Ghana, Mongolia Extractive Industries Meet ‘Compliant’ Standard

Mongolia and Ghana received “compliant” status from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a corporate, civil society and government-composed group devoted to increasing financial disclosures in the oil, gas and mining industries.

The group, which is currently meeting in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, requires an independent assessment of a country’s disclosure and reporting practices in order to become a compliant state. The meeting was called to consider the status of those countries, along with Cameroon, Gabon and Kyrgyzstan, and the applications of Indonesia and Togo.

With Mongolia and Ghana joining, that now makes five countries compliant; the others are Azerbaijan, Liberia and Timor-Leste. Indonesia joined as a “candidate” state, which means it will have to implement the principles of the initiative–government disclosure of payments received, companies publishing what they pay to the government and the completion of an independent audit–in order to receive “compliant” status.

“The achievement of EITI Compliance status is well deserved and I hope be a spur also for strong management of the oil sector,” said Peter Eigen, chair of EITI, in a statement announcing Ghana’s ascension. “Ghana was the first country to publish an EITI Report for the mining sector. It was also the first country to provide data on the payments made to regional levels of government.”

Of Mongolia, Eigen said in a separate statement: “Since committing to the EITI in 2005, Mongolia has published payments from its extractive sector in three excellent EITI Reports…This allows all stakeholders in Mongolia to monitor one of the most important sources of government revenue, and to monitor an Industry that is transforming Mongolia’s economy.”

EITI played a small-but-controversial role in the U.S. financial regulation reform debate, as a provision in the legislation President Obama signed into law in July applies the principles of the initiative by mandating the disclosure of payments made to foreign governments by extractive industry companies regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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