The Board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has approved proposals made on clarifications and changes to the EITI Requirements which must be followed by its candidates.
Confirming this with the Guyana Standard today was Head of the EITI Secretariat in Guyana, Dr. Rudy Jadoopat. He said that the new changes are expected to ensure that the highest level of accountability is delivered to citizens when it comes to the exploitation of their natural resources. He said that these changes will be further discussed when all EITI candidates meet on June 18 and 19 for the Global Conference in Paris, France.
Dr. Jadoopat said that the proposals were made to 13 areas. These include Gender, State-owned enterprises (SOEs), Licensing transparency, Contract transparency, Production and Export Data, Systematic Disclosures, Commodity Trading, Project-level Reporting, Subnational Transfers, Environmental Reporting, Open Data Efforts, Impact and Outcomes from EITI Implementation, and consequences related to compliance and deadlines for implementing countries.
With respect to Gender, He said that the Board will require multi-stakeholder groups (MSGs) to consider gender balance in representation; disclosure of employment figures by company, gender and occupational level; encourage gender considerations in dissemination of EITI data; and encourage MSGs to document how they have taken gender considerations and inclusiveness into account.
Dr. Jadoopat said that the international watchdog also wants more disclosure on encouraging disclosures of production and exports by company and project, on the management of subnational transfers and on license allocations.
As it relates to environmental reporting, candidates will be required to cover environmental payments by companies and disclose contextual information related to environmental monitoring.
With regard to contract transparency, Dr. Jadoopat said that the Board explained that contracts will have to be made public with a deadline for implementation.
He noted that at the upcoming meeting in Paris, a team from Guyana will be present to learn more about the new changes and how it might best implement them.
