Guyana scores “fairly low” on EITI Standard

May 04, 2022 News

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– Board flags country’s failure to make contracts, receipts accessible & understandable
– facing suspension if no corrective action taken

By Kiana Wilburg

Kaieteur News – The Board of the Norway-based Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) said on Tuesday that Guyana has achieved a “fairly low” overall score in implementing its 2019 EITI Standard.
The EITI’s 2019 Standard requires that open data on natural resource income and contracts be a routine part of government and corporate reporting, while providing information to stakeholders in a timeframe and format that support widespread use in analysis and decision making. The Board which manages 55 member countries said the overall score of 52 points for Guyana reflects an average of the three component scores. These scores were given the in areas of: Outcomes and Impact, Transparency and Stakeholder engagement.
The Board expressed concern over Guyana’s low score on Outcomes and Impact (42 points). It said this score reflects the ad hoc approach to outreach and dissemination, weaknesses in follow-up on EITI recommendations to deliver reforms and insufficient attention to the annual review of outcomes and impact, with a view to informing the annual EITI work plan. While the Board commended Guyana for its innovative efforts to undertake outreach during the pandemic, it said ensuring that a broad range of government, industry and civil society constituencies are consulted in developing the annual work plan would help ensure that the EITI is supporting national reform objectives. The Board also flagged the country’s failure to make contracts, industry receipts accessible and understandable. It called for action towards this end.
On Transparency, the Board said Guyana reached a fairly low score of 53.5 points. Expounding further, the Board said Guyana has made commendable efforts to use EITI implementation to ensure disclosures on areas of public interest, including contract transparency, commodity sales and environmental aspects of the extractive industries, reflecting priorities of civil society in particular.
It said too that Guyana’s EITI reporting has shed some light on the government’s revenues from the extractive industries for the first time, although weaknesses in company reporting and taxpayer confidentiality constraints mean that only a minority of the government’s revenues have been disclosed through EITI to date to the levels of disaggregation and reliability required under the EITI. The Board, therefore, urged Guyana to ensure complete and reliable revenue disclosures as a basis to support the government’s public finance management reforms.
Additionally, the EITI Board said Guyana achieved a fairly low score on Stakeholder engagement. In this component, Guyana gained 60 points. While civil society has been a driving force in implementation, the Board expressed concern over weaknesses in government and industry engagement in the EITI process, including in disclosures of required data. It said too that weaknesses in the multi-stakeholder oversight of EITI implementation have led to challenges both in reporting and in ensuring that the EITI provides a meaningful forum for multi-stakeholder consensus-building.
Furthermore, the EITI Board said ensuring a balance of views in developing objectives for EITI implementation could contribute to strengthening government and industry engagement. The Board, therefore, urged the government to implement legal provisions for public participation in policy making for extractive sector governance, including in the implementation of legal provisions related to free, prior and informed consent in the extractive licencing process, with a view to ensuring full adherence to national policies and laws. It also encouraged the Guyana EITI to closely monitor implementation of these legal provisions.
Kaieteur News understands that Guyana will have until April 1, 2024 to carry out corrective actions.
The Board warned that failure to demonstrate progress in the next Validation Exercise may result in temporary suspension.
In accordance with the EITI Standard, Guyana’s Multi-Stakeholder Group may request an extension of this timeframe or request that Validation commences earlier than scheduled.
Guyana was accepted as an EITI implementing country on October 24, 2017. The first Validation of Guyana was scheduled to commence on April 25, 2020. Due to the transition to the revised Validation model, the Board rescheduled the Validation to commence on July 1, 2021. On July 9, 2021, the EITI Board approved Guyana’s request for an extension to its Validation deadline to October 1, 2021.
Guyana EITI collated documentation for Validation using the Board-agreed data collection templates on Stakeholder engagement, Transparency and Outcomes and impact. The files are available on the Guyana EITI website. The International Secretariat’s Validation team prepared an initial assessment following the Validation procedure and Validation Guide. In accordance with the Validation procedure, a public call for stakeholder views on EITI implementation was open from September 1 to October 1, 2021. Virtual stakeholder consultations were undertaken.
ABOUT EITI
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is a global standard for the good governance of oil, gas and mineral resources. It seeks to address key governance issues in the extractive sectors.
The EITI Standard requires information along the extractive industry value chain from the point of extraction, to how the revenue makes its way through the government and its contribution to the economy.
This includes how licences and contracts are allocated and registered, who the beneficial owners of those operations are, what the fiscal and legal arrangements are, how much is produced, how much is paid, where the revenue is allocated, and its contributions to the economy, including employment.
The EITI 2019 Standard represents an evolution of the foregoing transparency requirements demanded by the body. It is an improvement of the EITI 2016 Standard. The 2019 EITI Standard requires contract transparency for new contracts from 2021 as well as adherence to stricter requirements on environmental reporting and gender. (https://eiti.org/articles/eiti-launches-2019-eiti-standard).

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