Sao Mai Group and Social Responsibility

According to the Private Economic Development Group of the World Bank Group (WB), CSR is the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development, working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve quality of life, in ways that are both good for business and good for development.

 

Business is not just an entity that only focuses on increasing profit but becomes an element of the community that cares about the demand and aspiration of all stakeholders like employees, customers, and even the fields it serves.

 

Along with other conventional factors such as costs and quality, CSR is an extremely important factor of a business. Specific CSR criteria include working environment and conditions, labour safety and hygiene, protection of employee rights, environmental protection, and employee facilitation. CSR is integrated into business strategy and becomes a prerequisite for the business to survive and develop sustainably.

 

Vietnam began to advance broad and deep integration into the world economy where competition is getting increasingly fiercer. Consumers not only care about the look and quality of a product but also take into account its origin, its maker and environmental impacts arising from production process. Then, the business will understand the necessity of its social responsibility to its sustainable development.

 

However, many companies, especially small and medium ones, still do not have a proper view of CSR importance to the community. According to a recent survey by the Vietnam Business Council for Sustainable Development (VBCSD), up to 63 percent of Vietnamese companies do not have a full understanding of sustainable development process and do not have a consistent vision and strategy for sustainable development and CSR.

 

In Vietnam, CSR is primarily carried out by big entities, including Sao Mai Group (ASM). The success of Sao Mai is illustrated by its business performances. In 2014, the firm’s revenue reached VND4,120 billion and its net profit jumped four times from a year earlier to VND223 billion. To cope with impacts of the global economic crisis, many companies accepted to scale down production and lay off employees but the An Giang province-based Sao Mai Group, a multi-business firm engaged in real estate, fisheries, investment, finance, construction and design consulting, travel services, fish-meal production, crude fish oil production, and Ranee premium fish oil refining, did the other way around. In 2014 alone, the group recruited more than 2,300 employees, bringing its workforce to 6,000 people, including more than 500 high-level employees with master's degrees or higher.

 

Sao Mai Group operates in various business fields like construction, real estate, fisheries, food and tourism. The group is also known as the biggest business entity in An Giang province, a leading real estate investor in the Mekong Delta, and one of the five biggest pangasius exporters in Vietnam.

Sao Mai Group is a very close brand to the community as it actively does a lot of social philanthropic activities. In the year to date, the firm spent more than VND2 billion to give gifts to more than 5,600 poor households in 13 Mekong Delta provinces and financed environmental system construction in An Giang province. In the past Lunar New Year, Sao Mai expended VND2.9 billion to decorate Nguyen Hue Street with flowers, build 10 charity houses for the poor, and grant scholarships to poor students with excellent study records. Sao Mai plans to coordinate with Long Xuyen City People’s Committee to decorate streets during the next Lunar New Year.

 

Mr Le Thanh Thuan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sao Mai Group, said CSR cannot be an instrument to polish one’s name but it must serve corporate sustainable development. Besides, for Sao Mai, CSR creates a good value chain for the company, understands the company’s brand position and value in the society by accessing strategic issues and challenges.

 

Prof Thomas Malnight at Harvard Business School, said if a company exercises CSR well, it will be the winner in the marketplace since CSR investment is synonymous with competitiveness improvement and existence of the company. Doing CSR in the medium and long terms will achieve multiple benefits such as lower costs, higher revenue, higher brand value, layoff reduction, higher productivity and more opportunities to access new markets .