IEITI Annual Report: Progress, but Improvement Still Needed

By Ahmed Mousa Jiyad.

Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

The Iraq Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (IEITI) succeeded in launching its fifth annual Report 2013 on 10^th December 2015, almost three weeks earlier than its previous report. Moreover, IEITI plans to issue Report 2014 by April 2016. Obviously, this is a commendable progress.

On previous occasions I reviewed and assessed IEITI Reports starting from the first one for 2009. These assessments are available on this IBN website and can be accessed through the following link:

https://www.iraq-businessnews.com/category/oil-gas/ahmed-mousa-jiyad/

Despite the progress acknowledged above, my thorough review of the latest IEITI Report indicates very minor qualitative improvements in this current Report and in some items there are few serious setbacks from previous report. Major parts are repetitive due to copy and paste method from previous reports.

The mind-set of the Reconciler/Administrator of the Report (PwC) and its used methodology led to reduce its contribution and make it confined to reconciliation of oil export revenues only, leaving other Iraqi entities to contributing some of the remaining parts of the Report without critical examination by the Reconciler/ Administrator.

In this respect I have identified serious discrepancies that were not addressed in the Report; many important missing items that the Report should have provided; flaws that are impacting the quality of the Report; lack of progress and low learning curve, among other.

The IEITI Report in its current form still, unfortunately, far from what is required under EITI new Standard and to a large extent did not comply fully with the ToR of the related consultancy assignment.

Mr Jiyad is an independent development consultant, scholar and Associate with Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), London. He was formerly a senior economist with the Iraq National Oil Company and Iraq’s Ministry of Oil, Chief Expert for the Council of Ministers, Director at the Ministry of Trade, and International Specialist with UN organizations in Uganda, Sudan and Jordan. He is now based in Norway (Email: [email protected], Skype ID: Ahmed Mousa Jiyad).