The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) on Tuesday expressed confidence in hurdling the upcoming Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) validation for the Philippines, which began last April 1, 2021.
The second to be conducted since 2017, the validation is the assessment of implementing countries’ capability to meet EITI standards.
The countries will be scored based on three components of the validation process, namely, 1) stakeholder engagement—participation of all stakeholders from government, industry, and civil society 2) transparency—disclosure requirements such as beneficial ownership registry and 3) outcomes and impact—addressing national priorities on natural resource governance.
The final result of the validation is expected to be announced by the EITI Board around the fourth quarter of 2021.
The first validation in 2017 found the Philippines to have made “satisfactory progress,” the first EITI implementing country to achieve such status, COMP said, adding that the industry remains committed to the EITI benchmark, with 95 percent of operating mines filing their reports, COMP Executive Director Ronald Recidoro told the BusinessMirror.
“The Chamber of Mines of the Philippines looks forward to the validation. We hope to still be at the forefront of this transparency initiative just as we were in 2017 under the old standard,” he said.
In fact, Recidoro said, COMP member-companies, at the least, have been doing transparency reporting on their own even before it became mandatory.
“We have done a lot to move transparency reporting in the Philippines, including reporting on gender, environmental protection, etc., which is only now being made mandatory under the new standard,” he said.
The group Bantay Kita, a civil society representative to the Philippine EITI Multi-Stakeholder Group (PH-EITI MSG) sees the validation as an opportunity to further discuss challenges in implementing the EITI and how it can be more relevant both at the national and subnational levels.
“Over the past months, the PH-EITI MSG has been working to gather all evidence to show progress in the Philippines. All stakeholders, not only civil society, have contributed to communicating EITI data and initiated outreach activities from local communities to policy-makers,” Vincent Lazatin, national coordinator of Bantay Kita, said in a news statement.
“Stakeholders involved in the validation process would be honest and able to articulate what really is happening on the ground with the transparency initiative of extractive industries in our country. Beyond aiming to be on top, the one of greater value is knowing the real score, the PH-EITI’s actual situation, and how we can perform better,” said Aniceta Baltar, a civil society representative to the PH-EITI MSG.
“The validation looks at how it continues to execute its mandate, and at what level it does. It also gauges what positive impacts the initiative were able to bring across to its constituents and stakeholders,” she added.
Pressed for further comment, Recidoro said that COMP, a founding member of PH-EITI, remains committed to participating in the ongoing validation.
He said there are new requirements under the 2019 EITI validation standard such as reporting on gender and environmental expenditures, and the controversial issue of beneficial ownership (BO).
“The PH-EITI has been reporting on gender and environmental expenditure since 2012, so we are ahead of the curve in that regard. We piloted beneficial ownership reporting last year,” Recidoro said.
However, he said, “BO reporting will still need some work.”
“We need SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] to take the lead on this so that it doesn’t become redundant,” he said.
“There are also concerns about data privacy,” Recidoro added.
He explained that EITI wants companies to disclose details of ownership but he added this is already being done with SEC.
Recidoro suggested that a clear-cut policy or guidelines from the SEC are needed when it comes to BO reporting.
“Beneficial ownership disclosure is already part of the annual general information sheet [GIS], but the issue now is publication. SEC does not make that beneficial ownership disclosure public because of data privacy concerns,” he explained.
The GIS is an annual submission to the SEC where companies report on their basic corporate data and shareholders, among other information.
Recidoro said companies submit a separate GIS form containing their corporate data every year.
“Since last year, that GIS now has a beneficial ownership report portion. The GIS is available for download with the SEC, but the BO portion is redacted. Because of data privacy concerns,” he said.