World Bank EITI Reporting Meeting Focuses on Disaggregation

By Rebecca Iwerks, RWI Training and Capacity Building Program Officer

As part of "EITI Week" in Washington, D.C., the World Bank hosted a meeting on May 13 to facilitate a discussion among multiple EITI stakeholders about the state of EITI reporting and how it can be improved.

The format and content of EITI reports has long been a source of local and international debate. Before the EITI was launched, amid careful rounds of negotiations among companies, governments, and civil society actors, the founders agreed not to require all countries to report their payments and receipts in a format disaggregated company by company.  At the time, trust was weak between the different actors and compromises had to be made to maintain multi-stakeholder commitment to the initiative. Companies were particularly concerned that they would face increased scrutiny and a competitive disadvantage if this information was released.

Last week's World Bank meeting in Washington took place five years into the initiative's implementation.  The range of debate and experiences expressed by the participants was an impressive testimony to how much progress has been made.  In many countries, it was obvious that there was increased trust among all stakeholders.  Five of the 11 implementing countries were able to explain how they produced disaggregated reports with consensus among the government, companies, and civil society.  The EITI national coordinator from Liberia spoke eloquently about how, as a result of the disaggregated EITI reports, citizens in his country have gained new power to understand how the companies at work in their communities are compensating their nation for its natural resources.  Similarly, the EITI national coordinator from Mongolia asserted that this increased citizen engagement was done without additional risk to the companies. Indeed, not a single company operating in a country with disaggregated reporting has reported suffering a commercial disadvantage. In response, a newly-implementing country, Albania, committed to advocate for disaggregated reporting.

Unfortunately, the meeting, a mix of guided discussions and World Bank presentations, also made clear that there is still tension about the reporting issue in several countries.  Some country coordinators, based in nations where there is less trust between civil society and companies, spoke of the difficulties they face in convincing companies to report payments on an individual basis due to their fear that the information will be misused once it is publicly available. The coordinators also voiced concerns about the additional costs and administrative challenges of disaggregation. That these challenges have been overcome in other implementing countries did not seem to alleviate their fears.

In all, the meeting was an important forum for reflection on the experiences of EITI country reports and an opportunity to debate how the international EITI should respond.  While all stakeholders strongly agreed that the principle of national ownership should not be supplanted (a strong sign of the initiative’s roots in many countries), some speakers from the World Bank and civil society suggested that it was time to strengthen the guidelines for reporting.  Willy Olsen, a member of the Revenue Watch governing board of directors and a long time oil industry expert, proposed that EITI rules should be adjusted to require disaggregated reports as the default standard, with exemptions for countries that provide written explanations for their failure to disaggregate.  This idea was endorsed by some EITI board members and representatives from the extractives industry.

While the push for disaggregation dominated the majority of the meeting, the group also addressed important questions about ensuring high quality data in EITI reports. Representatives from the World Bank gave specific examples of instances where revenue amounts in EITI reports did not match those put forth in other public documents such as national budgets and IMF reports. 

This timely meeting also highlighted the relevance of RWI's upcoming work: This summer, Revenue Watch will publish a report detailing the benefits and experiences of disaggregated EITI reporting.  We are also in the process of creating civil society training modules on EITI report analysis, which we hope will engender a stronger debate about data quality in each country context.

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