KUALA LUMPUR (March 6): Malaysian companies rank top among the emerging ASEAN countries in terms of managing sustainability, according to a survey conducted by PwC Malaysia.

Singapore was excluded from the survey as the country is not termed as an emerging country.

About 211 companies, which only comprise the five largest emerging countries in the ASEAN - Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam - participated in the survey.

The report By PwC Malaysia entitled “Going beyond philanthropy?” revealed three key building blocks of a sustainable business, namely the importance of alignment to corporate strategy, stakeholder engagement as well as measurement and reporting.

“Malaysia is certainly the most matured market out of those five countries and certainly higher sustainability would contribute to more robust growth in profit for the company,” said PwC Malaysia’s associate director Jack Cunningham after the launch of the report today.

He added “businesses that are in the high sustainability groups outperform companies financially that in the low sustainability groups.”