Civil society organisations (CSOs) in Ghana, have been tasked to generate a draft legislation to be considered as a legal framework for the Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (GHEITI), an initiative that seeks to ensure transparency in the management of revenue from the extractive industry.

The GHEITI is the Ghanaian subset of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global initiative to make natural resources benefit all the people in resource-rich countries.

Under the initiative, companies in the extractive industry are expected to publish what they pay to the government and the government is also expected to publish what it receives from the companies to ensure transparency in the payment and utilisation of the funds.

Ghana, which was one of the first African countries to sign onto the initiative, presently runs it on a voluntary basis and the GHEITI has no binding powers on companies to disclose what they pay to the government and on the government to disclose what it receives from the companies.

Addressing participants at a workshop for parliamentary correspondents in Koforidua Friday, the Vice-Chairman of the National Steering Committee of the GHEITI, Mr Amponsah Tawiah, noted that it was important for everyone to understand how much money was flowing and to where.

The workshop was organised by the Parliamentary Centre, the Revenue Watch Institute, GTZ and the Parliament of Ghana and it was attended by 25 journalists.

Mr Tawiah said there were two schools of thought with respect to the legal framework for the GHEITI and said one of them posited that there was enough legislation to ring fence the process, while the other felt it was important to have a stand-alone legislation to institutionalise the EITI process.

“A platform for a legal framework has now been established and CSOs have been tasked to generate the draft legislation for stakeholders’ analysis,” he added.

He said the National Steering Committee recognised that if the EITI was to capture all material payments to the country, it needed to include not only payments made to the central government but also at the regional and district levels.

He said the committee had developed a district level reporting template for data collection at the sub-regional level to capture the receipts and utilisation of the resources sent to the mining communities.

He added that it was important to ensure that information provided by initiatives such as the EITI should include details of the sub-national payments and revenue.

He announced that a communication strategy had been developed to help empower Ghanaians and all stakeholders to effectively understand the EITI concept and participate meaningfully in the process.

A consultant on the process, Mr Boa Amponsem, who has been tasked to conduct both the financial and process audit of the extractive industry, said the lack of a legal framework was a challenge, as some companies were sometimes reluctant to disclose some information for the auditing.

He, therefore, stressed the need for an appropriate legal backing for the process to address some of the challenges.

Mr Abdul Karim of the Parliamentary Centre said one of the key benefits of the process was that it would help improve the investment climate by providing a clear signal for investors and financial institutions that the government was committed to greater transparency.