Yang Berusaha Mr Lam Kee Soon, Chairman, NACRA 2004 Organising Committee
Yang Berusaha Mr Foo Sheh Loon, CEO of MIM
Members of the media
Invited guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
I bid you a good morning. Before I proceed, allow me to thank all of you for making time to attend today's launch event of the National Annual Corporate Report Awards 2004.
As the chairman of the adjudication committee I would like to elucidate to potential participants, the additions and changes that have been incorporated into this year's awards. First, allow me to enlighten all of you on the adjudication process of NACRA.
The detailed adjudication will be carried out in 2 stages. The preliminary stage will entail the assessment of annual reports within industry groups. The annual report which achieves the highest level of overall excellence within an industry group will be adjudged the winner of the Industry Excellence Award. Those reports which are nominated by the industry group adjudicators for the Overall
Excellence Award and Presentation Awards will be subjected to a second round of detailed adjudication. This detailed adjudication process will be carried out by an independent panel of adjudicators appointed by the Adjudication Committee.
At this juncture, I must also add that we are introducing a new award category this year. We are broadening our coverage to include companies listed on the MESDAQ, hence the creation of an Industry Excellence Award for Companies Listed on the MESDAQ market. The adjudication process I explained previously will apply to this category as well.
Another aspect that I wish to highlight concerns the marking process. Previously the emphasis has always been 6n the voluntary disclosure/voluntary adoption of transitional standards. For this year, the emphasis has shifted from voluntary disclosure to mandatory compliance to the MASB standards. As you all know out of 32 standards issued by MASB, a total of 30 have been effective by end of 2003.
Mr Lam Kee Soon, Chairman of NACRA 2004 Adjudication Commitee delivering his welcome address at the NACRA launch |
|
Might I also remind potential
participants, that to qualify for detailed adjudication, all annual reports must comply
with the preliminary criteria set by the Adjudication Committee. This information is
available in the NACRA brochure that has been distributed to you. |
The NACRA is open to all companies incorporated or registered in Malaysia as well as the public sector and other organisations established in Malaysia. For the listed companies category, all companies listed in the Bursa Malaysia qualify for preliminary screening before being subjected to a detailed screening. Non-listed companies and other organisations will have to complete an entry form, to be
submitted with 30 copies of the published annual report to the NACRA Adjudication Committee by July 30 this year.
While we are still on the topic, I would like to invite more non-listed companies to participate in this year's NACRA. Although the majority of NACRA participants have always been listed companies, the organising committee has always encouraged the participation of non-listed companies and other organisations such as charitable bodies, non-profit organisations and the public sector. To date, there
has been a lukewarm response, from this sector but we would definitely like to see more participants in this category this year. However, mention must be made about the quality of the annual reports that we have previously received from
non-listed companies. From NACRA 2003, we can safely say that their reports are of
commendable high standards.
In fact, it must be admitted that standards of annual reports submitted by companies have grown significantly with the passing years. Highly reflective of qualities such as aesthetics, accuracy and compliance to requirements, the adjudication process from the previous years keeps getting more challenging. It is our hope that this year's submissions will surpass the quality of those from last year,
because essentially that is the objective of this competition, to achieve excellence in corporate reporting.
In view of the increasingly challenging environment we have to work in, as well as the fact that we have now added another category to the award, the number of adjudicators this year will also increase. We will have 70 adjudicators from MIA, MICPA and MIM this year compared to last year's 64.
Last year, 883 annual reports were screened for the preliminary process in which 93 companies qualified for the detailed adjudication stage. During the adjudication process, it was noticed that many companies do not have Bahasa Malaysia version of their annual reports. Once again, I will remind aspiring winners that this is a pre-requisite for participation in the competition.
With that, I would like to state that the Adjudication Committee is eagerly looking forward to the task that lays ahead of us and we hope to see more participations this year.
I would like to once again thank you for you presence here today, and I hope you enjoy the
rest of this launch event.
Thank you.
