Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (EITI) will as­sist in cre­at­ing more par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy in T&T. This was the view of chair­man of the T&T EITI Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Vic­tor Hart. He said the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of EITI mem­ber­ship were cit­i­zens, Gov­ern­ment, ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries, such as oil and gas com­pa­nies, in­vestors and im­porters of T&T's prod­ucts. Hart said: "Cit­i­zens will ben­e­fit be­cause their full par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EITI is a first-time pub­lic recog­ni­tion that the coun­try's nat­ur­al re­sources be­long to the peo­ple and that they have the right to an in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied and eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble pub­lic ac­count­ing of the rev­enues earned from those re­sources through tax­es, roy­al­ties and oth­er pay­ments."

In Sep­tem­ber last year, Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to have T&T ap­ply for EITI mem­ber­ship. Ac­cord­ing to Hart, the ap­pli­ca­tion was made in Feb­ru­ary this year and was ac­cept­ed in March. The tar­get date for EITI im­ple­men­ta­tion, to pass the val­i­da­tion test and be ac­cord­ed com­pli­ant coun­try sta­tus is Au­gust 28, 2013. Hart was speak­ing at the World Bank/T&T EITI Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing work­shop at the Kapok Ho­tel, Mar­aval, yes­ter­day. The work­shop ends to­day. The EITI is a vol­un­tary in­ter­na­tion­al coali­tion of gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies en­gaged in the ex­trac­tive in­dus­tries (oil, gas and min­ing), civ­il so­ci­ety groups, in­vestors, donors and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment agen­cies.

It was es­tab­lished in 2002 by for­mer UK prime min­is­ter Tony Blair. Hart said know­ing what com­pa­nies paid and what Gov­ern­ment re­ceived for the peo­ple's re­sources was a crit­i­cal first step to en­able cit­i­zens to hold de­ci­sion-mak­ers ac­count­able. He said Gov­ern­ment's im­age would ben­e­fit from the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a stan­dard­ised and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised pro­ce­dure for nat­ur­al re­source man­age­ment. "Com­pa­nies, in­vestors and im­port­ing coun­tries will ben­e­fit from the im­proved in­vest­ment cli­mate in T&T where busi­ness will be seen to be con­duct­ed on a lev­el play­ing field with re­duced like­li­hood of cor­rup­tion and in­creased po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ents for cap­i­tal-in­ten­sive long-term in­vest­ments," Hart said.