Sustainable Development Trends of Domestic Companies in The Metallurgical Industry

Abstract

In the current conditions of severe sanctions restrictions, more difficult access to capital markets in order to attract long-term investment resources, a sharp increase in the exchange rate, enterprises in the real sector of the economy faced a difficult choice of setting the priority of tasks - full financing of current activities or cutting part of costs in order to implement long-term projects, including those related to sustainable development. A number of experts have already expressed the point of view related to the fact that the sustainable development programs of domestic companies will be suspended, since the necessary resources simply will not be enough to finance them. In this article, the author, considering the concept of sustainable development, proves that for large industrial enterprises this concept has long been organically built into the overall development strategy of the enterprise, therefore, “freezing” programs related to ESG is impossible in practice, or it will lead to extremely adverse consequences for companies. On the contrary, it is during the crisis period that the main attention should be focused on observing the long-term interests of the company and the interests of its stakeholders, which will help the company in the post-crisis period become one of the industry leaders not only in Russia, but also in the world. This statement is confirmed by specific examples from the experience of a number of companies. Within the framework of this article, the main attention is focused on enterprises related to the metallurgical industry, since at the moment most of the representatives of this particular industry are included in the rating of Russian leading companies in sustainable development, and the experience of implementing the ESG principles in this industry is quite wide and represents of particular interest to consider.