The Publish What You Pay Liberia Coalition commends the Liberian Senate for concurring and passing the Liberian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative Act, on June 11, 2009 creating the first mandatory disaggregated reporting process for extractive company payments to the Government of Liberia. The passage of the LEITI Act helps ensure that the LEITI process will continue to bring transparency to payments made by extractive companies to the Government.

For the first time in the history of modern Azerbaijan, the State Oil Company has signed two oil development deals “in the dark,” without public notice of its negotiations with the foreign companies involved, and without the traditional public contract signing ceremony.

The Azerbaijan NGO Coalition is alarmed by this backwards step in the country’s excellent tradition of oil contract transparency. This incident may demonstrate the beginning of a dangerous trend in the preparation and signing of extractive industry contracts.

Transparency in the extractive industries was very much on the agenda in Washington DC during the week 11-15 May. The World Bank and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) held sessions on sub-national implementation of EITI and working with civil society to ensure EITI is implemented successfully.

14-15 May saw the convening of the 9th EITI Board which accepted Albania, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Zambia as EITI Candidate countries.

PWYP member the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) held its own event on how transit revenues could potentially be included in the framework of EITI. RWI followed events closely and posted regular updates here, including contributions from EITI board member Anthony Richter who was busy blogging on how the week unfolded.

Rio Tinto, the global mining company, has taken an important step towards transparency by voluntarily disclosing, for the first time, the total tax and royalty payments that it makes to 13 of the countries where it operates, Publish What You Pay (PWYP) said today.