SGX Sustainability Reporting: A Communications Playbook

Ask a Singapore-listed company’s investor relations team what changed most in their reporting calendar this year, and climate data is usually the first answer. Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions reporting moved from a comply-or-explain recommendation to a mandatory rule for SGX-listed issuers from the 2025 financial year, and the shift has caught a fair number of communications teams flat-footed.

The numbers themselves are usually ready well before anyone thinks about how to present them. What takes longer, and carries just as much weight, is turning a page of emissions figures and governance disclosures into language that investors, journalists and the public can actually use to judge a company’s progress. SGX sustainability reporting has quietly become one of the more consequential communications jobs on the Singapore corporate calendar.

A Mandate That Arrived Faster Than Expected

By 31 July 2024, 97 per cent of SGX-listed issuers had included at least one climate disclosure referencing the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures framework, up from 73 per cent the year before, though only 28 per cent covered all eleven recommended disclosure items. From the 2025 financial year, Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reporting aligned with IFRS S2 became mandatory for listed issuers, with the remaining sustainability report components still on a comply-or-explain basis. From the 2026 financial year, those components become mandatory too, and SGX RegCo has signalled that larger issuers should expect to begin Scope 3 reporting around the same period.

Why This Is a Communications Problem, Not Just a Compliance One

Finance and sustainability teams can satisfy the disclosure checklist on their own. They can gather the emissions data, document the governance structure, and publish a report that technically meets every requirement in the rulebook. None of that guarantees the report actually communicates anything.

Investors reading a sustainability report alongside annual results want a narrower answer than the report usually gives them: is this company’s climate exposure improving, and can management be trusted to hit the targets it has set. A dense table of emissions figures without narrative context leaves that judgement for each analyst to construct independently.

Journalists covering these disclosures will use whatever framing a company gives them. Where none exists, they tend to build their own from the raw numbers, and a bare set of figures rarely produces a flattering story on its own. A company that explains its own progress, including the parts that still need work, keeps more control over how that story gets told.

Turning Technical Metrics into a Story Investors Understand

Before any narrative gets added, a handful of elements deserve priority over the rest of the report, since they are what most readers are actually scanning for:

• Direction of travel: whether emissions are rising or falling year on year, stated plainly instead of left for a reader to calculate from a table.
• Progress against targets: whether the company is ahead, on track, or behind its own stated goals, said outright instead of implied by a chart.
• Governance context: who owns climate risk at board level, and how often that oversight happens.
• Assurance status: whether the figures have been externally verified, and by whom, since unassured numbers tend to invite more scepticism from analysts.

Coordinating Sustainability Announcements with SGXNet Timing

Sustainability reports for SGX-listed issuers follow the same SGXNet announcement mechanics as other material disclosures, and from the 2026 financial year, issuers without external assurance must publish their sustainability report at the same time as their annual report instead of afterward. Getting that timing wrong carries the same compliance risk as any other late filing, which is why much of the same discipline that applies to writing SGX disclosure announcements carries over here too: legal sign-off on the content, a confirmed SGXNet slot, and a public-facing summary ready to go out the moment the filing clears.

External assurance buys a company up to five months after financial year end to publish, which sounds generous but shouldn’t become a reason to start communications planning late. The narrative work, deciding which storylines to lead with and who needs briefing beforehand, can start well before the final numbers are locked. None of this is legal advice, and the exact disclosure obligations that apply to a given issuer should be confirmed with its own compliance or legal advisers before anything goes out the door.

Where the International Standards Fit In

SGX’s requirements draw directly on IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards set by the International Sustainability Standards Board, a reference point many overseas investors already recognise from their own markets. For issuers that also list or raise capital abroad, aligning disclosures with IFRS S2 in the same language used by comparable overseas issuers avoids a company ending up telling two different versions of its climate story to two audiences. SGX’s sustainability reporting practice note sets out exactly what listed companies need to cover and how it should be structured, and it rewards a full read before any communications copy gets drafted, not just a skim of the summary.

Building a Repeatable ESG Communications Workflow

Companies that handle this well tend to treat sustainability communications as a standing workflow rather than an annual scramble to repackage the compliance report once it lands. A few habits separate the teams that manage this calmly from the ones still finalising their press release the night before the SGXNet filing:

• Brief communications and investor relations teams on the data as soon as a first draft exists, not once it has been finalised.
• Draft a plain-language summary of the material changes before the technical report is locked.
• Identify two or three storylines that explain real progress or setbacks, instead of restating every metric in the report.
• Prepare a media-ready announcement alongside the SGXNet filing, not after it has gone out.
• Pre-brief the analysts or journalists who regularly cover the company on any complex or sensitive figures.
• Keep a record of last year’s framing so this year’s language can show genuine movement instead of echoing it.

None of this replaces the underlying compliance work. It sits alongside it, and companies that invest the effort tend to get a more accurate, less adversarial read on their numbers from investors and the press alike.

Getting the Story Ready Before the Next Reporting Cycle

These disclosure requirements are not going away, and the FY2026 rules will only widen what needs explaining clearly. Treating the communications side with the same seriousness as the compliance side, well before the next filing deadline, tends to be the difference between a report that builds investor confidence and one that simply exists to satisfy a rule. If your team would value a second pair of eyes on how your next announcement will read to investors and media alike, feel free to get in touch with PressRelease.com.sg.