Authors : Shafiqul Islam , Aoulad Hosen and Mujahidul Islam
Abstract: In Bangladesh, before 90`s it was not found any evidence that public limited companies disclosed environmental information in their annual reports. Government`s denationalization policy in the late 70`s made capital market open for investors and since then very insignificantly corporate reporting practices was working. A very significant improvement of environmental disclosure was highlighted by some of the previous studies but they did not go through any testing which was statistically significant. Our attempt here is to examine 48 recent corporate annual reports of 2003 to find out significant differences in the quality of environmental disclosure between industry types and between company sizes along with the present environmental disclosure practices. We have found that 40% of companies surveyed have made environmental disclosures that have been more general and descriptive in nature. Only 16% companies have disclosed environmental information under a separate heading in the annual reports. Our finding shows a significant statistical difference in sales revenue and employee sizes between companies having environmental disclosure and companies not having environmental disclosure. We have found that there is no significant difference in the quality of the disclosure between Textiles and Garments Industries and Pharmaceutical industries and between Pharmaceuticals industries and other industries. But the textiles and Garments industries and the other industries are significantly different each other. Our finding also shows that there is no significant difference in the quality of environmental disclosure between different combinations of employee sizes but there is a significant statistical difference between different combinations of revenue sizes.
Shafiqul Islam , Aoulad Hosen and Mujahidul Islam , 2005. An Examination of Corporate Environmental Disclosure by The Bangladeshi Public Limited Companies. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences, 3: 1095-1102.