The Capital Market Authority represented by Oman Corporate Governance and Social Responsibility Centre (OCCSRC) is gearing up to organize “Social Responsibility Summit” in collaboration with Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry  and “Informa” a firm specialized in organization of such conferences, on Monday 29 September 2014 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.

The  two day conference comes as part of the importance  the wise Government attaches to the visions and instructions of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said on the importance of disseminating the culture of social responsibility among the companies and businessmen and to upgrade the dealing with such concept through real partnership between the public and private sectors and its role in sustainable development.

Sayyid Hamid Sultan Al Busaidy,  Director General of Support Services and Acting Director of OCCSRC said social responsibility has become a necessity  we need to  focus on to develop its practices in the community. “It is well known that the concept of social responsibility is entertains growing concern worldwide to contribute to the common efforts of the public and private sectors to raise the social role, and such success requires new standards and concepts contributing to adapting the social structure to conform with the economic, political and social changes to ensure continuation of attaining sustainable development.”

Al Busaidy pointed out that CMA had embarked on consolidating and instilling the social responsibility culture  through the Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative to stimulate the concept and highlight it by private sector enterprises and disseminate the awareness of the dimensions of the social responsibility in the business community.

CMA had earlier instructed all the companies regulated by it to include in their annual reports their social responsibility practices, and recently the OCCSRC was entrusted with the task of instilling the social responsibility culture  to issue standard policies and manuals in this respect, as well as organizing conferences, seminars and training workshops on the issue, said Sayyid  Hamid. He added that  the upcoming conference is a translation of the role of OCCSRC toward best practices in the application of the principle of partnership among the components and elements of the community.

He added “ We anticipate wide participation from the Sultanate and abroad beside addressing and reviewing international practical experiences of  social responsibility.

It is noteworthy that social responsibility is a form of good citizenship and assurance of belongingness to the community, and is a real opportunity for building solid relationships among the private sector companies and the local community. To this end enterprises need to adopt clear objects, plans and well though strategies based on best practices of social responsibility.