Rapheal John-Lall

The board of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) has de­clared the T&T Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (TTEITI) ful­ly com­pli­ant with all its re­port­ing re­quire­ments. Mak­ing the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day was Clare Short, chair of the EITI board, who said T&T has achieved EITI com­pli­ant coun­try sta­tus, the high­est lev­el of mem­ber­ship in the glob­al trans­paren­cy body.

"T&T is now part of the in­ter­na­tion­al move­ment which is part of 50 coun­tries from all parts of the world. The whole aim is to get the sec­tor of oil, gas and min­ing trans­par­ent, which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been very opaque and se­cre­tive. Peo­ple have tra­di­tion­al­ly asked where the mon­ey is go­ing to. Trans­paren­cy is im­por­tant for the trust of the peo­ple," she said in an ad­dress on the sec­ond day of the T&T En­er­gy Con­fer­ence at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

Lat­er, at a me­dia brief­ing, Short said T&T has done two re­ports for the EITI so far un­der and in that re­gard is way ahead of de­vel­oped coun­tries like the Unit­ed States and Aus­tralia."The UK is a can­di­date and on­ly now is pub­lish­ing their re­port, the Unit­ed States has not pub­lished a re­port, Aus­tralia did a pi­lot and just had a change of gov­ern­ment so we do not know what they will do. T&T has achieved a lot by go­ing be­yond the min­i­mum re­quire­ments in its re­port­ing," she said.

Chair­man of the TTEITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee, Vic­tor Hart, a well-known trans­paren­cy ad­vo­cate de­scribed be­ing ful­ly com­pli­ant with all re­port­ing re­quire­ments of the EITI as a ma­jor achieve­ment.

"This comes at a time when we have been shar­ing the EITI ben­e­fits with oth­er Cari­com coun­tries, so it re­in­forces our cred­i­bil­i­ty as we spread the EITI mes­sage through­out the re­gion. It has been a lot of hard work over the last four years and I hope as we go for­ward the hard work will con­tin­ue. Our one fail­ure in the past is we failed to get buy in from the me­dia in T&T on the EITI," he said.

Hart said: "This is the pat­ri­mo­ny of the peo­ple of T&T in terms of the oil and gas. We hope the me­dia will play a big­ger role in shar­ing the in­for­ma­tion with the pub­lic so they can use the da­ta gen­er­at­ed in our re­ports to hold the Gov­ern­ment and com­pa­nies more ac­count­able."

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who is on his way back to T&T af­ter at­tend­ing the Caribbean En­er­gy Sum­mit in Wash­ing­ton DC, sent an e-mail to the or­gan­is­ers of the En­er­gy Con­fer­ence say­ing he was de­light­ed T&T is now com­pli­ant with EITI re­port­ing stan­dards."This is great news for our coun­try. It means we are now part of a pres­ti­gious glob­al stan­dard. This is the cul­mi­na­tion of four years of hard work," he said.

The EITI pro­motes open­ness and ac­count­able man­age­ment of nat­ur­al re­sources in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. As a glob­al stan­dard, it seeks to strength­en gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies, in­form de­bate and en­gen­der pub­lic trust in the man­age­ment of a coun­try's nat­ur­al re­sources. In par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries, EITI is sup­port­ed by a coali­tion com­prised of mem­bers of gov­ern­ment, com­pa­nies, and civ­il so­ci­ety–the three stake­hold­ers close­ly in­volved in the ex­trac­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources.

As a can­di­date coun­try to the EITI in­ter­na­tion­al mem­ber­ship, T&T has been im­ple­ment­ing the EITI Stan­dard by pub­lish­ing re­ports that dis­close the in­de­pen­dent­ly-au­dit­ed rev­enues from ex­trac­tion of the coun­try's nat­ur­al re­sources in oil and gas sec­tors. These re­ports are made pub­licly avail­able on the EITI's T&T Web site (http://www.tteiti.org.tt).

In ad­di­tion, T&T has been im­ple­ment­ing checks and bal­ances in the rev­enue col­lec­tion sys­tem to meet the EITI Stan­dard re­quire­ments and so max­imise the rev­enues earned.The Eu­ro­pean Union has been as­sist­ing T&T to im­ple­ment the EITI Stan­dard and to achieve full com­pli­ance to EITI In­ter­na­tion­al mem­ber­ship.