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An agency tasked with cleaning up Nigeria’s murky oil industry says even though financial accountability has improved the state oil company still hasn’t explained billions of dollars of missing revenue.
SOEs often manage huge budgets and control valuable national assets. When accountability is lacking, they tend to deliver a poor financial return on these investments. Analyzing SOE performance is complicated by the multiple missions that SOEs often pursue, which is why there can be no one-size-fits all approach. But a good starting point is assessing whether the SOE has achieved the goals laid out by the government and the company’s own leadership.
By year-end, Indonesia is also set to join the Automatic Exchange of Information initiative, a global effort to curb tax avoidance and evasion, which enables tax authorities around the world to exchange information on taxpayers’ accounts.
The OBS 2017 results suggest that whatever factors contributed to improvements in transparency in the region between 2012 and 2015 were insufficient in maintaining these gains in 2017. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that increased their OBI score by more than five points between 2012 and 2015 declined by more on average between 2015 and 2017 than the countries that were not substantial improvers between 2012 and 2015.
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) determined Feb. 13 that Kazakhstan has made meaningful progress overall in implementing the EITI Standard. The decision was made based on the validation process conducted by the EITI starting from July 1, 2017. Validation is the EITI’s independent evaluation mechanism that assesses countries against progress made in meeting the EITI Standard and results in a Board decision on each country.
International experience suggests that an effective anti-corruption strategy for Latin America requires strong legal frameworks, vigorous enforcement, and perseverance. As well, strong national ownership and leadership are critical to maintain broad public support for such efforts. A big push on multiple fronts is needed to dramatically shift societal expectations.
Corruption in Latin America is high -- broadly on par with other emerging markets but is substantially worse than in advanced economies. Weaknesses in fiscal transparency, public procurement, state enterprise governance and legal enforcement rank among the leading factors. Tackling corruption will require a major shift in realigning incentives and expectations through forceful policies and collective efforts.
Since 2005, 147 countries and 178 subnational governments carried out PEFA assessments of their record in executing spending plans. European and Central Asian countries showed the most success, and Sub-Saharan African countries the least. Subnational governments generally had a poorer record than national governments.
Nigeria recently launched an innovative open data portal that is enhancing transparency and citizens' participation in public procurement and service delivery. But the portal's likely exclusion of defense and security spending threatens to undercut its contribution to fighting corruption.
Procurement heads of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) held their first-ever meeting in June to discuss a common market for public procurement. A single public procurement market would enable Caribbean countries prone to natural disasters to better prepare and respond more effectively.