Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

84 swanson, oldgard, and lundegovernment documents in Botswana and other developing (anddeveloped) countries, the procedures are not available over the Internet.Moreover, foreigners probably would require permission from theOffice of the President in order to obtain a paper copy from the GovernmentPrinting Office. Given that Botswana appears to be relativelyadvanced in terms of transparency and availability of information, thisprovides some indication of the difficulty that probably would beinvolved in compiling a comprehensive list of government reportingprocedures in developing countries, even where such procedures arepublicly available.AzerbaijanThe State Oil Fund for the Azerbaijan Republic (SOFAR) was establishedin August 2000 and is designed to receive most of the government’soil revenues. Information on the working of SOFAR is relativelyreadily available. Caspian Revenue Watch, an initiative of the SorosFoundation, has investigated the fund extensively and plans to publisha book on both the Azeri and Kazakh funds in the near future. 41 (Econwas able to review advanced copies of some of the chapters.) In addition,the fund has a reasonably informative website. 42 Finally, theWorld Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) worked closelywith the Azeri government in setting up the fund, and have madeseveral presentations about the fund, including to the recent PetroleumRevenue Management workshop hosted by the World Bank inOctober 2002.Impetus for the creation of SOFAR apparently came from thedesire of the government to protect its new oil-related income frompolitical pressures to spend too quickly and to avoid “Dutch disease”(Wakeman-Linn, Mathieu, and van Selm 2002). The emphasis of thefund appears to be more on savings than on macroeconomic stability,since the inflow and outflow rules theoretically prevent it from beingused to make up budget shortfalls.SOFAR is supposed to receive all revenue related to the new, post-Soviet fields—that is, those currently being developed by internationaloil companies. This leaves revenue from fields originally developedduring Soviet times for the state budget. The fund therefore receivesproceeds from less than half of Azeri production, which in 2002 stoodat about 300,000 barrels per day. However, the proportion received bythe fund is likely to increase substantially after 2004, when productionby international consortiums is expected to take off. It is perhaps forthis reason that most international attention has been on SOFARrather than on the central budget.