Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 05, 2022 News
– EITI Secretariat told to demand higher standards of transparency and accountability from Govt.
By Kiana Wilburg
Kaieteur News – If Guyana is to steer clear of a temporary suspension from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Board when it comes up for a second review on April 1, 2024, it must implement a suite of corrective actions, one of which includes doing more to educate citizens about resource governance. The Board said too, that Guyana’s EITI Secretariat must also do its part to demand high standards of transparency and accountability in government operations and in business.
The Board’s recommendation follows its recent announcement that Guyana achieved a “fairly low” overall score in implementing its 2019 EITI Standard.
The EITI’s 2019 Standard requires that open data on natural resource income and contracts be a routine part of government and corporate reporting, while providing information to stakeholders in a timeframe and format that support widespread use in analysis and decision making.
The Board which manages 55 member countries said, the overall score of 52 points for Guyana reflects an average of the three component scores. These scores were given in the areas of: Outcomes and Impact, Transparency and Stakeholder engagement.
To ensure that progress is made before the country comes up for review again in two years, the Board said Guyana is encouraged to explore innovative approaches to using the EITI platform and reports to inform public debate about natural resource governance and encourage high standards of transparency and accountability in public life, government operations and in business.
Significantly, the Board said Guyana should ensure that EITI information is widely accessible, distributed and comprehensible, including by ensuring that it is written in a clear, accessible style and in appropriate languages and consider access challenges and information needs of different genders and subgroups of citizens. Expounding on this front, it urged Guyana to ensure that outreach events, whether organised by government, civil society or companies, are undertaken to spread awareness of and facilitate dialogue about governance of extractive resources, building on EITI disclosures across the country in a socially inclusive manner. The Board categorically stated that the communications strategy should include activities to encourage the analysis and use of EITI data disclosures.
Furthermore, the Board said Guyana should agree on a clear open data policy on the access, release, and re-use of EITI data. The Board said Guyana’s EITI Chapter should make EITI data available in an open data format online and publicise its availability. It said too that government agencies and companies are expected to publish EITI data under an open licence, and to make users aware that information can be reused without prior consent. To strengthen implementation, the Board said Guyana’s EITI is encouraged to make systematically disclosed data machine readable and inter-operable, and to code or tag EITI disclosures and other data files so that the information can be compared with other publicly available data.
Guyana was accepted as an EITI implementing country on October 24, 2017. The first Validation of Guyana was scheduled to commence on April 25, 2020. Due to the transition to the revised Validation model, the Board rescheduled the Validation to commence on July 1, 2021. On July 9, 2021, the EITI Board approved Guyana’s request for an extension to its Validation deadline to October 1, 2021.
Guyana EITI collated documentation for Validation using the Board-agreed data collection templates on Stakeholder engagement, Transparency and Outcomes and impact. The files are available on the Guyana EITI website. The International Secretariat’s Validation team prepared an initial assessment following the Validation procedure and Validation Guide. In accordance with the Validation procedure, a public call for stakeholder views on EITI implementation was open from September 1 to October 1, 2021. Virtual stakeholder consultations were undertaken.
ABOUT EITI
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a global standard for the good governance of oil, gas and mineral resources. It seeks to address key governance issues in the extractive sectors.
The EITI Standard requires information along the extractive industry value chain from the point of extraction, to how the revenue makes its way through the government and its contribution to the economy.
This includes how licences and contracts are allocated and registered, who the beneficial owners of those operations are, what the fiscal and legal arrangements are, how much is produced, how much is paid, where the revenue is allocated, and its contributions to the economy, including employment.
The EITI 2019 Standard represents an evolution of the foregoing transparency requirements demanded by the body. It is an improvement of the EITI 2016 Standard. The 2019 EITI Standard requires contract transparency for new contracts from 2021 as well as adherence to stricter requirements on environmental reporting and gender. (https://eiti.org/articles/eiti-launches-2019-eiti-standard).
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