Transparency Initiative (EITI)

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5.2.1 FISCAL TRANSPARENCY
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A number of examples for the contribution of national
EITI processes to improved fiscal transparency and accountability
are given, though often with weak empirical
evidence.
COVERING THE STANDARD 2013:
The study of Rich/Moberg (2015: 73) concludes when referring
to government (in the case of Nigeria) or company data
(in the case of Iraq) that “governments' capacities to assess
and improve their revenue collection processes have
increased”.
Bickham (2015) assesses the contribution of the EITI to
transparency and accountability from the perspective of
the extractive industry itself. The study states that mining
companies rate the impact of the EITI in their countries
as predominantly positive, particularly due to its efforts of
“increased cooperation” and “‘lifting of the mystery’ around
revenue flows” (p. 22), which, for instance in the case of Indonesia,
allegedly led to more willingness “to share information
around payments and production volumes”. Bickham
concludes that the EITI “has played a significant part
in changing attitudes towards transparency and accountability
in the management of resource revenues” and thus
has “helped build dialogue and increase trust” between
companies and governments (p. 29). Two issues that need to
be added from the private sector perspective are on the one
hand its interest not only to publish more and more data,
but to disclose adequately contextualized and presented
data in order to provide for sufficient understanding by
all stakeholders (RCS Global 2015: 18). On the other hand,
as concluded in the Scanteam report from 2015 (p. 28), governments
rather than extractive industries show resistance
to disclose information, as “the public is usually not aware
of the sums [they] pay to the state – and what happens to
these amounts in corrupt environments”.
Scanteam (2015: 34) comes to the conclusion that in Ghana
“improved transparency and timeliness of royalty disbursements
are clearly due to GHEITI’s RRs [ann.: Reconciliation
Reports], and the reduced opportunities for waste and
corruption are also due to RRs documenting the systemic
weaknesses regarding royalty revenues directed to local
level”. However, the report does not explain how it came to
that conclusion. Moreover, the statement that “GHEITI itself
does not generate data that can be used to track changes
to transparency” (p. 50) makes the finding questionable.
BEFORE THE STANDARD 2013:
Regarding Ghana some evidence can be found elsewhere, as
in the study from Wilson/van Alstine (2014: 32) that mentions
the enactment of the Petroleum and Revenue Management
Bill in 2011 as a major achievement since the civil
society appeared to be intensely involved in its formulation.
Similar findings can be found in the Scanteam report from
2011 (p. 10), which is based on case studies in Nigeria, Gabon
and Mongolia. For the case of Nigeria, EITI reports are
highlighted to be an important instrument for providing
“detailed data and considerable insights in a sector”. However,
their use and validity is challenged as they are considered
to be too “sporadic and late”, and furthermore are only
based on audited company statements (p. 15). Also in the
case of Gabon, timeliness and regularity of reconciliation
reporting is rated unsatisfactory. Still the fact alone that information,
regardless of its timing and reliability, was made
available for the public is rated as a step towards more
transparency (p. 16f). In the case of Mongolia eventually,
while the data is assessed to be sufficiently reliable, the distribution
and dissemination of information is considered
to be insufficient, due to limited capacities of the National
Secretariat (p. 20). Given these results, the report summarizes
that EITI reports provide substantial information about
tax payment and government revenues. However, their
scope is yet too limited to contribute to more transparency
about the governments’ public financial system in general.
A rather critical assessment of the EITI’s contribution to
transparency can be found in Sovacool/Andrews (2015: 186,
referring to Shaxson 2008 and Le Billon 2011) who assert
that since the EITI “focuses only on revenues from the extractive
industries” it only “takes a narrow view of transparency,
as it is only a small part of public sector revenues”.
Furthermore, it is unable to “monitor or track illicit financial
flows”, which makes it impossible to “influence resource
revenue that is pocketed or illegitimately transferred
for peoples’ private benefit”. Finally, since the EITI follows
a voluntary approach, governments may not ad-here to its
principles of transparency. The EITI briefing from Westenberg/George-Wagner
(2015: 13) supports this assumption
by declaring that only six of 22 reports, prepared under the
EITI Standard provided links to contracts between the government
and the private sector that provide the terms of
the exploitation of oil, gas and minerals, which is an explicit
recommendation in the EITI Standards (3.12).