Côte d’Ivoire declared to have made meaningful progress with EITI Standard

The Board welcomed the government’s use of the EITI to inform reforms in the mining sector

The international EITI Board today recognised Côte d’Ivoire’s efforts to improve natural resource governance through the EITI Standard. The Board concluded that the country had made meaningful progress in meeting the EITI requirements. The Board welcomed recent reforms to improve the governance of the sector through an online mining cadastre and coverage of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector.  

Fredrik Reinfeldt, Chair of the EITI, said:

“The government has made great strides in enshrining transparency in its mining code and in sharing the benefits of the mining sector through the Local Mining Development Committees. I congratulate all EITI stakeholders for the progress achieved to date and encourage them to continue their efforts.”

Côte d’Ivoire published its 2015 EITI Report on 30 March 2017 and the country’s Validation began on 1 April 2017. Validation is the EITI’s independent evaluation mechanism.

• View the full decision including the scorecard and supporting documentation 

Important space for dialogue

The EITI has provided the government, companies and civil society with opportunities to develop coherent and implementable policies and to help resolve conflicts between local communities and companies. Transparency provisions and allocation of revenues to local communities are now embedded in both the 2012 amendments to the hydrocarbon code and the 2014 mining code. The government has also integrated EITI reporting in its governance systems through the publication of an online cadastre in July 2017.

The quality of EITI reporting has also improved significantly. It has played a key role in improving transparency in the financial relationship between the two SOEs, PETROCI and SODEMI and the state.

Civil society helping to drive the process

Despite the small and fragmented groups of civil society interested in extractive industries in Côte d’Ivoire, a small but active civil society has generated a robust national debate on revenue management and impact on local communities. Civil society has highlighted significant popular demand for information, such as subnational transfers, mandatory and voluntary social payments, production figures, local content requirements and artisanal mining. The challenge for EITI Côte d’Ivoire is to establish robust mechanisms to provide timely information on these issues and to ensure that local community development funds are adequately managed to benefit local citizens.

Next steps

While the Government of Côte d’Ivoire has taken steps to address all the requirements of the EITI Standard, there is still opportunities for further progress.

Looking ahead, the EITI Côte d’Ivoire can contribute to improved  transparency of revenue sharing formula and subnational transfers in accordance with the tax code; and improved transparency of quasi-fiscal expenditure and the crude oil “swap” agreements by PETORCI.

Finally, the MSG’s ambition to extend the scope of EITI reporting to include artisanal mining is challenging, but important. EITI reporting already takes into consideration the monitoring and certification of diamonds exports and the 2015 EITI Report went beyond EITI provisions, by disclosing the identity of license holders in the artisanal and small-scale sector.

The EITI Board has decided on a set of corrective actions that Côte d’Ivoire is required to address to meet all the requirements of the EITI Standard. In particular, Côte d’Ivoire will focus on requirements related to MSG governance (1.4), work plan (1.5), license allocation (2.2), license register (2.3), state-participation (2.6), in-kind revenues (4.2), barters and infrastructure arrangements (4.3), SOE transactions (4.5) distribution of revenues (5.1), subnational transfers (5.2), SOE quasi-fiscal expenditures (6.2), and documentation of outcomes and impact (7.4).

Notes

• Validation is the EITI’s independent evaluation mechanism. It assesses countries against progress made in meeting the 2016 Standard.
• The Board decision in full, including corrective actions and impact of the EITI in the country, can be found here
• The reports giving an extensive review of Côte d’Ivoire's extractive sector can be found here.
• The Board has taken decisions on the status of Côte d’Ivoire on 8 May 2018: eiti.org/document/validation-schedule-decisions
• See here for a full explanation of the various levels of progress under the EITI Standard.
• For further information about the EITI in Côte d’Ivoire, please visit the country page on the EITI website and Côte d’Ivoire's own EITI website.