Citizens have the right to know how their natural resource wealth is managed.
We believe that increasing transparency in the extractive sector will enable citizens to hold governments and companies to account for the ways in which natural resources are managed.
The call for companies to “publish what you pay” and for governments to “publish what you earn” is a necessary first step towards a more accountable system for the management of natural resource revenues. If companies disclose what they pay and governments disclose their receipts of such revenues, then members of civil society in resource-rich countries will be able to compare the two and thus hold their governments accountable for the management of this valuable source of income. Revenue transparency will also help civil society groups to work towards a democratic debate over the effective use and allocation of resource revenues and public finance in order to meet development objectives, improve public services and redistribute income.
Civil society groups around the world, investors with trillions in assets under management, governments, financial institutions, and extractive companies all agree on the value and importance of payment transparency. With the passage of mandatory disclosure laws in the United States, European Union, Canada and Norway, a global transparency standard has developed.
PWYP-US calls on:
Multi-national, private, and state-owned companies to:
Disclose the payments made to governments for all projects and in all countries of operation
Publicly disclose extractive industry contracts
Fully and faithfully adhere to the reporting requirements of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI)
Governments of resource-rich countries to:
Require payment disclosure by all extractive companies in their territory on a company-by-company and project-by-project basis
Publish What You Earn, i.e. fully disclose revenues from resource extraction
Independently audit and verify revenue information based on best international practice
Adopt mechanisms for sub-national reporting of payments and revenues
Establish open, participatory and transparent budget processes at national, regional and local levels to enable civil society consultation on the allocation and management of revenues to promote broad-based economic and social development
OECD Governments to:
Require country-by-country and project-by-project disclosure of payments by all extractive companies raising capital in their financial markets
Bilateral and multilateral financial institutions to:
Require extractive companies to publish their project-level payments as a pre-condition of all project support
Require governments to have in place a functioning system to account for and independently audit revenues from extractive industries in return for non-humanitarian/non-emergency development, technical and financial assistance
Donor organizations to:
Promote the empowerment and capacity building of civil society organizations in resource-rich countries to enable citizens to hold their government accountable for the management and expenditure of extractive industry revenues
