Mr Nguyen Quang Vinh, Director of VCCI’s Business Office for Sustainable Development and VBCSD Secretary General said that CSR is a quite important factor in the sustainable development of enterprises, to benefit society and to raise the national status in the international arena. CSR is often placed in each enterprise’s business strategy and becomes a condition for the enterprise to grow, improve its status and competitive capacity. Nowadays, enterprises who don’t exercise CSR can get no chance to access the market.

 

Sharing the same opinion, one member of the VBCSD Mr Witcha Simsiri said that although CSR is still new in Vietnam, it is really important to sustainable development. CSR doesn’t depend on the scale, but on the awareness of each enterprise. Each enterprise should choose a suitable method to deploy CSR right from the beginning, instead of waiting until they have become rich and their trademarks have become well-known.

 Regarding CSR awareness, Mr Khuong said that CSR, in fact, is a commitment to contribute to sustainable development via improving working conditions and quality of life for employees; following environment protection and labour safety; ensuring labour rights and developing the community. CSR, thus, is both the duty and right of enterprises. By practicing CSR, enterprises will contribute to the economic, cultural and social development of the country, in parallel with raising their prestige, trademark and image among consumers, suppliers, distributors and investors, as well as encouraging enthusiasm among labourers.

 

 However, many Vietnamese firms have not understood CSR properly, making CSR implementation quite difficult. Several enterprises simply think they would dedicate part of their profit to charity, but didn’t understand that CSR implementation has to be included in the business and production plan. The second difficulty in implementing the CSR is the uncontrolled collection and application of international codes from countries where the material standard is higher than in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Vietnamese firms, most of which are small and medium ones (SMEs), lack financial and technical sources to implement these CSR standards. In addition, Vietnam has not built comprehensive policies and laws as well as the practical system of standards to support CSR application. Mr Khuong said it is necessary to set up its own association or organization to help and consult with enterprises about the matter. Besides, the wide propaganda on CSR will help to soon prevent environmental and social damages caused by enterprises’ weak awareness of CSR.

 

In Vietnam, many people don’t understand CSR properly, viewing it as purely an action which, if not implemented, does not cause any damage. CRS is not actually so. Enterprises have to consider themselves part of the society and take responsibility in contributing as well as sharing benefits with the community to build and develop the environment which enterprises are operating in. If family is a cell of the society, similarly each enterprise can be considered a cell of the economy. Like the relationship of family-society, the relationship of enterprise-economy must be take shape and grown; enterprises need to actively become an undivided element of the economy. Fulfilling responsibility to society is a way through which enterprises contribute to boost the economy. After all, to keep the economy body healthy, each enterprise cell must strive to contribute to the process.    

The sector of tourism – hotel – restaurant, like other sectors, wants to boost sustainable development via obeying standards on environmental protection, gender equality, labour safety and rights, workforce training and community development in the context of global economic integration. I hope that in the upcoming time, authorized agencies will offer more policies to support enterprises operating in the tourism sector to complete their social responsibility, particularly in environment protection. Vietnam is on the process of fixing its status in the world economy, mainly via tourism activities. The development of green and sustainable tourism is an urgent requirement of each enterprise, each nation and each region in the context of the current globalized economy.

 

Vietnamese firms, particularly small and medium enterprises, need to increase and supplement themselves with new competitive abilities. If they are aware of and apply effectively CSR, this will be an efficient tool for domestic firms to compete against regional rivals.

 

CSR should be developed to become the essence of each enterprise, not only a tool to polish up and advertise the trademark. In my opinion, good morality will help business, meaning that the higher the corporate social responsibility is, the more benefits the enterprise gets and vice versa. The implementation of CSR, thus, must originate from the heart rather than from the plenty of money. Enterprises who do CSR well will be winners in the market, because investments in CSR also mean that those enterprises raise the competitive capacity and position.

 

Many enterprises show attention to social issues such as poverty or diseases, while others focus on community activities like environmental protection, anti-climate change. At present, due to the dark sides of economic development and population increase, the world is facing many challenges, particularly the issue of environmental pollution. In order to cope with the risks and limit the consequences of environmental pollution, the whole world is striving to promote master solutions to control the environment quality, including a campaign of planting trees worldwide. This is considered the best solution. In Vietnam, the campaign has been receiving a good response from the community. However, in the context of economic difficulties, to increase the number trees, I think we should soon set up steering boards for provinces and cities, in parallel with calling on scientists and enterprises to attend and support the campaign.