One in three (12 out of 40) of the largest companies operating in Lithuania scored the maximum score in the newest business transparency assessment. This year, the overall level of corporate transparency is 56 out of 100 points, according to the assessment conducted by Transparency International Lithuania. In 2019, companies scored 36 points, in 2017 – 32 points, in 2014 – 22 points.
The following 12 companies with the highest number of points (100) disclose the most information about their activities: “Energijos skirstymo operatorius” AB, “LTG Cargo” AB, “LTG Infra” AB, “Telia Lietuva” AB, “Agrokoncerno grūdai” UAB, “Bitė Lietuva” UAB, “Circle K Lietuva” UAB, “Ignitis” UAB, “Lidl Lietuva” UAB, “Maxima LT” UAB, “Neste Lietuva” UAB, “Tele2” UAB.
3 companies scored more than 90 points: “ORLEN Lietuva” AB (98 points), “Sanitex” UAB (98 points), “SBA Home” UAB (92 points).
The latest initiative on private sector transparency evaluates the 40 largest companies in Lithuania. TI Lithuania analyzed each corporate website in search of publicly available information on each company’s anti-corruption program, organizational structure and financial reporting.
After the initial assessment, the results were sent to all companies. They were invited to review the information and improve their score within the period of 3 weeks. 15 companies used this opportunity and improved their rating by an average of 36 points.
During the initiative the overall score of companies improved by 13 points (from 43 to 56).
5 out of 40 companies scored 0 points. Two of them did not publish any information at all, one did not publish in Lithuanian language and two did not have websites.
Compared to previous years, in 2021 companies published more information about the ways they prevent corruption in their operations. On average, they scored 60 points for this disclosure this year, compared to 36 in 2019. Two thirds of companies publish their codes of ethics (27 companies), and provide their employees with an opportunity to report wrongdoing (25).
Companies scored slightly lower on organizational (55 out of 100) and financial (53 out of 100) transparency.
7 out of 10 companies disclose their shareholders and 6 out of 10 disclose their annual revenues.
Two thirds of companies (24) indicate which business associations they belong to. In total, companies participate in more than forty associations’ activities.
“I am glad to see companies showing more leadership in transparency. This is the first year when we have heard from several companies asking to dig deeper and evaluate more things. I would very much like to see businesses outside the top 40 follow in the footsteps of larger companies and pay more attention to transparency. At the moment, we see that in the relationship between private and public sectors the responsibility for preventing corruption still mostly falls on the shoulders of the public authorities,” said Sergejus Muravjovas, the CEO of Transparency International Lithuania.
The companies were selected based on their income records for 2020, which were announced by the business news outlet “Verslo Žinios”.
The methodology for assessing the largest companies operating in Lithuania is based on “Transparency International“ Secretariat’s global private sector transparency study “Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing the World’s Largest Companies“. This assessment was completed by TI Lithuania as part of the Integrity Pacts’ initiative funded by the European Commission.
The content of the companies’ websites was assessed between October and December 2021.
A short overview of the assessment can be found here.
Detailed companies’ evaluations – www.skaidrumas.lt/imones
More information: Sergejus Muravjovas, sergejus@transparency.lt, +370 5 212 69 51