Transparency Advocates Discuss EITI Implementation at Sub-National Roundtable

By Rebecca Iwerks, RWI Training and Capacity Building Program Officer

On May 12, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Secretariat hosted a roundtable during its Washington, D.C. board meetings to discuss the opportunities for EITI to broaden its transparency agenda beyond national governments to also include sub-national regions.

The EITI has always sought to improve governance and development in resource rich countries by fostering transparency in the extractive industries and accountability among all of the stakeholders involved—including government, civil society and companies. However, while EITI has made great strides, working only at the federal level leaves out many of the people most directly impacted by oil, gas and mining operations: communities that live and work in the shadow of extractive activity that have questions about the resource revenues their local governments receive and how those revenues are translated into local development.

Though broadening the EITI's reach from national to local governments has been a matter of discussion and interest at the EITI secretariat and board for several years (see "Advancing the EITI in the Mining Sector: Implementation Issues," pdf), Ghana is the only EITI-implementing country to include sub-national revenues in their reporting.

The May 12 meeting included perspectives from several transparency and accountability projects currently operating in resource rich regions in Peru, Nigeria, Colombia, and Ghana. RWI Senior Economist Antoine Heuty spoke about RWI's extensive work in Nigeria helping to design and implement the Bayelsa State Expenditure and Income Transparency Initiative. This initiative, though not directly linked to the national EITI program in Nigeria, follows a similar strategy, convening a multi-stakeholder group to facilitate the transparent reporting of extractive revenues and expenditures. Lessons from the International Financial Corporation (IFC) in Colombia (pdf) and Peru (pdf) further stressed the importance of using multiple methods to effectively communicate with local communities about the revenues their regions were due.

While the experiences of these different programs contain useful lessons, there is still significant work to be done to institutionalize sub-national transparency as a key part of the EITI process.  The majority of the sub-national programs discussed at the meeting had no link to the national multi-stakeholder process of receipt and payment reconciliation.  Sub-national revenues and payments in kind—whether transferred from the national government or paid directly to the local governments—could be included in more EITI implementing countries through simple adjustments of to the template, reporting, and dissemination processes. 

RWI will be working with partners in Mongolia, Peru, and Indonesia to learn from the pilot experiences in Ghana and facilitate conversations about the specific steps that EITI supporters can take to include these important sub-national constituencies.

LEARN MORE

• Helping Local Leaders and Communities Manage Resource Revenues
• From Indonesia to Peru: RWI Partners Meet to Confront Sub-National Resource Revenue Challenges

• Bayelsa State Leads Fight for Responsible Government in Niger Delta with New Transparency Effort

• Read more about the International Financial Corporation … (pdf)