The EITI in Kiev

The second day of the Sustainable Resource Management Forum saw the formal launch of Ukraine’s first EITI Report. The report documents USD 3.3 billion of payments by oil and gas companies (including oil and gas transportation companies) in 2013.

“The report provides reconciled data on the extractive industry in Ukraine giving the opportunity to the public to form an objective idea of the state of the extractives in the country. This is essential, especially at a time of change that we are facing now with much hope for the development of this industry at home,” said Sergei Kasyanchuk from Naftogaz. 

Victor Kovalenko from Independent Administrator Ernst&Young noted that despite the detailed information on oil and gas fields, the data collection process proved to be very challenging. Confidentiality clauses and unfamiliarity with the EITI process created barriers to comprehensive disclosure. The published data was aggregated, without the company by company data required by the EITI Standard. This underlined the need to strengthen the legal framework, compelling full government and company participation he said. 

“The first report showed us what the existing system is like and what areas need to be developed further”, said Olena Pavlenko, President of the local think-tank Dixi Group. “It is important to remember that these reports are for us, for the people of Ukraine, not the international community,” she said.

“The second EITI Report will include information on Ukraine’s mining sector. The current legal system will not allow us to collect all data for the reconciliation exercise and we are looking into working with members of the multi-stakeholder group to propose revisions to the government” said EITI National Coordinator Dina Narezhneva.

EITI Chair Clare Short welcomed the rapid progress that has been achieved in 2015. “This is a big achievement. The objective is not to produce more complex reports but to use the requirements of EITI as a transition to build an open, transparent and reliable governance system that will be permanently available to the people in Ukraine.”

As Oleksiy Orlovski from the International Renaissance Foundation noted: “We are on the road to something bigger. It is now time to act. Let the Ukrainians work on this, together with the international community.” 

For more information on EITI in Ukraine please visit the country page or contact the EITI team at the International Secretariat.