ESG Reporting Standards in Singapore: How to Present SGX, GRI & IFRS Disclosures Clearly

Most Singapore issuers preparing their first ISSB-aligned disclosure arrive with three frameworks on the table, the SGX rules, GRI, and IFRS S2, and no clear map of how they fit together. The standards are rarely the hard part. ESG reporting standards are the frameworks that define what a company discloses about its environmental, social and governance performance. In Singapore, an SGX-listed company works to the SGX Listing Rules 711A and 711B, which require an annual sustainability report and a stated reporting framework, alongside the climate-related disclosures SGX has phased in. The GRI Standards and the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2 are the frameworks commonly used alongside the SGX requirements to structure that report. Getting the standards right is one thing. Presenting the disclosures so a reader can actually follow them is another, and that is what this guide covers.

The Singapore wrinkle is that most listed issuers run two frameworks at once, GRI for impact and IFRS S2 for the investor-facing climate picture, against a hard climate timeline that adds a layer every financial year. So the real coordination problem is not picking a standard. It is making one governed dataset answer both frameworks without producing two contradicting versions of the same emissions figure.

This article is written for investor relations, communications and corporate secretarial teams who are preparing or refreshing a sustainability report for an SGX-listed company. It explains how the three reference frameworks fit together and where the common presentation failures occur.

A note on scope. Walk Production is an integrated creative agency that designs and writes sustainability reports, annual reports and integrated reports for listed companies and organizations across Malaysia and Singapore. We are not an audit, assurance, ESG advisory, or legal firm. The frameworks here are cited as context for presenting disclosures clearly. Always confirm your reporting obligations with your advisers and the current official sources listed below.

What are ESG reporting standards in Singapore?

ESG reporting standards in Singapore refer to the frameworks that govern what an SGX-listed company discloses about its environmental, social and governance performance, and at what level of detail. The three reference points that matter most for a listed Singapore issuer are the SGX Listing Rules (which set the mandatory floor), the GRI Standards (which govern impact disclosure), and the ISSB’s IFRS S1 and S2 (which govern climate and financial-materiality disclosure). Standards define what to disclose. The question this guide addresses is how to communicate those disclosures so a reader can follow the logic from the materiality matrix through to the performance data without losing the thread.

What does SGX require under Listing Rules 711A and 711B?

Under Listing Rule 711A, every SGX-listed issuer must publish an annual sustainability report, described on a comply-or-explain basis. Rule 711B sets out six primary components the report must address: material ESG factors, climate-related disclosures, policies and practices and performance, targets, the reporting framework used, and a board statement with the associated governance structure.

The report is issued at the same time as the annual report, or no later than five months after the financial year-end where it has been externally assured. Practice Note 7.6, the SGX Sustainability Reporting Guide, sets out the expected structure and content in more detail, including how the climate-related disclosures align with the four pillars of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. That alignment is the link that makes the 711B climate component concrete: the rule names the topic, and the Practice Note tells you the structure the disclosure is expected to follow. Confirm the current text of all three on the SGX Rulebook before finalizing any disclosure. The rules in this area are actively updated.

How do GRI Standards differ from IFRS S1 and S2?

GRI and the ISSB standards answer different questions. GRI Standards take an impact materiality lens: how does the company affect people, the economy and the environment? IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 take a financial materiality lens: how do sustainability risks and climate-related factors affect enterprise value? Many Singapore issuers run both, which raises a question the team has to settle early: how to feed both frameworks from one governed dataset rather than two.

GRI is structured around three foundational documents (GRI 1: Foundation, GRI 2: General Disclosures, GRI 3: Material Topics) plus Topic Standards covering emissions, water, workforce and other areas, and Sector Standards for specific industries. Its primary reader is a broad stakeholder group rather than the investor alone: employees and communities sit alongside ratings agencies and ESG analysts.

IFRS S1 sets the general requirements for sustainability-related financial information useful to investors in assessing the entity’s prospects. IFRS S2 covers climate specifically, requiring disclosure of the risks and opportunities that could affect the entity’s cash flows, access to finance or cost of capital over the short, medium and long term.

The practical design implication: build the data architecture once so the same Scope 1 and 2 figures, workforce metrics and materiality assessment surface consistently in both the GRI-referenced narrative and the IFRS-aligned investor disclosure. Inconsistency between the two is one of the easiest gaps for an analyst or ratings agency to flag.

Reporting emissions once across both frameworks

A worry we hear early in a dual-framework cycle is that running GRI and IFRS S2 means disclosing emissions twice, in two slightly different shapes. It does not. The two are highly aligned on greenhouse gases because both draw on the GHG Protocol, which is why, as GRI puts it, companies already disclosing Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions under the GRI Standards “will be well positioned to report information about GHG emissions in accordance with IFRS S2.”

That alignment was made formal in June 2025. The Global Sustainability Standards Board granted equivalence to IFRS S2 for GHG disclosures prepared under GRI 102, so an issuer reporting under both can use its IFRS S2 Scope 1, 2 and 3 figures to meet the GRI requirement. One set of emissions numbers, prepared once, satisfies both.

For the team building the report, this settles a real coordination question. The report should carry a single emissions dataset, stated once with its boundary and method, and a short note of which framework each figure answers, not two parallel emissions tables that a reader then has to reconcile. The equivalence holds for the GHG numbers; the broader GRI impact narrative and the IFRS investor-facing strategy disclosure still differ, because they are answering different questions. Settle which figures are shared and which are framework-specific at the data stage, and the rest of the layout follows from that decision rather than fighting it at the proof.

How does SGX use the ISSB standards for climate disclosure?

SGX has taken an ISSB-informed approach: rather than adopting IFRS S1 and S2 directly into law, SGX RegCo and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) have embedded climate disclosure requirements into the Listing Rules through a phased roadmap. Rule 711B’s climate-related component points issuers to the requirements set out in Practice Note 7.6, which is aligned with the ISSB’s climate disclosure architecture.

That architecture rests on four pillars: governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets. IFRS S2, and therefore the climate content the Singapore regime is aligned to, is built around them, so the cleanest way to organize a climate disclosure is under those four named headings rather than as undifferentiated prose. A reader, and a ratings analyst working at speed, can then find the governance account, the strategy account and the metrics in predictable places instead of hunting for them.

The four pillars are not new thinking. IFRS S1 and S2 fully incorporate the recommendations of the TCFD, which the IFRS Foundation describes as “the culmination of the work of the TCFD.” The Financial Stability Board handed monitoring of companies’ climate disclosure to the ISSB from 2024. The practical consequence for a reporting team is one of inheritance: a “TCFD report” carried over from an earlier cycle is now reporting against ISSB-aligned content under a new home. The structure can largely carry forward, but the basis of preparation and the framework reference have to be restated to the current standard.

The practical difference from previous ESG narrative requirements is significant. Climate governance disclosure now has to describe how the board oversees climate-related risks and opportunities, and that content cannot be carried over from a prior year’s boilerplate. The basis of preparation matters too: naming the phased adoption year and the framework reference signals that the disclosure is current and has been built against the applicable standard, rather than drawn from an earlier template.

What is the Singapore climate reporting timeline?

Every SGX-listed company reports Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions from financial years beginning in 2025. Straits Times Index constituents lead on the broader ISSB-based disclosures, with other listed tiers phased in over later years. ACRA and SGX RegCo have extended the climate reporting timelines more than once, so always confirm the live position on the ACRA website before sign-off.

Large non-listed companies are also being phased into ISSB-based climate reporting, with climate disclosures deferred to FY2030 and external assurance deferred to FY2032 under the current roadmap. Confirm the live dates on the ACRA website before finalizing any timeline language in a report.

How should companies present ESG data clearly across the report?

Treat presentation as a deliberate editorial and design decision, not an afterthought you address at the final proof round. Lead each section with the headline metric before the full table, maintain one visual language across the financial and sustainability halves of the report, and state units once at the top of each data table. A dense disclosure that is technically complete still fails if a non-specialist reader cannot follow it from the materiality matrix through to the performance data.

A few principles that travel well across sustainability report design:

• Lead with the headline figure, then the supporting detail. A Scope 1 and 2 emissions summary or a materiality matrix gives the reader the takeaway before the full table.
• Design the charts, rather than simply generating them. An emissions trend chart is read in under ten seconds. How that chart is built determines whether the rest of the section receives attention.
• Keep one typographic and color system across the whole document. The sustainability section sharing the same visual register as the financial review signals that the report is one document, not two stapled together.
• Make tables scannable. Clear column headers, figures aligned consistently, and units stated once at the top beat dense grids with units repeated inside every cell.
• Connect the materiality matrix to the principal risks. The sustainability disclosure and the risk review should point at the same issues. When they diverge, the inconsistency is the first thing an analyst notices.

One thing we have learned producing these reports for listed companies in Malaysia and Singapore: the reports that run smoothly are the ones where materiality is locked before the design brief is written. When the material topics are still moving in the third proof round, every spread gets rebuilt around them, and the cost lands in the schedule. Settling what the report is actually about, and in what order it matters, is the single decision that does most to keep the design from unraveling later.

The single-dataset principle is easiest to see in a real figure. Here is the gap an analyst flags first, and the fix.

What are common mistakes when presenting ESG disclosures?

In a climate-first regime the recurring failures are presentation problems, not data problems. Climate risks listed without the governance narrative, a scenario-analysis section that hides its own maturity, a materiality assessment that never reaches the financial review, and figures that contradict each other across the report: all of these weaken an otherwise compliant disclosure and invite scrutiny from analysts, ratings agencies and assurance reviewers.

These are the patterns we see most often in reports we have reviewed and produced:

• Climate disclosure without the board-oversight narrative. Listing climate risks is only the starting point. What the ISSB-aligned requirements ask for is the account of how the board oversees those risks and how management identifies and monitors them, which is the governance pillar doing its work.
• Scenario analysis that hides its own maturity. IFRS S2 asks for the resilience assessment and the method behind it, not a quantified figure at every stage. An early-cycle issuer may legitimately be qualitative. The failure is not the absence of numbers; it is dressing a qualitative exercise in the language of quantification, or asserting resilience with no method shown. Name the maturity of the analysis plainly, and the disclosure reads as credible.
• A materiality assessment that never reaches the financial review. Climate appears prominent in the materiality matrix, then absent from the principal risks and strategy narrative. The two should point at the same issues, because a reader following one risk through the report notices when they diverge.
• Sustainability content that reads as a separate publication. A different writing register, a different color palette and a different graphic system, bolted on the back of the annual report. Readers notice within a page.
• Marketing claims that exceed the qualified language in the report. The greenwashing risk most often surfaces between the corporate website or investor presentation and the sustainability report itself. Align every channel on the same approved messaging.

How Walk Production can help

Walk Production is an integrated creative agency that designs and writes annual reports, sustainability reports and integrated reports for listed companies and organizations across Malaysia and Singapore. Our in-house team handles concept development, copywriting, layout, infographics and data visualization so disclosures read clearly across both the investor-facing and stakeholder-facing sections of the report.

We are a design and copywriting studio, not an audit, assurance or advisory firm. Our scope is the presentation layer: structuring the narrative, designing the data visualization, and building the report as one coherent document from the materiality section through to the performance tables. Your reporting team and appointed advisers own framework compliance, materiality, and assurance sign-off.

For sustainability report design, the most useful step at the start of a cycle is aligning the financial and sustainability narratives before design begins, so both halves are drafted together rather than reconciled at the last proof. See also our guide to annual and sustainability reports for Singapore companies for a broader look at how the two documents work together, and what a sustainability report is for the definitional groundwork behind the standards this article covers.

See how we have built sustainability and annual disclosures into single, coherent reports in our reporting work, including our sustainability report for PT Halmahera Persada Lygend (HPL), a mining group, or speak to our editorial team about the reporting cycle ahead.