Ian Gary, an expert in extractive industry governance with global charity, Oxfam America, said although many African countries had made significant gains in promoting transparency in oil resource governance and revenue management, there was the need to move a notch higher to ensure that enough benefits inured to the host countries.
Gary was speaking late Monday during the launch of Africa Oil Governance Report, 2016, prepared by the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP).
“There is important work that needs to be done in terms of a second generation of transparency. And this will relate to four priority areas that I will identify and the report covers.
“The first is the rather basic call to finish the agenda when it comes to contract transparency. In a majority of countries in Africa, most of the petroleum contracts are still secret and in countries where you derive most of your government revenue from oil, that basically means that the countries’ tax code is secret,” he observed.
Gary said it was unfair that citizens were paying Value Added Tax and other forms of taxes, those same citizens did not know the terms of the deals when it came to the oil sector.
He therefore called for the introduction of beneficial ownership registers in all resource-rich countries so the real beneficiaries of oil contracts are known.
Africa has been a major contributor to the global supply of oil for the past three decades.
With the recent major discoveries, there has been an influx of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to the oil sector, leading to the classification of the continent as the last oil frontier of the world.
“In spite of this progress in the extraction of oil and gas, Africa lives the irony of the ‘oil curse’: Abundant resources have rather established a link between oil wealth and underdevelopment, poverty, environmental disasters, social and economic challenges,” said Ben Boakye, Deputy Executive Director for ACEP.
He said this ‘anomaly’ had to be fought by all who were interested in the growth and development of the continent: including academia, civil society, development partners, community leaders and the wider citizenry.
Linda Ahunu, a policy analyst at ACEP, who presented the report, said the one thing that could actually ensure that Africa transformed the lives of its people with oil wealth was good governance.
“If only indeed Africa can maximize its oil wealth to transform the lives of its people, it would go a long way to addressing the challenges that we face,” Ahunu stated. Enditem.
Source: Xinhua / NewsGhana.com.gh
