Validation Deadline Arrives: A Crucial Test for EITI

The following originally appeared on Anthony Richter's blog. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative aims to improve transparency and accountability in oil, gas, and mining.

Today is the deadline for 20 of the implementing countries in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to complete validation. As everyone who has been watching this process now knows, they didn't make it in time. This will be a source of great frustration for supporters of EITI and rightly so. For detractors of EITI it will be proof to judge -- prematurely -- that it has been a dismal failure.

Some countries have been signed up for EITI for several years and yet were not ready; it is understandable that with so many countries going through validation at the same time and for the first time that it was messy; maybe the countries were poorly advised or assisted in the task. But still, some countries such as Liberia were so determined to move ahead that they were deemed compliant ahead of time. There are many reasons why countries ended up as they did; and some may have tried to game the system by attempting to demonstrate that they were more committed than they actually were, hoping to be rewarded while not acting in good faith; others clearly didn't consider validation a priority.

Still, many of the countries were working hard and, if given an extension, will complete and move on to be assessed for their compliance. As much as this is a test for the implementing countries it is also challenge for the EITI itself. How rigorously the Board handles this will be a measure of how seriously this voluntary experiment can be taken. If any extension is given to any country it will have to be granted according to clear principles, consistently and transparently applied on a one-time basis.

The ultimate evaluation of EITI still lies a way ahead, after looking at a class of compliant countries' performance we can judge how much of a difference it has made in battling corruption or promoting better development outcomes. EITI, which has done so much to popularize the idea of a global standard for transparency in oil and mining rich countries, is just one (though presently the most notable and elaborated) of the many ideas out there -- other initiatives, including powerful mandatory legislative efforts are among them. We should embrace them all.

If you want to understand all this better, see Publish What You Pay's explanation, press release, and Revenue Watch's press release.