December 2020 marks for me just short of eight years of membership on the Multi-stakeholder Group (MSG) Steering Committee (SC) of the Trinidad and Tobago Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TTEITI) as the representative for the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce (TTCIC). It also signals the end of my journey in this capacity as I move on from the committee in 2021, to pursue other personal and professional goals.
I am grateful for the opportunity to use this forum to share a few of the important developments witnessed; a reflection, not so much on my personal experience, but on the progress and impact that this fundamentally important governance initiative has made, locally, regionally and internationally, during my time with the TTEITI Steering Committee.
Reporting to Mainstreaming
The publication of the first TTEITI Report on September 30th, 2013 (for the fiscal year 2011) was not only a milestone for Trinidad and Tobago but was deemed to have set a benchmark for EITI reporting with its use of infographics and approach to presenting complex, technical data in an easily understandable manner. The then head of EITI’s International Secretariat, Jonas Moberg, at a regional conference in Bogota, Colombia, hailed the report as a ‘fine model’ of what EITI reporting could and perhaps should look like.
Over the last eight years, not only has the TTEITI continuously modified its reporting to meet the needs of a broader public (including digitising many aspects), the entire approach to capturing, collating and presenting information is transitioning in line with what the EITI terms ‘systematic disclosure’ or ‘mainstreaming’. The journey to mainstreaming is definitely a marathon, not a sprint, as this approach would see a fundamental shift in reporting. The TTEITI would no longer be sourcing and collecting information from Government and reporting companies, to present in line with EITI Standard requirements, but rather, State reporting mechanisms would be aligned with these requirements so that the data produced and reported in the normal course of government reporting would already satisfy EITI requirements. As one member of the EITI International Secretariat puts it, “mainstreaming is basically working ourselves out of our jobs” or at least in my view, reminiscent of my auditing days, changing the job function from that of Audit Junior to Audit Partner.
Transparency to Accountability to Impact
In line with the initial objectives for the establishment of the EITI, the TTEITI started its journey with a focus on transparency of revenue collection. Governed by the EITI Standard 2013, it served as a mechanism of checks and balances; ensuring that revenue reported by Government as having been received, was reconciled with revenue reported by oil and gas companies as having been paid. An exercise which, for every reporting year to date for the TTEITI, has produced negligible discrepancies. The publication of the EITI Standard 2016, saw this focus on transparency expand to a broader dimension of accountability, with the most notable addition being the inclusion of the requirement to disclose beneficial ownership, albeit not to take effect until 2020. For the TTEITI, significant strides have been made and continue to be made in this area, including the recent development of an online Beneficial Ownership (BO) register for TTEITI reporting companies, the country’s first publicly available BO register. Fast forward to the recently released EITI Standard 2019 and again the scope has increased with the inclusion of both social and environmental dimensions; demonstrating the importance not just of just collecting revenue, but of ensuring that the state of the environment is given priority, together with the well-being of the society. Again, in this regard, TTEITI has seen the establishment (even prior to the requirement) of an Environmental Subcommittee to the MSG which has been implementing environmental governance initiatives with civil society organisations. Another requirement of the 2019 Standard is contract transparency, implementable for the 2021 report and an issue that has been featuring in our MSG and Secretariat efforts for quite some time now.
Regional Growth of EITI
Trinidad and Tobago’s decision to join the EITI was not met with favour by all and the journey to membership started long before the timeline mapped on the diagram. I remember during my early days, the words of a government official and now “TTEITI convert” who felt at the time, the EITI was not for countries like Trinidad and Tobago, but as he described it, for “those corrupt African countries”, something which I’m certain if said today, would be deemed even more politically incorrect than I thought it at the time.
By 2016, however, even with 51 member countries, there were only Continued from page 14 two from this region – the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago; the only English-speaking member in the Caribbean. Recognising this trend, former Chair and forever EITI champion, Victor Hart made it his mission as he put it “to spread the gospel of EITI” throughout the Caribbean. Under his leadership and with the support of the MSG and tireless efforts of the Secretariat, a regional campaign was initiated which spread the gospel throughout the Caribbean region starting in the north from Belize, The Bahamas, Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada and ending in the south with Suriname and Guyana.
In May 2017, Suriname became a candidate country of the EITI with Guyana following suit in October 2017. This has allowed for regional dialogue and crosscountry collaboration which serves to strengthen the overall efforts of extractive industry governance in the region.
The contribution made by Trinidad and Tobago to the development of the EITI was not lost on the wider EITI member countries. That recognition was shown by the EITI member countries of North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean electing TTEITI's Victor Hart to serve on the EITI International Board (2016-2019), the first English-speaking member of the Americas to be so honoured.
These are but a few examples of the impact that the Trinidad and Tobago implementation of this ‘global standard’ on extractive sector governance has had both locally, regionally and internationally. TTEITI has grown from strength to strength and I look forward to seeing what it accomplishes in the next decade.
As I am certain now to have exceeded the space kindly allocated to me in this edition, allow me to end on a personal note of gratitude for having had the opportunity to serve and represent Trinidad and Tobago in support of good governance, transparency and accountability in the use of our natural resources. The ultimate goal always is to ensure that the value that accrues from these resources benefits the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.
