Seychelles has made meaningful progress in implementing the 2019 EITI Standard, with considerable improvements.
Outcome of the Validation of the Seychelles.
Board decision
The Board came to the following decision:
Corrective actions and strategic recommendations
The EITI Board agreed the following corrective actions to be undertaken by Seychelles. Progress in addressing these corrective actions will be assessed in a third Validation commencing on 11 March 2022:
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In accordance with Requirement 1.5, Seychelles should ensure that the EITI work plan includes objectives and activities that reflect the scope of EITI implementation and systematic disclosures of data. The work plan should reflect the MSG’s role in overseeing that systematic disclosures are timely, comprehensive and reliable and outline plans for ensuring the disclosure of petroleum contracts. Follow up of recommendations from Validation should be reflected in the work plan.
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In accordance with Requirement 2.2, Seychelles is required to disclose any non-trivial deviations from the applicable legal and regulatory framework governing license awards. The list of applicants and the bid criteria related to any bidding processes that took place in the reporting period should be comprehensively disclosed. This applies to any companies submitting competing proposals through the “open file” procedure.
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In accordance with Requirement 2.3, Seychelles is required to disclose the dates of application and the duration of currently held petroleum licenses.
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In accordance with Requirement 2.4, Seychelles is required to disclose the government’s policy on disclosure of contracts and licenses that govern the exploration and exploitation of oil. The MSG is expected to agree and publish a plan for disclosing contracts with a clear time frame for implementation and addressing any barriers to comprehensive disclosure. Seychelles is required to disclose any contracts and licenses that are granted, entered into or amended from 1 January 2021.
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In accordance with Requirement 2.5 and the Board-agreed framework for assessing progress, Seychelles is required to disclose the beneficial owners of all companies holding or applying for extractive licenses by 31 December 2021.
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In accordance with Requirement 7.2, the MSG should agree and publish an open data policy on the access, release and re-use of EITI data. Government agencies and companies are expected to publish EITI data under an open license, and to make users aware that information can be reused without prior consent.
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In accordance with Requirement 7.4, the MSG should annually review progress in implementing all applicable EITI Requirements, including the timeliness, comprehensiveness and reliability of systematic disclosures. This process should inform the next EITI work plan. The review of outcomes and impact of EITI implementation should be publicly available.
Background
Seychelles joined the EITI in 2014. Seychelles’ first Validation under the EITI Standard concluded in October 2018, in which the EITI Board found that Seychelles had made ‘meaningful progress’ in implementing the EITI Standard. Eight corrective actions were identified by the Board, to be assessed in a second Validation commencing on 1 April 2020.
Seychelles’ second Validation commenced on 1 April 2020. The EITI International Secretariat has assessed the progress made in addressing the eight corrective actions established by the EITI Board following Seychelles’ first Validation in 2018. The eight corrective actions relate to:
- MSG governance (Requirement 1.4),
- Work plan (Requirement 1.5),
- License allocation (Requirement 2.2),
- License register (Requirement 2.3),
- Contract transparency (Requirement 2.4),
- State participation (Requirement 2.6),
- Data quality (Requirement 4.9),
- Review of outcomes and impact (Requirement 7.4).
Seychelles has undertaken a number of activities to address the corrective actions:
- Submitting a request for proportionate implementation to the EITI Board, which was approved in October 2019.
- Disclosing summary data from 2017 and 2018 in February 2020.
- Disclosing license information on the PetroSeychelles website.
- MSG pre-Validation review of progress in addressing corrective actions and recommendations from the 2015-2016 EITI Report.
- The MSG met six times between November 2018 and March 2020.
In October 2019, the EITI Board approved Seychelles’ request for proportionate implementation covering reporting years 2017-2021.The Board-approved approach entails that Seychelles EITI focuses on the petroleum sector. As the MSG did not consider there to be any material oil revenues and data quality assurances were in place, revenues would be unilaterally disclosed by the government. The Board confirmed that in addition to the requirements not found to be applicable in the first Validation, Requirements 3.2 (production data), 3.3 (export data) and 6.3 (economic contribution) were not applicable. Practical limitations to industry engagement would be considered in Validation. The Board-approved approach to implementation is reflect in this second Validation.
Seychelles’ second Validation commenced 1 April 202. The Secretariat assessed the progress made in addressing the eight corrective actions established by the EITI Board. Progress in implementing Requirement 2.5 on beneficial ownership, as well as new Requirements 6.4 and 7.2 of the 2019 EITI Standard were also assessed. The EITI International Secretariat’s assessment is that Seychelles has fully addressed three of the eight corrective actions and partly addressed three other corrective actions.
The draft assessment was sent to the MSG on 10 June 2020. Following MSG comments received on 17 July 2020, the assessment was finalised for consideration by the EITI Board.In its feedback, the MSG contested the assessment of Requirement 1.5 on the work plan as “Inadequate progress”, arguing that the assessment should be “meaningful” or “satisfactory progress”.
