KUALA LUMPUR: In celebrating CIMB Foundation’s 10th anniversary and to reaffirm the group’s commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR), CIMB Group Holdings Bhd (CIMB group) today announced one per cent of the group’s profit before tax (PBT) to be channeled to the foundation.
This would be used for the group’s CSR initiatives across the region for the next three years.
The funds would be channeled towards enhancing and replicating successful projects through the Foundations’s three core pilars - community development, sports and education - with the aim of empowering larger communities and changing more lives.
"After deliberating, we have decided to recalibrate CIMB’s approach to CSR and through the one per cent PBT, there will be a significant increase in the annual fund for CSR.
"It will be an increase of three times from the current amount that we are spending. For 2017, we spent almost RM23 million for CSR projects and we are estimating about RM65 million to RM75 million annually,” said CIMB group chairman Datuk Sri Nazir Razak during the press conference held after the official ceremony of the foundation’s anniversary celebration.
Nazir said only a handful of corporate companies in Malaysia spent more than one per cent of its profit for CSR projects and hoped that CIMB’s announcement would encourage others to reflect on the amount spent for their CSR projects.
Nazir also announced that its staff would be allowed to take up to one-month paid leave to work in the foundation’s CSR activities.
Besides this, the foundation would also launch its financial literacy programme for youth called Be$mart as well as the Community Link programme to be introduced in Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia in 2018.
‘We have also decided to empower the youths in sports, through sponsoring Junior Cycling Malaysia for its development. As we all know, for this year’s SEA Games 2017, the entire team was from CIMB’s Junior Squash development programme and hopefully we can replicate the success with other sports.
‘I’m happy to note that CIMB Foundation is also introducing ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ as the guiding principle for all its initiatives, to promote better communal relations, diversity and inclusion and nurture cross-cultural understand among beneficiaries,” he said.
As part of this, to promote better communal reltions and to drive greater integration for Malaysians, CIMB group would launch a Mozek School soon, which would be a holiday school for students to learn more on integration and also for them to live together in a multiracial society.
The anniversary celebrations held at The Curve, Mutiara Damansara, featured fun activities by its beneficiaries who showcased their unique skills and talents.
Established in November 2007, the foundation has disbursed RM120 million through 962 initiatives benefiting more that 700,000 lives through its CSR projects.
Also present during the celebration were CIMB Foundation chairman, Tan Sri Md Nor Md Yusof, CIMB Group chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Seri Tengku Zafrul Aziz and CIMB Foundation CEO, Datuk Hamidah Naziadin.
