One of the is­sues that the 50 plus Com­mon­wealth heads of gov­ern­ment at their meet­ing in Perth last month agreed to was "to pro­mote more ef­fec­tive nat­ur­al re­source man­age­ment through greater trans­paren­cy and bet­ter gov­er­nance, and tak­ing ac­count of the val­ues of nat­ur­al cap­i­tal in de­ci­sion-mak­ing..." The heads, in their com­mu­nique, agreed to build on the Com­mon­wealth's long­stand­ing prac­ti­cal con­tri­bu­tions to mem­ber gov­ern­ments in this area and al­so "wel­comed the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive (EITI) prin­ci­ples and en­cour­aged Com­mon­wealth coun­tries to con­sid­er sup­port­ing or im­ple­ment­ing them."

One of the Com­mon­wealth coun­tries that is lead­ing the charge to im­ple­ment the EITI is Trinidad and To­ba­go and, un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, T&T has done more than the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in at­tempt­ing to make this coun­try com­pli­ant with the stric­tures of the ini­tia­tive. Ear­li­er this year, T&T im­ple­ment­ed the five steps nec­es­sary to make the coun­try an of­fi­cial EITI can­di­date. To achieve the next step, which is com­pli­ant sta­tus, T&T will be re­quired to com­plete EITI val­i­da­tion with­in two and a half years of be­com­ing a can­di­date coun­try. This will re­quire T&T to im­ple­ment a range of ac­tiv­i­ties by 2013 aimed at strength­en­ing the trans­paren­cy of rev­enues from nat­ur­al re­sources.

We raise these is­sues con­cern­ing the trans­paren­cy of nat­ur­al re­source rev­enues be­cause of the ap­par­ent lack of trans­paren­cy with which the is­sue of the back-tax set­tle­ment be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and bpTT has been han­dled. A state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter on Fri­day re­vealed that BP had made a pay­ment of US$159,723,071 ($1 bil­lion) to the Gov­ern­ment's ac­count at the Cen­tral Bank. This mon­ey, ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, rep­re­sent­ed "the com­mence­ment of pay­ments aris­ing out of the ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Board of In­land Rev­enue." Fur­ther, ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, BP's tax team had been in­volved in ef­forts this year "to re­solve a large num­ber of the com­pa­ny's open and un­re­solved cor­po­rate tax is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

The clear sug­ges­tion from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter-as a re­sult of its use of the words "com­mence­ment" of pay­ments and its ref­er­ence to the res­o­lu­tion of "a large num­ber" of tax is­sues-was that the US$159 mil­lion was the first of sev­er­al pay­ments in­volv­ing many is­sues. The sug­ges­tion of on­go­ing is­sues and po­ten­tial fu­ture ne­go­ti­at­ed tax pay­ments was but­tressed by the quote from BP's chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer in Fri­day's state­ment from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter that "good progress" had been made on com­plex and tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult tax­a­tion is­sues. That state­ment al­so re­port­ed BP as view­ing the set­tle­ment "as a sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards bring­ing its tax­a­tion af­fairs in Trinidad and To­ba­go up to date."

It is clear that BP (and be­fore it Amo­co) has main­tained a long­stand­ing, cor­dial and mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship with the coun­try and peo­ple. In the 21st cen­tu­ry, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty must be added to con­sti­tute the mod­ern hall­marks of good cor­po­rate re­la­tions. Giv­en its stat­ed com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy in the en­er­gy sec­tor, there would have been an ex­pec­ta­tion that the Gov­ern­ment would have sought to prac­tise what it has preached by in­sist­ing that this is­sue of the tax au­dit of bpTT for the years 2001 to 2006 be ful­ly ven­ti­lat­ed. As the po­ten­tial ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the tax­es paid by com­pa­nies like bpTT, the peo­ple have a right to know the na­ture of these "com­plex and tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult" tax is­sues that sep­a­rat­ed the coun­try and its sin­gle largest rev­enue source.

In fact, both the Gov­ern­ment and the en­er­gy com­pa­nies need to spend more time and ef­fort re­mov­ing the shroud of mys­tery that sur­rounds the two main regimes un­der which en­er­gy com­pa­nies op­er­ate. More of the cit­i­zen­ry needs to make the con­nec­tion be­tween the ac­tiv­i­ties off­shore and their stan­dard of liv­ing on­shore-and when there is a clear re­al­i­sa­tion that the off­shore re­sources are de­plet­ing and there­fore need to be used for the ben­e­fit of the en­tire na­tion. We call on the Gov­ern­ment to fol­low not just the let­ter of the EITI char­ter but its spir­it, safe in the knowl­edge that trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty pro­mote the in­ter­ests of both com­pa­ny and coun­try.