Environmental Accounting and Reporting an Analysis of Bangladeshi Corporate Sector
1.Md. Shohidul Islam,2.Murshedul Arafin
Abstract
This paper is based on an exploratory study to have an understanding of the nature and extent of environmental reporting and accounting practices followed by Bangladeshi Corporate and to determine the factors or attributes that drives the companies to adopt these practices. The increasing importance of considering environmental aspects within a company‟s decisions demands a broader scope in management accounting. Eco-management accounting should enable management to integrate environmental issues into the decision-making process. An attempt has been made to analyze the published annual reports of the selected companies in Bangladesh to examine their disclosure practices regarding the environmental issues. It also examines the type of Length and location of the disclosure in these reports. An „Index of environment disclosure‟ listing 23 items of information has been used to find out the actual disclosure practices in these companies. The paper also describes the theoretical considerations relating to environmental accounting. The study found that a very few companies in Bangladesh are voluntarily disclosing the environmental issues in their Annual reports. The attributes such as high polluting industries, size of the company, High Debt to equity ratios and environment performance have positive impact on the environment disclosure The reason behind the poor disclosure in environmental issues in Bangladesh was found to be a lack of environmental legislations compelling the companies in disclosing the same in companies‟ annual reports.