The United States Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coalition promotes transparency in the extractive industries to ensure that oil, gas and mineral wealth contributes to development and poverty alleviation.
PWYP US is part of a global coalition of over 350 NGOs in 50 countries promoting the public disclosure of revenues, contracts, and other financial transactions related to the extractive industries. This information allows people to hold their government accountable for managing the revenues.
We believe that corporations, governments and multilateral institutions engaged in extractive industry activities have an important role to play in facilitating development and good governance. This includes the transparent management of revenues emanating from their activities. These actors have an obligation to, where necessary, change policies and practices in order to contribute to transparent revenue management.
Specifically, our objectives are:
1) To increase EI revenue transparency and to promote accountability for the use of natural resource revenues, and;
2) To address the growing problem of contracts between EI companies and host governments that supersedes or erodes national environmental laws, investment regulations, and citizens’ rights.
Multilateral and bilateral institutions that provide financing to governments and/or companies for EI projects – such as the World Bank Group and Export Credit Agencies – are key to efforts to ensure revenue and contract transparency. With greater disclosure of payments, receipts, and the contracts that determine how revenues are shared and public policy is shaped, the public will be better able to hold companies, governments and financiers accountable for the use of their natural resource wealth.
Our efforts to promote disclosure are based on citizen interest in understanding and influencing EI activities that affect them. These efforts do not represent an endorsement of the extractive industries nor of public financing for this sector. Furthermore, these efforts do not preclude our involvement in initiatives to help expose or oppose specific extractive sector projects when they generate unacceptable risks to social, cultural, environmental, economic or political and civil rights.
Signed by the PWYP US member organizations
