The participants adopted the 2021 Work Plan with amendments.
25 Feb, 2021
The National Committee of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) held its first meeting of the year on Thursday 25 February 2021 in Brazzaville. During this meeting chaired by Ludovic Ngatsé, Minister Delegate for Budget, the participants adopted the 2021 Work Plan with amendments.
The adoption of the Work Plan was one of the items on the agenda of this meeting, which is intended to be a regular meeting. As was the adoption of the Terms of Reference (TOR) of the 2019 EITI Report; the Memorandum of the Commissions; the Agenda and the scoping note on the implementation of the Roadmap on Beneficial Ownership.
With regard to the objectives of the 2021 Work Plan, in accordance with the guidelines of the EITI International Secretariat, the National Committee has set itself the following objectives for the year 2021:
Objective 1: Improving internal governance by holding regular Executive Committee and Commission meetings; ensure efficient management of human and material resources.
Objective NO.2: Sustaining the implementation of the EITI as a tool for governance and transparency. In order to achieve this, two essential measures have been selected, namely: monitoring the implementation of EITI recommendations and training and capacity building of the stakeholders in the EITI process.
Objective 3: Integrating EITI implementation into government and company systems. One of the measures targeted is to ensure systematic disclosure of data for the needs of different users. The targeted measures include: completing the Transparency Mapping Template for Systematic Disclosures, which will facilitate the tracking and collection of many of the information requirements of the EITI standard; and disclosing oil costs. The aim is to integrate oil costs into the reporting process and disclose the results of oil cost audits; disclose the summary data from the EITI Reports; put SYSCORE into operation; promote, through SYSCORE, the use of data from other existing systems for EITI reporting purposes (for example, the Integrated Public Financial Management System - SIGFIP).
All other items submitted to the National Committee members were adopted and amended.
Congo is awaiting its third Approval
The Permanent Secretary of the EITI-Congo National Committee, Florent Michel Okoko, told the press, at the end of the meeting, that of the 27 corrective measures that Congo must apply, 9 remain to be implemented by 2022, date of its third validation for its maintenance or not in the EITI standard. Among these 9 measures is the liberation of the public space, i.e. the organization of debates without taboos around the issues of transparency and inclusiveness.
It should be recalled that Congo had obtained the status of EITI Compliant country in 2016-2017.
