Greater Transparency in State-Investor Contracts urged by CSOs

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have called upon the government to create greater transparency in state-investor contracts as well as revenues that companies pay the government of Tanzania.

The call was made by CSOs during a training session to familiarise CSOs with the new EITI Standards and the principles of good extractives revenue management, many expressed that this would partly help deal with the problem of lack of accountable management of the sector.

The training, organised by Policy Forum in collaboration with the Tanzania Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (TEITI) on the 1^st to 2^nd August 2014, was aimed at enabling civil society in extractive communities to fully engage in the EITI process.

CSOs, including those from Lindi, were acquainted with the new 2013 EITI standards which require among others, the disclosure of licenses, the production data and encouraging the disclosure of the contracts entered by countries with extractive companies.

The participants were also counseled on how to make effective use of the findings and recommendations of TEITI reports as an important tool to demand transparency and accountability within the extractive sector by non-state actors and policy makers

“The EITI requires that implementing countries to have companies to publish what they pay to governments and the government to publish what it receives from companies,” said Rhoda James, a facilitator of TEITI during the workshop.

During the event, it was recommended that there should be a publicly available register of beneficial owners of the corporate entities that bid to operate or invest in extractive assets including each beneficial owner’s identity and level of ownership.

Mr. Silas Olang, from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), said that one of the roles of TEITI is to come up with an EITI report with information about the sector and to see to it that actors are enabled to use the report in their work.

At the end of the workshop, CSOs representatives developed an Action Plan which involved activities such as engaging in the process of developing a corporate social responsibility policy, the licensing process, working with ALAT in creating an enabling environment for tracking the service levy imposed by local councils and to engage in the process of developing the Revenue Management Policy.