Foreign investors spend Rs5.5bln on CSR activities

KARACHI: The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) member companies spent Rs5.5 billion during 2018-19 and directly benefited 5.8 million people across Pakistan as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

As per 2018-19 CSR Report, which highlights the key social and community-related activities of foreign investors operating in the country, member companies continued efforts for community welfare and collective good of the employees.

About 200 leading foreign investors as part of OICCI platform invested over Rs300 billion annually in expanding their footprint and contributing a lion’s share in the tax revenue.

The landscape of CSR initiatives and activities is improving rapidly as the corporate sector in the country has been widely adopting the CSR and sustainability practices and making them a permanent feature of businesses. Social areas such as education, human capital development, healthcare, nutrition, environment and infrastructure development were the main focus of the businesses to reach out to the underprivileged sections of the population.

As a result of untiring CSR activities of 82 OICCI members only during 2018-19, over Rs5.5 billion were invested on CSR, which reached around 58 million direct beneficiaries throughout Pakistan.

OICCI members and their employees spent around 1.2 million man-hours and partnered with 160 social and development sector organisations in fulfilling their unique CSR programme. The geographic distribution of the CSR activities has been 32 percent in Sindh, 27 percent in Punjab, 15 percent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 10 percent in Balochistan, 8 percent in Azad Kashmir, and 4 percent each in FATA and Gilgit-Baltistan.

In terms of specific social sector, human capital development and health and nutrition remained key focus areas. Human capital development initiatives attracted the attention of 90 percent of the members.

Moreover, 86 percent of the members actively supported health and nutrition related initiatives through donations to reputable hospitals, medical care camps and health awareness campaigns.