Building a strong reporting infrastructure in Ecuador to attract financial resources and drive sustainable development

UNCTAD and the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Ecuador jointly launched an assessment exercise with UNCTAD’ s Accounting Development Tool (ADT) as a first step in the implementation of the United Nations Development Account Project on Strengthening sustainability reporting to foster sustainable finance and investment in selected developing countries in Asia and Latin America.

Her Excellency Ms. Sariha Moya, Minister of Economy and Finance of Ecuador opened the Kick off meeting. She stated that “The ADT, developed by ISAR and UNCTAD, is a technical tool that assesses the level of development of a country’s accounting and reporting infrastructure. Its value is strategic: it provides a comprehensive diagnostic and a roadmap to strengthen the national corporate reporting system — a key element for positioning Ecuador as a transparent, trustworthy country aligned with international standards.” Then, Ms. Nan Li Collins, Director of the Division of Investment and Enterprise at UNCTAD said “Today’s meeting is a step towards reinforcing Ecuador’s sustainability reporting framework and further promote dialogue among regulators, standard setters, supervisors and other key players in the financial and sustainability reporting value chain.”

The Kick-off meeting initiated a diagnostic of the national financial and sustainability reporting infrastructure to identify gaps and decide on priority areas. After this, a national workshop to validate the findings of the ADT and provide capacity building will take place. This will enable the development of a tailored action plan to strengthen the financial and sustainability reporting ecosystem in Ecuador. A capacity building activity on climate-related disclosure for the public sector will also be conducted.

The meeting was attended by 58 participants from the main institutions in charge of financial and sustainability reporting at the national level, from the public and private sectors and civil society. During the meeting UNCTAD presented the objectives, activities, chronogram and deliverables of the project. It spoke of the tools that UNCTAD will use to conduct the assessment of the financial and sustainability ecosystem in the country and to prepare an action plan for high quality sustainability reports.