Civil society learns how to manage natural resources’ revenues |18 October 2013

Representatives from different civil society movements met recently to learn more about how countries which discover natural resources like oil, gas, metal and minerals should manage revenues generated from them in a transparent and accountable manner.

These natural resources belong to a country’s citizens and their extraction can lead to economic growth and social development. However, when poorly managed as is the case in many countries it has too often led 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 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.

The EITI was launched in 2002 and since then has been endorsed by 39 countries across the world.
The Minister of Finance, Trade and Investment, Pierre Laporte has already made a public statement for Seychelles to join the EITI to strengthen its governance in the upstream petroleum sector.
There is a deadline under the current Development Policy Operation (DPO) between the World Bank and the government for Seychelles to submit its EITI candidacy by May 2014.

Hilda Harnack, a World Bank consultant in the field of the EITI, has been assigned with the task of helping with the development of the EITI scoping study for Seychelles.

Ms Harnack has extensive experience with the EITI implementation in a number of countries and she is currently in the country to meet different stakeholders as part of the study. She has already met Petro Seychelles to review and discuss the requirements for the EITI implementation and last Thursday she met representatives of the civil society.

In her presentation on the EITI and its standards, Ms Harnack told the audience that transparency can only lead to accountability if there is understanding of what the whole process is all about and public debate about how the country’s resource wealth should be managed.

“Civil societies need to know more about how resources of their countries are managed and if the companies involved are really following what their contracts say,’’ she pointed out.

Those present learned about the requirements that the EITI standard contains which countries need to meet in order to be recognised as first an EITI candidate and ultimately an EITI compliant country.

They also had the opportunity to ask questions and seek clarifications.