Limited Assurance Report of the Independent Auditor regarding Sustainability Information¹

To the Executive Board of BASF SE, Ludwigshafen am Rhein

We have been engaged to perform an independent limited assurance engagement on the qualitative and quantitative disclosures on sustainability, published in the Online-“BASF Report 2018” (further “Report”), published under www.bericht.basf.com/2018/en for the business year 2018, of BASF SE, Ludwigshafen am Rhein (further “BASF“).

It was not part of our engagement to review product or services related information, references to external information sources, expert opinions and future-related statements in the Report.

Management´s Responsibility for the Report

The legal representatives of BASF are responsible for the preparation of the Report in accordance with the Reporting Criteria. BASF applies the principles and standard disclosures of the Standards of the Global Reporting Initiative in combination with the Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Scope 1 und 2), the Corporate Value Chain Standard (Scope 3) of the World Resources Institute/World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the Addressing the Avoided Emissions Challenge-Guideline of the International Council of Chemical Associations and the WBCSD, the recommendations of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), internally developed criteria for the evaluation method Sustainable Solution Steering, for climate protection products and the related prevented emissions as well as for the Health Performance Index as Reporting Criteria (further: “Reporting Criteria”).

The responsibility includes the selection and application of appropriate methods to prepare the Report and the use of assumptions and estimates for individual qualitative and quantitative sustainability disclosures which are reasonable under the circumstances. Furthermore, this responsibility includes designing, implementing and maintaining systems and processes relevant for the preparation of the Report in a way that is free of – intended or unintended – material misstatements.

Independence and quality assurance on the part of the auditing firm

We are independent from the company in accordance with the requirements of independence and quality assurance set out in legal provisions and professional pronouncements and have fulfilled our additional professional obligations in accordance with these requirements.

Our audit firm applies the legal provisions and professional pronouncements for quality assurance, in particular the Professional Code for German Public Auditors and Chartered Accountants (in Germany) and the quality assurance standard of the German Institute of Public Auditors (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW) regarding quality assurance requirements in audit practice (IDW QS 1).

Practitioner’s Responsibility

Our responsibility is to express a conclusion based on our work performed and the evidence obtained on the qualitative and quantitative disclosures within the scope of our engagement.

We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised): “Assurance Engagements other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information” and the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3410: “Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements” of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB). These standards require that we comply with our professional duties and plan and perform the assurance engagement to obtain a limited level of assurance to preclude that the information above is not in accordance, in material respects, with the aforementioned Reporting Criteria. We do not, however, issue a separate conclusion for each disclosure. In a limited assurance engagement the evidence gathering procedures are more limited than in a reasonable assurance engagement and therefore significantly less assurance is obtained than in a reasonable assurance engagement. The choice of audit activities is subject to the auditor’s own judgement.

Within the scope of our engagement, we performed amongst others the following procedures:

• Inquiries of personnel on corporate level, which are responsible for the materiality analysis, in order to gain an understanding of the processes for determining material sustainability topics and respective reporting boundaries of BASF
• A risk analysis, including a media search, to identify relevant sustainability aspects for BASF in the reporting period
• Reviewing the suitability of internally developed Reporting Criteria
• Evaluation of the design and implementation of the systems and processes for the collection, processing and control of the sustainability disclosures included in the scope of this engagement, including the consolidation of the data
• Inquiries of personnel on corporate level responsible for providing the data and information, carrying out internal control procedures and consolidating the data and information
• Evaluation of selected internal and external documents
• An analytical review of the data and trend explanations submitted by all sites for consolidation at Group level
• Assessment of local data collection and reporting processes and reliability of reported data via a sampling survey at the sites Ludwigshafen am Rhein (BASF SE, Germany), Schwarzheide (BASF Schwarzheide GmbH, Germany), Shanghai/Caojing (BASF Chemicals Company Ltd., China) and Middle Georgia (BASF Corporation, USA)
• Reviewing the consistency of GRI Standards in-accordance option ‘Comprehensive’ as declared by BASF with sustainability information in the Report
• An evaluation of the overall presentation of the sustainability information in the Report

As described in the BASF Report 2018, BASF engaged external providers to perform sustainability assessments and audits on suppliers. The adequacy and accuracy of the conclusions from these external assessments were not part of our limited assurance engagement.

Conclusion

Based on the procedures performed and the evidence obtained, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the qualitative and quantitative disclosures on sustainability for the business year 2018 included in the scope of this engagement and published in the Report are in all material respects not prepared in accordance with the Reporting Criteria.

Restriction of Use/Clause on General Engagement Terms

This report is issued for purposes of the Executive Board of BASF SE, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, only. We assume no responsibility with regard to any third parties.

Our assignment for the Executive Board of BASF SE, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, and professional liability is governed by the General Engagement Terms for Wirtschaftsprüfer and Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften (Allgemeine Auftragsbedingungen für Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften) in the version dated January 1, 2017 (https://www.kpmg.de/bescheinigungen/lib/aab_english.pdf). By reading and using the information contained in this assurance report, each recipient confirms notice of provisions of the General Engagement Terms (including the limitation of our liability for negligence to EUR 4 million as stipulated in No. 9) and accepts the validity of the General Engagement Terms with respect to us.

Frankfurt am Main, February 20, 2019

KPMG AG
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
[Original German version signed by:]