An international advisory group has been formed to expand the scope of
the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and to work out how
to monitor its effectiveness.
The EITI, a three-year-old coalition of governments, companies and
civil society organizations, is seeking to open up the revenue
arrangements of oil, gas and mining companies in developing countries
to greater public scrutiny at a time of record oil prices.
It has attracted widespread corporate support and a concrete commitment
on transparency from ten governments since it was started by British
prime minister Tony Blair in 2002. But the UK government now wants it
to exert more influence.
International development minister Gareth Thomas said: ‘The EITI has
come a long way … [but] the time is right for it to develop into a
genuinely international initiative, and that is why we have established
this group.’
The group of about a dozen of corporate and governmental
representatives will be chaired by Peter Eigen, founder and chairman of
the anti-corruption non-governmental organization Transparency
International. His brief is to ‘internationalize the leadership of the
initiative, and to consider how to clearly determine which countries
are, and are not, implementing the initiative’.
The group will also consider how the EITI can promote clearer
transparency rules for companies and governments, how to establish a
way of monitoring disclosure in various countries, and how to reward
nations that audit their payments and make full disclosure. It will
make recommendations on all these matters at an international
conference in 2006. It may also consider how to expand the initiative
beyond the extractive sector, which was suggested last year by the
Africa Commission.
Four companies – Anglo American, BP, Chevron and F&C Asset
Management – will serve on the advisory group, and there will be
representatives from the Central African Bishops Conference, Global
Witness and the governments of Azerbaijan, France, Nigeria, Norway and
the US. The group’s secretariat will be provided by the UK government’s
international development department with help from the World Bank and
the IMF.
Leaders of the G8 nations agreed at their latest meeting to increase
support to the EITI and countries implementing its principles. In their
final communique on Africa they called on resource-rich African
countries to implement the initiative and for the World Bank, the IMF
and regional development banks to support them.
High oil prices were at present making the EITI’s work harder because they are ‘making everyone more greedy’, Eigen said.
