By RFPosted on 03-08-2019Modified on 03-08-2019 at 23:51

The Democratic Republic of Congo has not complied with the requirements of the EITI (Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative), according to an internal report by the organization. The EITI Board and its International Secretariat are expected to submit their recommendations and corrective actions in August. The Canadian company CowaterSogema was commissioned to conduct the evaluation, it reported on July 25th.

In this document of ten pages, we learn that the DRC " did not meet the requirements " of transparency of the EITI standard, even if this initiative supposed to clean up the management of extractive industries allowed, still according to the authors of this report, improve the collection of information. The country has been committed since 2005 to implementing these principles. Now, fourteen years later, the essential remains to be done. Thirteen requirements and recommendations should be made to the DRC in August, after validation by the EITI Board at the global level.

This affects the internal functioning of the DRC EITI, the appointment processes, the per diems too, so that " this does not alter the governance of the implementation of the EITI and does not create conflicts of interest ". On several occasions, the authors in this report suggest that there have been internal management issues.

But what is lacking in the DRC is above all the disclosure of key information by the state itself: licenses granted, transferred, calls for tenders, shares taken by the state in certain companies, the values ​​of production by raw material, the transfer of funds from or to public enterprises, the allocation of mining revenues that are never recorded in the State budget, such as the famous tax advances of Gecamines. Within the DRC EITI, it is said that in the long run it is feared a pure and simple suspension of the country if these recommendations are not implemented.

The Congolese representation of the EITI has not met for a year. For two years, there has been no national coordinator. It is necessary to go back to 2015 to find an independent audit which gave rise to recommendations. Recommendations that would never have been respected, according to the civil society.

It threatens to suspend its participation in the EITI Congo. For participating NGOs, the transparency initiative has become opaque and dysfunctional.

Asadho is one of these NGOs. Me Jean-Claude Katende explains why the civil society goes up today in the niche. " There are several reasons. The first is that since October of last year the executive committee which is in charge of the EITI management does not meet. This means that the DRC EITI has lost its leadership. The second reason is that for two years now, we have never recruited a new national coordinator. Whenever we asked for it, there have always been some government members who have obstructed the process. The final reason is that several recommendations made by the 2015 financial audit of the EITI RDC have never been implemented by the executive committees. Overall, these were recommendations for improving the governance of the funds that are given to the EITI by the government and also to make effective the technical secretariat that is in charge of implementing the recommendations or decisions of the executive committee. . So far, we feel that all these recommendations have never been implemented and we can not go that way. "

    On the same subject

    Government in DRC: Kabila's FCC to retain Mining and Finance

    DRC: "eviction" operations around a mine

    DRC: theft of radioactive materials at Gécamines

    comments