EITI Secretariat in Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan

EITI Secretariat in Kyrgyzstan

Karybek Ibraev

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We welcome any comments to the paper EITI in 3-5 years - Validation. Stakeholders may wish to address the questions and statements below, but should not consider themselves confined to them. Stakeholders are welcome to provide alternative proposals.

GUIDING QUESTION / MSG RESPONSE
1. / Should effort and progress in meeting the requirements over time be taken into account in Validation? / Validation should take account of actions and progress in compliance over time. It is true that in some countries.
2. / Should Validation encourage reporting that go beyond the EITI requirements? / How can the Validator encourage over-fulfilment of requirements? They can only call attention to it as a positive factor.
It is true that that in some countries the level of information openness already exceeds EITIrequirements. For example, in Kyrgyzstan, under the Open Budgetprogramme, the Ministry of Finance already publishes detailed information on its website about all taxes and fees paid by all legal entities in disaggregated form for each payment. Perhaps with time it no longer be necessary to hire an independent reconciliation specialist, as government figures and figures of companies will become available to any interested party.
3. / Should the timeframe for countries to achieve compliance be the same for all implementing countries? If so, should the timeframe be a fixed number of years as at present / The schedule to achieve compliance does not have to be the same for all the implementing countries. Countries joining the initiative are at different levels. Some countries need do no more than join, as they do not require major amendments to legislation, etc. (e.g. Norway, USA), while other countries require significant amendments to legislation, as well as capacity building by government agencies and the general public in order to achieve compliance. So setting a fixed number of years for compliance is not what is required. The country itself has to state when it will be ready for validation
4. / Should progress and direction of travel matter for how much time countries are given to achieve compliance? / The time required to achieve compliance is differentfor different countries. Some countries need to carry out a great deal of work and require more time to achieve compliance. They need to cover more ground and require guidance in order to achieve compliance.
5. / To what extent should the local context in which the EITI is being implemented be taken into account during Validation? / There are many different countries with many different specifics,so it is necessary to take the local context into account for EITI implementation. For example, the collection of reports in Kyrgyzstan from companies and government agencies has its own specifics and in the opinion of the Supervisory Board it is more adapted to local conditions due to budgetary constraints.
6. / Should EITI requirements continue to be assessed as met or unmet? / Clear criteriaand weightingsfor each requirement need to be designed and decisions should be taken as a whole, including assessment of the level of progress in implementation of each requirement.
7. / Should there be more disaggregated assessments, showing which requirements are met and which requirements are unmet, including the level of progress in meeting each requirement? / Assessmentsshould be more disaggregated,so that they show what requirements have been met and which have not been met. Not all of the EITI's requirements have the same value. It can happen that a candidate country achieves full implementation of the most important requirements by channelling its efforts, but achievesonly small progress on less important requirements, and then is at risk of not passing validation.
8. / Should the consequences of not reaching compliance status be removed? i.e. countries are allowed to stay members of the EITI as long as they make progress towards meeting requirements? / If a country has expressed interest in implementing the EITI it is undesirable to exclude the country due to its failure to reach the status of compliance within the time limit. As noted above,the time periods for implementing the new EITI standard are too short for some countries. Countries should be allowed to remain candidates until they themselves say that they are ready to validate and obtain EITI compliancestatus.
9. / How can Validation measure progress or direction of travel towards meeting a requirement? / A system of assessment has to be designed in order to measure progress or the direction of movement towards fulfilment of the requirement. But, when designing the assessment system,due account should be taken of the fact that different countries require different amounts of effort to meet the requirements, depending on their levels of transparency.
10. / Should Validation take place more frequently to measure progress, for example at the end of each EITI reporting cycle, or is the current frequency of every 3 years adequate? / If a country has reached the status of compliance and meets these requirements, the frequency of validation can be increased, or validation can be carried out in the event that EITI requirements have changed. Validation after each reporting cycle is inappropriate.
11. / Should the concept of “candidate” and “compliant” be replaced, and if so with what? / The concept of "candidate country" and "compliant" country does not need to be changed.
12. / What terminology could be suitable to indicate the various degrees of progress in meeting EITI Requirements? Are the current concepts of “limited progress” and “meaningful progress” appropriate? / If there are no requirements for the time needed for validation, then there will be no need to use the current concepts of "limited progress" and "meaningful progress". Each country must itself announce its readiness to undergo validation.
13. / How can Validation incentivize countries to continue to progress and innovate both before and after reaching compliance status? / A very important question. It is not obvious what a country gains from acquiring EITI compliance. Companies even believe that too much transparency can lead to conflict. Not all government officials and companies see and understand the benefits for the country of becoming EITI compliant. Incentive mechanisms are needed to encourage countries to progress and innovate, both before and after reaching compliancestatus.
14. / Should multi-stakeholder groups and/or local and international experts on extractive sector governance have a greater role in Validation? / Multi-stakeholder groups and local and international experts on the management of the extractive sector should play a more significant role in validation.
15. / Should the International Secretariat have a greater role in carrying out Validation assessments? What are the risks and benefits of this approach? What should be done to mitigate conflicts of interest? / The International Secretariat should play a more significant role in assessment by means funding for validation. But the International Secretariat should not set time limits for validation. Rather, the countryitself should announce its readiness to undergo validation. On this approach, countries do not incur additional financial costs for validation and there is less risk that they will not pass validation.

Approved by the MSG:

Date:07 September 2015

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