Objectives
Publish What You Pay U.S. calls for full transparency and disclosure of extractive industry revenue payments and receipts by companies, governments and international financial institutions, in countries of the global North and South. Moreover, we promote the transparency of contracts between extractive industry companies and host governments.*
In many resource-rich developing countries, such as Kazakhstan, Congo Brazzaville, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, governments do not provide the most basic of information concerning natural resource revenues. This lack of transparency facilitates and even encourages corruption. Large sums of money that are not subject to oversight or disclosure are hijacked by corrupt leaders and are misappropriated, funding wars and inciting civil strife, diverting much needed funds from the citizens who own said resources. These citizens lack any method of recourse in holding the government accountable for their expenditures. The end result is a litany of corruption, social decay, increased poverty, reenforcement of authoritarian government and political unrest, which can ultimately lead to state failure and the spread of instability across regions.
Effective use of revenues is strongly linked to accountability, which in turn requires transparency of information. According to a 2005 report from Save the Children UK, improved transparency benefits all actors; civil society, host governments, governments of countries that use oil and gas, companies, financial regulators, regulating agencies and investors and international financial institutions (IFIs). On a purely humanitarian level, transparency in resource revenues is fundamental for poverty reduction and development projects.
Oil, mining and gas are critically important economic sectors in about 60 developing or transition countries. Amongst the 3.5 billion people in these countries, some 1.5 billion live on less than US$2 per day and constitute over two-thirds of the world’s poorest people. Twelve of the world’s most oil-dependent states are classified by the World Bank as Highly Indebted Poor Countries with amongst the world’s worst Human Development Indicators.
Current steps towards transparency include the EITI, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, introduced by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Department for International Development in 2002. Although this is an important acknowledgment of the transparency problem, it is limited in its composition.
It is poorly resourced and relies purely on voluntary reporting by companies and governments. This voluntary approach will not work in the majority of countries where it is most needed.
A number of regulatory mechanisms are needed to ensure that multinational and state-owned companies disclose payments made to governments, and that governments disclose revenues received from the extractive sector. In calling for the implementation of these mandatory mechanisms, Publish What You Pay’s primary targets are:
* Stock market listing authorities
* The World Bank Group (IBRD, IDA, MIGA and IFC)
* The International Monetary Fund
* Other multilateral and bilateral lending institutions
* Export credit agencies
* Producer country governments
* Developed country governments
* The International Accounting Standards Board
*(our full coalition statement can be found under "Mission")
