Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

82 swanson, oldgard, and lundethe United Nations Development Programme or the World Bank. Thiswould help to put revenues into perspective, allowing comparisonswith domestic expenditures and with other countries.Because of its credibility in collecting data on oil production andmaking the information publicly available, the International EnergyAgency may be in a good position to play a key role, possibly in cooperationwith other global organizations such as the World Bank.BotswanaAppendix: Four Case StudiesBotswana is generally considered to be a rare success story amongdeveloping countries because of the way in which it has handled itsnatural resource revenues, which come principally from diamonds.(Diamonds currently contribute about a third of gross domestic productand about three-quarters of export revenues.) It is also one of thefew developing countries for which procedures for collecting andreporting resource revenues appear to be publicly available.Botswana has been a model from the standpoint of both economicpolicy—for example, the design of economic policies for avoiding theworst effects of “Dutch disease”—and public policy—the developmentof a relatively open approach to government and to the collection andreporting of natural resource revenues in particular.According to the Botswana Ministry of Finance (n.d.), proceduresfor the collection and recording of resource revenues are availablefrom the Government Printing Office. 39Revenue collection is decentralized in Botswana, with the variousline ministries responsible for collection in their respective sectors. TheMinistry of Minerals, Energy, and Water Affairs collects revenue in thediamond sector, including royalties and taxes on company profits,although the procedures are essentially the same for each sector: 40• Line ministries make periodic projections of the revenues theyexpect to collect on a monthly basis and submit these to the AccountantGeneral in the Ministry of Finance.• Line ministries deposit all revenue they collect into a single governmenttreasury account in the Central Bank of Botswana. This isusually done on a monthly basis, although diamond revenues are collectedquarterly.• The line ministry sends the receipt of the central bank deposit tothe office of the Accountant General at the Ministry of Finance, alongwith required documentation showing how this revenue was calculated.