Description:
Proper stewardship of revenue from the oil, gas, and mining industries has tremendous potential to lift people out of poverty and contribute to sustainable development. These industries create jobs directly and indirectly, transfer technologies and knowledge, and generate significant income. These benefits provide governments with a financial base for infrastructure development and social service delivery. The extractive industries, and the petroleum sector in particular, are known for generating high economic rent the difference between the value and cost of production and the government's share of this rent can be very large in times of high commodity prices, as in the last several years. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) seeks to help resource-rich countries maximize the development gains from the exploitation of their oil, gas, and mineral resources by encouraging greater EI revenue transparency. Through the verification and full publication of payments made by companies and revenues from oil, gas, and mining received by governments, the EITI helps to safeguard against corruption and provides a powerful illustration of voluntary engagement of governments, industry, civil society and other stakeholders to establish a locally implemented global standard. This paper describes steps to improve EI revenue management, transparency, and accountability at each link of the value chain