Firms told to disclose data on beneficiaries

COMPANIES directly involved in the petroleum and mining sectors will be required to disclose information regarding their beneficial owners, starting in 2020, according to the PNG Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PNGEITI).
Beneficial owner (s) of resource projects (mine, oil and gas companies) refer to the natural person (s) who directly or indirectly owns or controls a corporate entity or company.
This followed yesterday’s signing of contract between the PNGEITI national secretariat and KPMG, the successful bidder for the implementation of the beneficial ownership roadmap that outlined how the country could develop a matrix to report beneficial owners.
Implementation of the roadmap was effected yesterday and would be rolled out until final quarter of 2019.
By then, a platform would have been developed for reporting through the EITI reporting process in 2020.
Head of the PNGEITI National Secretariat Lucas Alkan said it was the decision of the EITI international board.
“It wants all EITI implementing countries, including Papua New Guinea, to ensure that corporate entities that bid for, operate or invest in extractive assets disclose the identities of their beneficial owners by Jan 1, 2020,” Alkan said.
He said this was done to identify real owners of companies which had acquired rights to extract oil, gas and minerals which, in many cases were not known and often hidden behind a chain of corporate entities.
“The lack of transparency in this area often creates an environment for other illegal activities such as money laundering and transfer pricing,” Alkan said.