EITI

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The international civil society coalition Publish What You Pay welcomed today’s U.S. commitment to participate in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to increase transparency in oil, mining and gas revenues collected from U.S.

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Publish What You Pay Australia is calling on the Australian Government to follow the lead of other countries in our region by committing to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

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Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo might be one of the world’s richest countries in natural resources, but its population ranks among the poorest with four out of five citizens living on less than 30 cents a day.

On 10 June 2011 a wide range of civil society organisations gathered in Melbourne for a PWYP information and strategy development workshop. Hosted by long time PWYP member Oxfam Australia, sessions included an introduction to PWYP, examination of national coalition case studies and a strategy brainstorm for the future of the campaign in Australia. The day closed with a real sense of momentum in the quest for greater openness in the oil and mining sector in Australia.

Currently, the campaign in Australia is developing across two very exciting fronts.

Publish What You Pay (PWYP) congratulates the Rt. Hon. Clare Short on her appointment as Chair of the EITI Board, as well as all of the representatives of governments, civil society and the private sector who will serve on the EITI Board 2011-2013.

Publish What You Pay, the global civil society coalition, today urged the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to take bold steps to ensure it remains robust and meaningful over the next two years.

Speaking at the opening of the fifth EITI Global Conference in Paris, France, PWYP International Coordinator Radhika Sarin said: “The EITI has been a ground-breaking initiative which has put revenue transparency firmly on the agenda, but it now needs to embrace changes which will ensure that transparency leads to true accountability.”

A Call for Nominations was launched on December 7, 2010. The Call for Nominations was circulated widely through civil society networks and via the EITI National Coordinators in each EITI country to ensure the widest possible diffusion.

The OSCE Summit that ended December 2 in Astana missed an opportunity to promote good governance of the oil, gas and mining industries by failing to endorse the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in its Summit Declaration, a global civil society transparency network said today.

“It is extremely disappointing that Kazakhstan, as the OSCE Chairman and Summit host, was unable to get political backing for the EITI, which the country is itself implementing to bring transparency and good governance into its massive energy and mining sectors,” said Radhika Sarin, International Coordinator of the Publish What You Pay network. “The EITI is based on the values supposedly shared by OSCE States, including respect for civil society, and is an example of effective and constructive cooperation between different stakeholders. This could have been an easy yet significant win for every OSCE member.”

The board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) today considered the status of 18 countries which were unable to meet the deadline they were given in 2008 to complete external verification of their progress under the global transparency initiative.

The EITI board rejected the option of granting a blanket extension to all countries in recognition of the need to maintain its credibility as an initiative that respects its own rules. Instead, the board granted an extension to 16 countries following a case-by-case review which teased out the specific difficulties countries have faced in meeting the deadline. Countries were granted an extension if these difficulties were judged to be exceptional and unforeseen.

This week Norway, the first OECD country to implement the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), took an important step by publicly releasing its first EITI report disclosing all payments of taxes and fees made by oil companies to the government in 2008.

PWYP Norway coordinator Mona Thowsen congratulated Norway at the launch event and encouraged “all resource rich countries, including other OECD countries to engage meaningfully in the EITI tripartite process…”