President Leonel Fernandez called for more “ethics” from the business community yesterday, during an address to a group of politicians, business leaders and representatives of international institutions as part of the First Dominican Conference on Corporate Social and Entrepreneurial Responsibility: Sustainable Development and Competitive Strategy held at the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development. Fernandez complained, according to El Caribe, that politicians and the business community are “discredited” in the eyes of some international bodies and that this had to change. Fernandez called on the business community to play by the rules and pay their taxes, respect labor rights and to become more involved in their communities. He said that the mere fulfillment of their legal obligations was not enough, and that they, the business community, needed to become more transparent in their operations.
Fernandez, sharing the speaker’s table with Moises Pineda, representing the IDB, and Nicky Fabiancic, the United Nations Development Program representative, spoke out against fuzzy bookkeeping, and hidden accounts, and mentioned the cases of Parmalat, Smith-Enron and Worldcom as examples of what not to do.
President Fernandez highlighted that social responsibility was not just up to the government and called for the business community to step up and share the job. Part of the business community’s role is to pay their taxes and keep their financial transactions transparent, according to Fernandez, who also called for ” rigorous audits and clear results.”
The conference was organized by Funglode and financed by the InterAmerican Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).