NGOs call for greater transparency in the petroleum sector

A coalition of NGOs in the Republic of Congo has called upon petroleum companies operating in the country to make public the amount of revenue they provide to the Congolese government. In a communique issued on Thursday, the Peace and Justice Commission of the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Church of Congo and the Observatoire congolais des droits de l'Homme (OCDH - Congolese Human Rights Observatory), said that such a measure would help to provide greater transparency in the Congo's petroleum industry. Petroleum is the Congo's most lucrative export product, revenues from which account for two-thirds of the national budget. Despite this wealth, some 70 percent of the country's roughly three million people live below the poverty line, while salaries of civil servants have been frozen for the past decade, even as the cost of living has continued to rise. "We are calling for a change in the management of petroleum revenues so that measures might be taken to bring an end to the poverty that still prevails in this country after 30 years of oil exploitation," Christian Mounzeo, the OCDH interim president, told IRIN. "It is totally unacceptable that 70 percent of our people live below the poverty line while our country is the third largest producer of petroleum in sub-Saharan Africa." The NGO coalition said that while it was pleased with promises made by the Congolese government to improve transparency in the petroleum sector, it called on officials to make these declarations concrete by enacting legislation, by removing confidentiality clauses from petroleum industry contracts and by publishing the financial results of the Societe Nationale des Petrole du Congo, a national company responsible for the oil industry sector. Congo's National Assembly recently approved measures that would guarantee the interests of the state in its dealings with Total, the country's primary petroleum industry partner. The NGO coalition demanded that similar accords be reached with other petroleum companies, in line with the EITI [Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative] launched by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. Its aim is to increase transparency of payments by companies and revenues to governments in the extractive industries. [For more information on EITI, go to www.dfid.gov.uk] The NGO coalition was created on 5 September in Pointe-Noire, the economic capital of the Congo, following increased calls for transparency in the nation's petroleum sector, as part of the international Publish What You Pay coalition, which, like the EITI, calls for greater transparency in the extractive industries. [For more on the campaign, go to www.publishwhatyoupay.org]