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EITI and the emerging global norm of contract transparency

By Gavin Hayman, Isabel Munilla, Rob Pitman and Perrine Toledano

With discussions on contract transparency featuring prominently in this year’s EITI global conference (23-24 February), our organisations have put together a brief on the current state of play with contract transparency. Here are some of the main highlights.

Contracts signed between governments and resource companies are the fundamental documents that set out the terms of oil, gas and mining investments in many countries. 

By keeping them secret:

 

Disclosure is happening, and the sky isn’t falling

 

But mind the gap…

 

What governments can do:

  1. Publish their contracts in an accessible, digestible manner, including summaries of the key contract terms.
  2. Start a conversation with companies and civil society concerning contracts that are not in the public domain.
  3. Fully implement contract transparency laws and better, envision the transition to a law-based regime, less reliant on contracts.
  4. Analyze and use information to negotiate better, more balanced deals, backed up by robust modelling.
  5. Adopt open contracting throughout the whole process of concession awards.

Read the full briefing here.

 

Gavin Hayman is Executive Director at the Open Contracting Partnership
Isabel Munilla is Senior Policy Advisor, Extractive Industries at Oxfam America
Rob Pitman is Governance Officer at the Natural Resource Governance Institute
Perrine Toledano is Head of Extractive Industries at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

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