Following Guyana’s fairly low overall score in implementing the requirements of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the Norway-based Executive Director Mark Robinson is expected to arrive in Guyana later today for a two-day visit.
The visit stems from Guyana’s first validation exercise conducted by the Board.
The EITI’s Board’s validation report was released in April and indicated that Guyana received a 52 points rating which reflects an average of the three component scores on Stakeholder engagement, Transparency and Outcomes and impact. The exercise was conducted by comparing Guyana’s performance against the 2019 EITI standards.
The EITI Board, in its report, expressed concern over “Guyana’s low score on Outcomes and impact (42 points). This 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.”
One of the major problems identified in the report is the legislative shortcomings that prevent the examination of earnings and other information from the extractive industries.
Robinson was supposed to be accompanied by another high-level executive of the EITI who pulled out owing to an emergency. Robinson is expected to arrive in Guyana sometime in the late afternoon and will be here for two days – Thursday and Friday.
During his time here he will meet with civil society, the government, industry members and other stakeholders in the extractive industries.
According to his profile on the EITI’s website, Robinson has been the Executive Director of EITI since 2018, leading the organisation’s engagement on extractives transparency and managing the International Secretariat. He serves as Board Secretary and is responsible for managing the International Secretariat, fundraising and financial management, and oversight of implementation in EITI’s member countries.
A source close to the Guyana EITI Secretariat said “The EITI Executive Director will be here for two days and in that two days he will be looking at the progress Guyana has made in the implementation of the standards and discuss the validation report that recently came out. It is really the validation report that brought him here and as a new EITI implementing country he is here to see how we can get the process to move along and I think this is a good thing.”
EITI is a global standard to promote open and accountable management of natural resources. It seeks to strengthen government and company systems, inform public debates, and enhance trust. In each implementing country, it is supported by a Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) comprising government representatives, extractive companies’ officials and civil society organisations working together.
In its validation report, the EITI Board commended Guyana for successfully establishing the country’s first functioning platform for multi-stakeholder discussions of the governance of the extractive industries. It also welcomed Guyana’s efforts to tailor the scope of its EITI implementation to address public demands for information beyond the extractive industries to cover forestry and fisheries.
Warned
However, the Board also warned that Guyana could face suspension if it fails to show significant progress.
“The Board has determined that Guyana will have until a next Validation commencing on 1 April 2024 to carry out corrective actions regarding government engagement (Requirement 1.1), industry engagement (Requirement 1.2), MSG governance (Requirement 1.4), work plan (Requirement 1.5), contract and license allocation (Requirement 2.2), license registers (Requirement 2.3), contracts (Requirement 2.4), beneficial ownership (Requirement 2.5), state participation (Requirement 2.6), comprehensiveness (Requirement 4.1), transactions related to SOEs (Requirement 4.5), disaggregation (Requirement 4.7), data reliability (Requirement 4.9), distribution of revenues (Requirement 5.1), social and environmental expenditures (Requirement 6.1), SOE quasi-fiscal expenditures (Requirement 6.2), public debate (Requirement 7.1), data accessibility (Requirement 7.2), follow-up on EITI recommendations (Requirement 7.3) and the MSG’s review of outcomes and impact (Requirement 7.4).
“Failure to demonstrate progress on Outcomes and impact, Stakeholder engagement and Transparency in the next Validation may result in temporary suspension in accordance with Article 6 of the EITI Standard. In accordance with the EITI Standard, Guyana’s MSG may request an extension of this timeframe or request that Validation commences earlier than scheduled,” the report stated.
The EITI Board commended Guyana for its innovative efforts to undertake outreach during the pandemic, 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.
Yesterday, Stabroek News’ source explained that there has been consistent communication within the Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG) – GYEITI’s decision-making body – for progress to be made on the legislative front. The government is represented on the MSG.
“We are hoping with the Executive Director coming here and his meetings with the government would spur some change in that regard and they [the government] would start taking this thing seriously. In order for us to continue being a member of the EITI, we need to make fast progress.
“We are far along as a country that recently began implementing the EITI standards but we could be so much further along if we have the supporting laws. There are some countries that have special EITI laws and while that is great, we are not asking for that here but what we are asking for is just a change in some laws to facilitate the work of the GYEITI,” the source related.
The EITI Board recommended that work be done to strengthen the implementation of the stakeholder engagement process and urged the civil society constituency to consider innovative ways of expanding the constituency engaged in EITI implementation. They recommended further outreach to additional civil society organisations.
The MSG has been pressed to monitor the extent to which the government enables, in policy and practice, 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 licensing process.
Guyana was also urged to ensure systematic disclosures of information about reserves and significant exploration activities in the mining, oil and gas sectors.
On May 30 this year, Guyana submitted its third report to the EITI outlining the fiscal position of the extractive industries at the end of 2019. In 2019, Guyana earned some $68.3 billion from the extractive sector, with the majority of that amount coming from the oil and gas industry, the report stated.
