Disclosure of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Corporate Reporting by Banks in Bangladesh: A Study of Selected Banks in Bangladesh

The study examines the level of sustainable development goals (SDGs) disclosure through corporate reporting in Bangladesh by 30 selected banks, of which 15 are listed banks with Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) and 15 are non-listed banks taken from the website of Bangladesh Bank.Content analysis based on the recommendations provided by Adams et al. ( 2020) under governance, strategy, management approach, performance and targets has been used as the guideline to check disclosure levels.Corporate reports for the year of 2023 were examined to determine the disclosure issues based on the given recommendations.Key findings of this study reveal that listed banks are performing better when it comes to disclosing information on SDGs, non-listed banks failed to share information related to their connection, impact, contribution, measures for SDGs in detail.As a result, the overall percentage of disclosure for the recommendations of governance, strategy, management approach, performance and targets fell significantly.The study has observed that instead of mentioning specific SDGs banks are reporting sustainable issues.Even if banks have a dedicated segment of sustainability report (22%) in annual report or separate sustainability report (4%) outside annual report, banks are sharing such information in a scattered manner across the whole annual report (30%).Another key finding of the study is that SDG1, SDG2, SDG3, SDG5, SDG6, SDG8, and SDG13 are the most commonly stated SDGs (7%) by total number of banks, ranking first, while SDG14 is the least mentioned SDG (3.8%), ranking fifth.The study's results will enable banks in Bangladesh assess their competitive standing in the market regarding the achievement of sustainable development goals.