Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Open PDFs ... EITI-Factsheet-140326-English.pdf'

What is the EITI? The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a global coalition of governments, companies and civil society working together to improve openness and accountable management of revenues from natural resources. See a short video about the EITI Download the EITI Fact Sheet Natural resources, such as oil, gas, metals and minerals, belong to a country’s citizens. Extraction of these resources can lead to economic growth and social development. However, when poorly managed it has too often lead to corruption and even conflict. More openness around how a country manages its natural resource wealth is necessary to ensure that these resources can benefit all citizens. The EITI Standard The EITI maintains the EITI Standard. Countries implement the EITI Standard to ensure full disclosure of taxes and other payments made by oil, gas and mining companies to governments. These payments are disclosed in an annual EITI Report (to see all EITI Reports, go to data.eiti.org). This report allows citizens to see for themselves how much their government is receiving from their country’s natural resources. Transparency can only lead to accountability if there is understanding of what the figures mean and public debate about how the country’s resource wealth should be managed. Therefore, the EITI Standard requires that EITI Reports are comprehensible, actively promoted and contribute to public debate. The EITI Standard contains the set of requirements that countries need to meet in order to be recognised as first an EITI Candidate and ultimately an EITI Compliant country. The Standard is overseen by the international EITI Board, with members from governments, companies and civil society.