KARACHI: The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI) member companies spent Rs 5.5 billion during 2018-19 and directly benefited 5.8 million people across Pakistan as part of its CSR activities. As per 2018-19 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report, which highlights the key social and community related activities of foreign investors operating in the country, member companies continued their efforts for community welfare and collective good the employees. There has been growing realization among the businesses that fulfilling social responsibility means doing good business. Hence, there has been a widespread engagement of the leading corporates in adopting various forms of social activities depending upon the need of the society in their area of operations.
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 permanent feature of the businesses. The social areas such as education, human capital development, healthcare, nutrition, environment and infrastructure development are the main focus of the businesses to reach out to the underprivileged sections of the population.
About 200 leading foreign investors as part of OICCI platform are among other members who besides doing good business, are investing over PKR 300 billion annually in expanding their footprint, contributing a lion’s share of the tax revenue of the country, are also rated as the trendsetter and among the prominent social developers of Pakistan through their CSR and sustainable initiatives.
As a result of untiring CSR activities of 82 OICCI members only during 2018-19, over PKR 5.5 billion were invested on CSR and reached out to 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 organizations in fulfilling their unique CSR program. The geographic distribution of the CSR activities has been 32% in Sindh, 27% in Punjab, 15% in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 10% in Balochistan, 8% in Azad Kashmir, and 4% 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% of the members helping to meet the growing need for improving the human development in the country. Many of our members have funded new school facilities and made contributions towards vocational training programs for skills development of the youth.
Moreover, 86% of the members actively supported health and nutrition related initiatives through donations to reputable hospitals, medical care camps and health awareness campaigns. Infrastructure Development was also one of the growing areas of interest for 65% of the members who assisted communities in the vicinity of their respective major operating facilities. Says in press release
