What is SEDG, and who is it for?
SEDG is developed and published by Capital Markets Malaysia (CMM), an affiliate of the Securities Commission Malaysia. It helps small and medium enterprises (SMEs), particularly those in supply chains, organise environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures. A disclosure is simply information you report about your business.
It also gives customers and financiers a common reference when asking SMEs for information. See CMM's SEDG overview and downloads.
Edition checked on 5 October 2026: the latest national edition listed by CMM is SEDG Version 2, July 2025. It supersedes Version 1 and contains 38 disclosures across 15 topics. The disclosures are grouped into Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels to reflect different stages of reporting readiness.
The guide is designed for use across industries, with priorities varying by business. It is voluntary guidance with no mandatory adoption timetable of its own. You still need to establish what matters to your operations, what a requester expects and which reporting obligations apply separately.
What does ESG mean in everyday business terms?
Think about your resources, your people and the way decisions are made:
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| Area | What it covers | Records you could start looking for |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental | Energy, greenhouse gas emissions, water, waste and materials | Electricity and fuel records, water bills, waste collection records, material purchases |
| Social | Labour practices, employee training, pay, workforce diversity, safety and community involvement | Payroll and workforce summaries, training attendance and hours, injury records, donation receipts |
| Governance | Who oversees the business, its policies, risks, corruption incidents and customer privacy complaints | Director details, approved policies, financial-report records, incident and complaint logs |
These are examples drawn from the Version 2 disclosure template, with suggested supporting records. They are a starting point for your search; the guide explains each disclosure's definition and measurement.
Some answers are numbers. Others describe a policy, a risk or how the business is organised. Report what actually exists. If you have no written policy on a topic, explain that honestly and decide whether you need to develop one.
Choose a useful starting set
First, put any customer or bank questionnaire beside the guide. Establish the period, locations, units, deadline and evidence expected. Ask whether the requester wants particular SEDG disclosures, its own form or another reporting framework.
Then review the full disclosure list. Materiality means deciding which topics matter most for your business and the people using its information. For example, a delivery business may need close attention to fuel and driver safety; a manufacturer may also need detailed material, waste and water records. Consider significant problems and risks even when their records are harder to gather.
The guide recommends beginning with Basic disclosures, identifying what you can report now and planning the next gaps to address. Basic includes greenhouse gas emissions, so it can still involve calculation. Intermediate and Advanced add detail, such as reductions, supply-chain emissions or further risk information. Use the additional guidance for each item you select. Read SEDG's instructions and disclosure map.
For your working list, mark each item as:
- Ready: supported by records for the agreed period and business scope.
- Needs work: relevant, but records or calculations are incomplete; assign an owner and next action.
- Not applicable: there is a clear reason it does not apply; record that reason and confirm it with the requester where needed.
Missing data is different from zero. Use zero only when your records support that answer. Gathering a few items is useful progress, but describe the coverage clearly when sharing a partial response.
Share the work among people who already hold the records
You can organise a first pass around existing responsibilities. One person may cover several roles in a small business.
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| Information to gather | Who might gather it | What they could check |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity, fuel and water | Bookkeeper, accounts administrator, facilities or operations person | Bills, meter readings, fuel use and which sites or vehicles they cover |
| Waste and materials | Production, purchasing or warehouse person | Supplier records, material weights, waste weights and collection destinations |
| Employees, pay and training | Payroll, administration or human resources person | Workforce totals, pay against applicable minimum-wage rules, training hours and attendance |
| Safety and labour concerns | Supervisor or safety lead, with administration and purchasing | Injury and incident records, labour concerns and relevant supplier information |
| Community contributions | Accounts or administration person | Payments and receipts for the reporting period |
| Directors, policies and financial reporting | Owner or director, supported by accounts and the company secretary where relevant | Current director details, policies and financial-report status |
| Corruption and customer privacy complaints | Owner or director, with the staff handling complaints and customer data | Confirmed incidents, substantiated complaints and supporting investigation records |
This is a suggested division of work, not a staffing requirement. Appoint one coordinator to bring the answers together, and have the owner or director review the final response. Share summaries where suitable and keep access to sensitive payroll, employee and customer records limited to the people who need them.
Keep a simple record behind every answer
Start with a spreadsheet and an organised folder. For each disclosure, record the result, unit, period, businesses and locations included, source document, calculation method, responsible person and any limitation.
For example, an electricity total should point back to the bills used and identify the premises covered. Keep consumption in kilowatt-hours (kWh) separate from spending in ringgit. Water bills may use cubic metres; check the conversion when reporting in litres. Waste records may use kilograms while the disclosure asks for metric tonnes.
Keep the original records alongside a summary of any conversions. Note estimates, missing months and shared meters. If you compare years, check that the period, coverage and measurement method are comparable before claiming an improvement.
Set a routine your team can maintain, such as filing bills monthly and reviewing the disclosure sheet before a customer update. That routine is a practical suggestion; follow any frequency agreed with the requester.
If you're asked for greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gases are the gases contributing to climate change. Emissions figures require calculations; an electricity bill or fuel receipt supplies an input to that calculation.
Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources the business owns or controls, such as fuel burned in its vehicles or equipment. Scope 2 covers emissions associated with purchased energy, such as electricity. Scope 3 covers other indirect emissions in the value chain, such as purchased goods or outsourced transport. CMM's emissions calculator introduction explains these categories.
CMM provides a calculator to help estimate Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Read its July 2025 user guide before using it: that guide excludes refrigerant leakage and physical or chemical process emissions from the calculator. Check coverage if those sources matter to your business. Its methodology page also describes using 2022 grid emission factors for later years; confirm which factor year and method your requester needs.
Save the calculation inputs, factor source and year, business coverage and output. If a customer asks for product-level or supply-chain emissions, clarify that scope before assuming a company electricity calculation answers the request.
Hypothetical SME example: a small packaging manufacturer
This is a made-up example, not a case study or a financing eligibility assessment.
Imagine a packaging manufacturer in Johor with 22 employees and one factory. A customer asks for its 2025 electricity use, water use, workforce training, safety information and company policies.
The owner asks the accounts administrator to coordinate the response. Accounts gathers the electricity and water bills for January to December 2025. The production supervisor collects safety records and checks what waste information is available. The payroll administrator brings together employee and training records. The owner checks which policies are approved and in use.
They use SEDG to map the customer's questions and label the period and factory covered. They discover that two months of water bills are missing and some training sessions have no recorded duration. Those items remain incomplete while the team retrieves bills and checks attendance records.
The team agrees with the customer how to submit the available information and when to provide the outstanding answers. It also starts recording training hours and filing utility bills consistently. If emissions are requested next, the team will establish the required method and gather the relevant fuel and other source data as well.
Later, the business can bring those electricity records into a discussion about more efficient equipment, alongside supplier quotations, costs and its repayment plan. The same records become useful in another conversation without changing what they actually prove.
How the information helps with customers and financing
For a customer, an organised response makes it easier to understand your operations and follow the evidence behind your answers. Keep a reusable core record, then match it to each customer's requested period and scope. CMM identifies supply-chain procurement and financing discussions among SEDG's possible uses.
For a financier, the information can help explain your current operations, an improvement you want to fund and how you will measure progress. Bring it alongside financial records, project quotations and a realistic repayment case. Ask what additional reporting or verification the proposed facility requires.
Completing SEDG does not guarantee financing approval or a particular rate. For example, Bank Negara Malaysia explains that applications for its SME funds remain subject to the participating institution's normal credit assessment.
Our financing-readiness guide helps you organise the wider evidence pack. For borrowing tied to performance targets, see sustainability-linked financing.
Is SEDG mandatory for my SME?
Keep three different sources of requirements in view:
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| Where the requirement comes from | What it means for your business |
|---|---|
| Voluntary guidance | SEDG helps you organise disclosures and has no mandatory adoption timetable of its own. Choose relevant information and build capability. |
| A customer or bank request | The requester may specify information for supplier assessment, an application or an agreed contract. Establish the exact scope, deadline and consequences under that process or agreement. |
| Applicable reporting obligations | Laws, regulatory rules or listing requirements may apply to your entity. Check those requirements separately; completing SEDG does not establish that you have met them. |
The Securities Commission's NSRF FAQ, issued 14 January 2026, identifies Main Market and ACE Market listed issuers and qualifying large non-listed companies as target entities for the National Sustainability Reporting Framework (NSRF). Other entities may adopt voluntarily unless their respective regulators mandate otherwise.
Your status, group circumstances and sector matter. Check the official NSRF resources and the rules governing your business when assessing an obligation. A customer's own reporting duties may explain its request to you; establish separately what applies directly to your SME. Duties concerning matters such as labour, safety or waste also need their own checks.
Find the guide and the tools that fit your business
Start with the national SEDG Version 2 guide and its English Version 2 disclosure spreadsheet. The workbook contains General, Environmental, Social and Governance sheets covering all 38 disclosures. The guide also includes a disclosure-table template.
CMM's download portal lists sector guides and spreadsheets for agriculture, construction and real estate, energy, manufacturing, and transport and logistics. The sector guides checked are dated May 2024. Use them for relevant additional detail alongside the national Version 2 guide; the linked sector spreadsheets do not contain all three additions in national Version 2.
You can also consult the Human Rights and Labour Practices Guide, May 2024 for child-labour and forced-labour disclosures, or the Sustainable Batik Disclosure Guide, November 2025 if you operate in the batik value chain.
If a regional customer mentions ASEDG, ask which edition it expects. The ASEAN Capital Markets Forum publishes a separate ASEAN Simplified ESG Disclosure Guide Version 2, November 2025. Keep the national and ASEAN titles and dates clear when answering a request.