The board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is meeting in Oslo this week to discuss, among other issues, the mainstreaming of extractive sector reporting. As focus moves away from EITI reports to governments’ own systems, it is important to examine the initiative’s relationship with key domestic actors like supreme audit institutions.
Day 2 of EITI Board meeting - Outcomes of Validation
Timor-Leste today joined Mongolia and the Philippines as the first countries having made satisfactory progress against the Standard. The Board also found Albania, Burkina Faso, and Kazakhstan to have made meaningful progress against the EITI Standard.
Two more Asian success stories
Mainstreaming is the future of EITI
The EITI Board made a groundbreaking decision today that will change how EITI implementation will look like in the coming years.
From EITI reports to systematic disclosures
The Board agreed to make systematic disclosures of extractives data through government and company systems the default expectation from countries. This means that instead of producing annual EITI Reports that typically cover fiscal periods that are behind by two years,
Nikolai Astrup, the new Norwegian Minister for Development, was speaking at a reception to mark the 39th EITI Board meeting. He started by quoting part of a powerful speech delivered at Davos by Erna Solberg, Norway’s prime minister:
“Corruption and illegal financial flows are linked to the whole range of security threats we face today: climate change, terror, organised crime, cybercrime, to mention a few. We face multiple challenges, not limited by national borders.
Photo: Head of Papua New Guinea EITI Mr Lucas Alkan (right) being presented a gift by the leader of a civil society organisation in East Sepik Province after completion of an EITI Awareness Roadshow in the capital, Wewak in November last year.
Before Papua New Guinea signed up to implement the EITI Standard in 2013, there was no framework in place for disclosure of revenue streams from the country’s mining and petroleum sector.
First impressions from an assessment of Afghanistan progress against the EITI Standard
Legend says that sometime around 2000 BC, an oracle decreed that the next man to enter the city of Telmissus would become king of the Phrygians. Gordias, a farmer riding on an ox-cart, drove into the city and was summarily made king. Decades later, his son, the famous King Midas, commemorated this event by tying the cart to a pole in the town square with a devilishly intricate knot. According to prophesy,
“Working on corruption and illegal financial flows is vital to reach the global goals in the future.”
- Erna Solberg at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos
The EITI International Secretariat’s headquarters are located in Oslo because many people consider Norway a global leader on governance of the extractive industries. The Prime Minister of Norway, the world’s richest (per capita) oil producing country, Erna Solberg,
Cari Votava is a Senior Financial Sector Specialist with the World Bank Group, focusing on financial market integrity. Cari participated in EITI's conference on Beneficial Ownership in Jakarta, Indonesia, as both a moderator and a speaker, and EITI commissioned this blog post on beneficial ownership in the extractives sector. The views expressed in this blog are her own.
One on one with Ayodeji Olowoporoku, winner of the Executive Secretary Annual Award for Exceptional Contributions, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
Please give us a little bit of background of yourself; tell us who you are and why you are interested in extractives governance in Nigeria?
My name is Ayodeji Olowoporoku. I am a Policy Analyst at the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), and I have worked here since 2010. As an undergraduate,
2017 has been a busy year for our countries. Almost half have completed Validation, we have seen unparalleled political commitments on beneficial ownership transparency and most are accelerating the process of mainstreaming transparency into government and company systems.
We welcomed three countries to our family in 2017 – Guyana, Mexico and Suriname. We also saw three countries withdraw from EITI implementation, Azerbaijan, Niger and the United States.