Natural Resources and Violent Conflict - WaterWiki.net

who gets the money? 49Global Witness has urged companies to form a common approachto ensure that confidentiality clauses address legitimate commercialconcerns only and do not cover basic payments to the state. The eliminationof nondisclosure clauses would make it more difficult forcompanies to justify not publishing the amounts they pay to host governments.However, it may not be enough to counter the apparentlystrong incentives some host governments have for keeping paymentssecret and for putting pressure on companies to do so. BP reportedlycame under very strong pressure from the Angolan government eventhough the information on payments it released in early 2001 apparentlydid not fall under its confidentiality clauses. 3Confidentiality clauses also exist in the mining sector, although thisindustry appears to be making relatively more progress than the oilsector in dealing with the issue. For example, mining groups under theMining, Minerals, and Sustainable Development (MMSD) Projecthave worked with Transparency International to increase the transparencyof agreements between mining companies and governments,and MMSD has discussed creating an international database of members’payments (MMSD 2001). 4Reporting to Host Governments. Companies in most extractiveindustries usually are required to report some information to the hostgovernment in order to allow it to calculate taxes due. Although the informationrequired varies by industry and country, it generally includesinformation on production, sales, costs, and profits. However, hostgovernments in developing countries rarely make such informationpublicly available.There are a number of commercially available sources of informationon fiscal arrangements in the oil, gas, and mining sectors of variouscountries, including developing countries, where much of the world’sresource extraction activity takes place. 5 Such sources often specify thebasis on which tax and other payments are calculated, but not the reportsthat must be filed. Moreover, they rarely provide information onthe negotiated terms of a particular production-sharing agreement.Nevertheless, information on supposedly secret contracts often can beobtained through private consultancies.Government websites in OECD countries, such as the website ofthe U.S. Mineral Revenue Management Service, often list reporting requirementsfor companies, including downloadable versions of formsthat must be filed. 6 Examples of this practice are rare in developingcountries.Some countries (mostly in the OECD) require companies to filefinancial information on a regular basis with an official government