many developing countries have not created a business environment
that would encourage companies to compete in the international
arena,” Kaul said. “At Abuja we are working for
a manifesto for business and government together to remove
obstacles to wealth creation.”
The moves are led by a new push into business
partnerships that involve private companies, the government
and civil society.
The Commonwealth will also set up a certification
system for companies that can be players in the international
arena. This together with the new index would also give potential
investors and companies in the developed world pointers to
companies they can do business with.
The moves by the CBC are more than just more
Commonwealth talk. Forums organised by the CBC led to business
worth more than 3 billion dollars in 1999 and 2.3 billion
dollars last year, Kaul said. “The largest component
of this was business between developed and developing countries,”
he said.
Much of the business has come up in infrastructure,
mining and power projects, telecom services and financial
services. The CBC has been holding regional forums to promote
business among firms from Commonwealth countries within regions.
Africa investment forums have been held in South Africa and
also in Abuja.
The CBC has found unique ways to make these
business marriages work. Businessmen are persuaded to attend
business forums. Everyone who comes along gets a password
and a homepage on the forum website, and access to everyone
else who has registered. So you have everyone’s business
interests on the dedicated website, and an idea what they
are looking for.
The CBF then assembles a diary and puts together
everyone who ought at least to talk. It then asks what happened
once they met, and offers to make things happen if nothing
did. Some successes:
The CBC played a role in getting MTN of South Africa to make
a massive investment in the mobile telephone market in Nigeria.
MTN executives were invited to meetings at the ministry of
telecom in Nigeria. MTN is now the leading mobile phone company
in Nigeria.
The South African power giant Eskom Enterprises
was put together with the National Electricity Production
Agency (NEPA) in Nigeria. It now plans to take over several
of the divisions into which NEPA has been divided.
The South African firm Shivacom made
a deal to sell pre-paid telephone cards in Mozambique following
business to business meetings set up by the CBC. The deal
is expected to lead to several others.
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