EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES
TRANSPARENCY INITIATIVE (EITI)
London Conference, 17 June 2003
Statement by Charles McPherson, Senior Advisor, Oil and
Gas World Bank Group
The World Bank Group welcomes the Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative (EITI) and strongly endorses the
principles on which it is based.
The Initiative confirms the importance which our
institution has already assigned to the good governance of
natural resources. Both as a process and in terms of
expected outputs, the EITI would feed directly into the Bank
Group's own priorities and programs.
Poor governance associated with natural resource
exploitation is a challenge the World Bank Group regularly
encounters. Over the past several years, the Bank Group has
responded to the challenge through a wide range of
activities, including: a) country and project specific
interventions (country policy dialogues, and selected
lending and technical assistance operations. Support
operations related to the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and the oil
revenue diagnostic in Angola are examples, as is the mining
TA focused on local revenue management in Papua New Guinea);
b) global, regional and national out-reach programs
(workshops on natural resource governance and revenue
management issues in oil, gas and mining); c) the corporate
social responsibility initiatives at the International
Finance Corporation; and d) a variety of external linkages
and partnerships (e.g., Business Partners for Development,
the UN Global Compact, NEPAD, and the ICMM).
The Bank Group has a clear interest in contributing to
all aspects of natural resource development. An emerging
finding of our own ongoing Extractive Industries Review, due
to be completed in September of this year, is that
governance is one of the key requirements for translating
resource revenues into sustainable benefits. Revenue
transparency, the focus of EITI, is a fundamental building
block.
The Bank Group fully supports the actions proposed for
roll-out of the EITI, and in this regard:
- Will continue its active involvement in the EITI
consultative process, including the design of technical
mechanisms for reporting (templates, aggregation of
data, etc.);
- Will discuss the Initiative with its client countries
and industry and, where appropriate, encourage their
participation in the Initiative;
- Will, in individual country contexts, and working with
other stakeholders, promote transparency in revenue
reporting. The voluntary, country-by-country approach
selected by EITI is particularly appropriate, allowing
all stake-holders to learn by doing. While experience
and individual country circumstances may suggest the
need for variations, the draft EITI reporting guidelines
represent a useful start to achieving revenue
transparency on a consistent basis;
- Will promote linkages to other ongoing governance and
transparency initiatives within the Bank Group;
- Will continue to assign high priority to the
development of in-country capacity to implement the
objectives of the EITI. All stake-holders have
recognized the significant role technical assistance
must play, and the corresponding requirement for its
funding. The Bank Group will seek resources within its
own programs for support of countries choosing to pursue
EITI goals, and will encourage active consideration of
trust fund or other donor mechanisms for financial
support of capacity building.
The World Bank Group looks forward to an active role in
furthering the EITI process, in close collaboration with all
stake-holders. In this context, the Bank Group will consider
carefully any proposals from the EITI that might enhance its
contribution.
Thank you.
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