PNG reaching for ‘industry standard’

Business

A PRE-validation workshop has brought the country closer to becoming an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative-compliant country.
The workshop was attended by the initiative’s multi stakeholder group and conducted by the regional director for East Asia and the Pacific. It was held in Port Moresby last month.
PNGEITI head of national secretariat Lucas Alkan said the country would be validated against the EITI global best practice standards on transparency and accountability of revenue from its mining, oil and gas industry.
“Drawing on this assessment, the EITI board will make an assessment of overall compliance with all requirements in the EITI standard,” he said.
“Where validation verifies that the government has made satisfactory progress on all of the requirements, the EITI board will designate PNG as EITI-compliant, thus granting full membership status to the EITI. It is important that we hold this workshop to prepare ourselves for validation that will commence in early April, 2018. Becoming EITI-compliant is good for PNG because it raises the country’s credibility as an investment destination, raises credit rating, positive impact on our corruption perception index at global level.
Alkan said the validation process would include an independent examiner to conduct detailed assessment on the implementation of the international requirements to strengthen mechanisms for transparency and accountability of revenue collection.