Presentation to EITI Implementation Workshop

It is a critical time to ensure that there are clear and enforceable standards to steer implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. This is essential so that the EITI becomes a truly effective and credible model for measuring the governance of oil, gas and mining revenues in countries around the world that allows citizens of resource-rich developing countries to hold their government accountable.

The PWYP coalition, with a worldwide membership of over 260 NGOs, has supported the development of the EITI since its inception. The Initiative has helped to generate extensive international awareness that transparency of resource revenues is vital to prevent corruption in countries that depend on such income, and to ensure that these revenues are used to promote growth and development.

After nearly two years there is still no clear benchmark for what it means to implement the EITI Principles endorsed in the June 2003 Conference. The EITI Reporting Guidelines and the draft EITI Source Book do not adequately set out how the EITI’s central concepts will be applied across implementing countries*. The EITI requires clear a implementation model that countries can refer to when designing their own initiatives, and which can be used by citizens, investors and others to compare one country or company with another. Without such a benchmark, EITI’s credibility will continue to be put at risk, and the original aims endorsed by its stakeholders from government, industry and civil society will not be achieved.

Without solid implementation guidelines there will continue to be no sound basis to judge which stakeholders are actively complying with EITI implementation at country levels. Therefore, the risk that some actors will free-ride on the process will remain, which could potentially damage the EITI ‘brand’ significantly.

The EITI has been championed as a multi-stakeholders international initiative. However, the differing levels of involvement of civil society in ‘pilot’ countries so far suggests that more effort needs to be made to ensure meaningful civil society consultation by governments at all stages of implementation.

PWYP welcomes the commitments made by many EITI stakeholders to help fund and facilitate capacity-building programmes for civil society organizations engaged in the EITI process. However, capacity-building programmes in implementing countries have not yet materialised, which could potentially undermine of the EITI’s primary objectives: to foster greater understanding of why revenue transparency is important to national development.

The time between now and the March High-Level Summit is critical to agree to an effective model for the implementation of the EITI that guarantees the active role of civil society at country levels, capacity-building assistance, and a much clearer set of responsibilities for all stakeholders involved in implementation. We look forward to addressing many of the lessons learned from country-level implementation so far and continuing to work with all stakeholder groups towards the success of the EITI around the world.

• For further information please see Making it add up , Global Witness/Save the Children UK, 2005): http://www.globalwitness.org/reports/download.php/00214.pdf