EITI Update

Albania, Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Zambia have now become EITI Candidate countries. This was announced by the EITI Board at its meeting in Washington DC. With these four new countries, 30 countries are now implementing the EITI, further bolstering EITI as the standard for transparent management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining sectors.

Following is a list of some of the key outcomes from the EITI Global Conference:

The 4^th EITI Global Conference in Doha, Qatar, on 16-18 February marked an historic moment for the EITI, with over 500 participants from 80 countries, 70 speakers, and with countless meetings taking place on the sidelines. The Conference marked the EITI's transformation from a start-up initiative to a global transparency standard. Furthermore, Azerbaijan has become the first country to achieve Compliant status.

At the EITI Conference in Doha, the winners of the EITI Chairman's Awards 2009 were announced. The recipients of the 2009 Awards have all shown leadership in establishing resource transparency since the last EITI Conference. They were presented on Tuesday, 16 February at the EITI Chairman's Awards Dinner sponsored by ExxonMobil and Total. The winners were multi-stakeholder groups in Liberia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

The first day of the EITI conference got off to a busy start with nearly 400 participants in attendance. During the 7^th EITI International Board meeting held, the Board discussed whether to accept Azerbaijan as the first EITI Compliant country and the approval of Tanzania as a Candidate country.  

Tanzania

The EITI Board agreed to admit Tanzania as an EITI Candidate country. Tanzania has developed a work plan to implement the initiative and is in the process of establishing a Multi-Stakeholder Group to oversee the process.

President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf launched Liberia's first EITI Report covering the period 1 July 2007 - 30 June 2008 on 9 February. Liberia becomes the 11th EITI reporting country and the first to include forestry in their report. In her launch statement, the President referred to the efforts to pass a LEITI Act to oblige all relevant parties to comply with EITI reporting requirements. In attendance was the whole LEITI multi-stakeholder committee, several Cabinet Ministers, and the US Ambassador.

On 12 December 2008, the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan announced the release of the Government's 9th EITI report (Jan-June 2008). The release is accompanied by the Aggregator's opinion based on individual submissions of extractive industry companies participating in the EITI process in Azerbaijan. The press release and reports are available here.

The 8th report was released 3 June.

The EITI Secretariat and the African Development Bank co-hosted a Mediterranean EITI Roundtable in Tunis 25-26 November, chaired by Peter Eigen and addressed by AFDB President, Donald Kaberuka. It provided a platform for senior government and company representatives from North African countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan) to meet with Northern partners (France, Italy, Spain, Norway).

Welcome to a new edition of the EITI Newsletter. The main story is that Central African Republic is now a Candidate Country. In addition, it contains an update from Cameroon, and the Conference.