The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) increases transparency over payments by companies from the oil and mining industries to governments and to government-linked entities, as well as transparency over revenues by those host country governments. The Chair of the EITI is Clare Short, former UK Secretary of State for International Development.
It was announced by Tony Blair, the then-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2002. Ghana, Nigeria and Azerbaijan piloted the EITI approach. As of June 2011, EITI was implemented in 35 resource rich countries around the world. 29 countries have produced EITI reconciliation reports.
EITI has issued a set of reporting guidelines, a Statement of Principles, available on its official website, and six Criteria which represent the global minimum standard for EITI implementation. EITI received official endorsement from the World Bank Group, announced December 9, 2003. The World Bank attempted to pioneer pressure for structuring revenue transparency in several high-profile extractive industries projects in the opening years of the 21st century, including with mixed success, such as the Chad-Cameroon pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
In May 2005 an International Advisory Group (IAG) was established under the Chairmanship of Peter Eigen, who assessed the progress made by the EITI so far in the magazine D+C Development and Cooperation. Members of the IAG included: the Governments of Azerbaijan, France, Nigeria, Norway, Peru and the United States; Anglo-American, BP, Chevron and Petrobras; the Azerbaijan EITI Coalition, Global Witness, Revenue Watch Institute, West African Catholic Bishops Conference; and F&C Asset Management. It was supported by the UK Government, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The third EITI Global Conference was held in Oslo Norway in October, 2006. The fourth EITI Global Conference was held in Doha in February 2009, and the fifth and latest EITI Global Conference took place 2–3 March 2011 at the OECD in Paris.
The Secretariat of the EITI moved to Oslo in Norway in March 2007. The Head of the EITI is the Swedish former diplomat Jonas Moberg.
Read more about Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative: EITI Implementing Countries
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