Chamber welcomes accountability plan

THE PNG Chamber of Mines and Petroleum has welcome the implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
Chamber president Dr Ila Temu, in response to a report, said EITI was a reporting structure that had been designed for environments where there was little or no transparency in reporting of taxes and payments between company and the national government.
“In PNG, the problem is not one of payments actually being made,” he said.
“Our transparency issue is limited to the need to publicly report.
“The bigger problem for PNG exists in flow of benefits at the sub-national level, particularly when payments are made to provincial governments and landowner entities.
“This research suggests a domestic type EITI to ensure transparency and good governance.
“If this can be done, well and good.”
Dr Temu said other areas of intervention, which would yield results sooner, were timely auditing of landowner entities.
He suggested the setting up of a dedicated landowner benefits audit team within the Auditor General’s Office to deal specifically with this.
“A similar function can also be outsourced to the private sector to overcome time issues and funding constraints,” Dr Temu said.
“It is important to review the existing arrangements and make changes to improve the management and distribution of landowner benefits.”
Last month, the World Bank and the Treasury Department organised a workshop for representatives of government, industry and civil society to learn about and discuss the benefits and possible challenges to implementing the EITI.
From this workshop, it was agreed that:
g    The PNG government EITI State Working Group (SWG) would prepare a report on the outcomes of the workshop and circulate to all participants by mid February 2012;
g    Industry players
(ExxonMobil, Oil Search, Barrick Gold, Ok Tedi Mining, Tolukuma Gold, Newcrest Mining and civil society would form EITI stakeholder working groups to promote EITI through communications and outreach efforts and direct engagement with the government EITI SWG.