Economic contribution

Wesfarmers is one of Australia's largest publicly-listed companies and one of the country's largest private-sector employers, with more than 500,000 shareholders and approximately 200,000 employees at the report date.

As a result, both directly and indirectly, there are many Australians with a shared interest in the sustainable future of Wesfarmers and our capacity to continue to provide satisfactory returns to shareholders.

Our major operating business interests in the full-year covered by this report include supermarkets, liquor and convenience stores; home improvement and office supplies; general merchandise and apparel; coal mining; insurance; industrial and safety products distribution; chemical and fertiliser manufacture; and gas production and distribution and power supply.

Key indicators of the Group's financial performance indicators are summarised in figure 1.

Our operations make a significant contribution to the economies of Australia and New Zealand. These contributions included more than $6,790 million paid in salaries, wages and other benefits to our employees, dividends to our shareholders totalling $1,735 million and $1,287 million paid to governments at all levels in the form of taxes, levies and royalties. More than 95 per cent of our revenues and earnings are derived from our Australian operations.

We are one of 20 Australian companies selected for inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for 2011 (as at 19 September 2011). We are also included in the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and the Asia Pacific region (DJSI World – Asia Pacific.

DJSI is a set of five indices which evaluate the performance of companies worldwide.

The DJSI assessment (with assessments against the DJSI criteria) of Wesfarmers over the past five years has been shown in figure 2.