KARACHI, Aug 7: A roundtable of over 125 leaders from corporate, industry and chambers of commerce on “Social Enterprise — Beyond Philanthropy,” organised on Thursday by the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) decided to form a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Forum.

Industry leaders from major public and private sector enterprises attended the roundtable who in their consultative interaction on identified 18 points reform agenda that could be taken up to improve and create a forum to share current programmes in Pakistan at grassroots level.

The participants agreed that the proposed forum would facilitate sharing among the companies and corporations the experiences and efforts. The roundtable therefore proposed that the CSR initiatives should be disclosed in the annual reports of the companies and auditors should report these during their audit.

Effective communication techniques should be employed to create wider understanding of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. The companies should focus shanties, ghettos and kutchi abadis and develop CSR initiatives on from the work force development.

Adult literacy and workers education should be the theme of CSR and company and corporate leaders should consider Assurance Statements. While the government had been asked to consider tax credit for CSR, the companies should consider forming a CSR programmes and best practices pool. The companies should carry out research on CSRs of other companies.

The participants of the roundtable made several other recommendations to build up skills in journalists for closely monitoring CSR initiatives and reporting on these activities.

The Executive Director of Centre for International Private Enterprise in his brief address said that the 21st century business model was increasing inclusiveness through corporate citizenship as a part of strategic planning process.