Norsk Hydro : More information in local language after Brazil survey (Jan 31, 2018)

Hydro increases communication in local language after feedback from Brazilian transparency survey.

January 31, 2018

Hydro's alumina refinery in Brazil, Alunorte, has been surveyed on transparency in local language by Transparency International, a global NGO that focuses on reducing corruption. TI has analyzed Hydro according to their 'Transparency in Corporate Reporting' methodogy (TRAC), and the result showed a score of 0.7 on a scale from 0 to 10, on transparency in local language. The requested information was published in local language after Hydro became aware of the scoring.

Hydro's Code of Conduct, Integrity program and Country by Country report are now publicly available in Portuguese.Hydro's Code of Conduct is currently under review, and translations in more languages will be made publicly available when the revised code has been finalized.

'Hydro is committed to transparency in all our operations, and we realize that we also must pay more attention to making relevant information available in local languages,' says Head of Extra-Financial Reporting Kirsten Margrethe Hovi in Hydro.

Alunorte was invited in September to respond to a questionnaire about transparency in its operations, available both in Portuguese and English. Hydro answered to the questionnaire using references to information publicly available at www.hydro.com, and gave relevant references to all questions that were applicable to Alunorte.

At deadline, we were made aware by TI that references in English language would not be accepted. As an immediate response, Hydro made the most relevant public documentation available in Portuguese on its Brazilian webpages and sent an updated response to TI. As this happened the next working day, these updates were, however, not taken into account in the survey.

'Hydro has a longstanding and good relationship with TI, and we see that they play a very important role in the fight against corruption and in improved transparency,' says Head of Corporate Compliance Lars Kolbjørnsen in Hydro.

In the report, TI states that the items published by Hydro after the deadline would have improved the assessment and score.

'(…) Hydro Alunorte, published items that would possibly improve its assessment, however, the additions where entered after deadline (October 6, 2017) and therefore were not considered for scoring purposes. In any case, as the objective of the research is to improve the level of corporate transparency, Transparency International understands that the goal was achieved in Hydro's case,' the report states.