The Philippines has earned several citations for best practices in the implementation of global standards on the management of mining resources during the recently concluded 37th board meeting of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Oslo, Norway.
Assistant Secretary Paola Alvarez of the Department of Finance (DOF) said the Philippine delegation reported that “our country was repeatedly cited for best practices and recognized for exemplary performance in the implementation of the EITI.”’
Alvarez, who is DOF spokesperson, said that Finance Assistant Secretary Teresa Habitan, the head of the Philippine delegation, was also appointed co-chair of the EITI Implementation Committee during the Oslo meeting.
Habitan as EITI board member represents the implementing country constituency in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“The Philippines is currently undergoing validation under the EITI, a process that started in January 2017 this year. Our country has received good feedback from the mission team, and is poised to possibly become the first country to be found compliant under the 2016 EITI Standard,” said Alvarez.
The EITI website states that “every country that joins the EITI as a member is assessed against the EITI Standard in a process called validation.”
An EITI validation process “reviews the country’s progress against the EITI requirements, analyzes the impact, and makes recommendations for strengthening the process and improving the governance of the sector,” the website said.
The EITI secretariat has so far completed the validation process for 13 country-members. The Philippines’ validation is listed as “underway” and commenced on January 1, 2017.
Alvarez said that in the Oslo conference, “the Philippines-EITI secretariat participated in 10 pre-Board meetings with the international secretariat and counterparts, covering topics such as beneficial ownership, project-level reporting, communication strategies, contract transparency, subnational EITI implementation, artisanal & small-scale mining, environmental reporting, EITI mainstreaming, and sharing of the PH validation experience.”
The Philippine delegation likewise met with the EITI International Chair, former Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and held other meetings with its foreign counterparts interested to learn from the Philippines’ implementation of the EITI.
The 38th EITI board meeting will be held in Manila on October 25-26 this year.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said at the PH-EITI national conference last month that a strong governance framework for the extractive industries, and not an “arbitrary” ban on this sector, will enable the country to “get the best of both worlds,” which is creating wealth for the people from the country’s natural resources and, at the same time, ensuring the sustainability of the environment.
In his speech, Dominguez had assured stakeholders in the extractive industries that the Duterte administration “will be firm but fair” in exercising strong governance while practicing transparency in all its processes and abiding by global best practices in ensuring sustainable development.
Dominguez, who co-chairs the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) with the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources, likewise expressed his support for the Philippines’ participation in EITI to set standards of honesty and openness, along with benchmarks of responsibility to the communities hosting the extractive industries.
According to Dominguez, “only full transparency can build an atmosphere of trust among stakeholders” and assure the public “that businesses are run with integrity and regulations enforced with competence.”
