African civil society organisations and a coalition of leading international development organisations have called for global policymakers to adopt measures to counter the hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned out of the continent through money laundering and industrial scale corporate tax avoidance.

The Financial Transparency Coalition’s (FTC) two-day high-level conference with Policy Forum held in Dar es Salaam last week was attended by 150 senior politicians, prominent international lawyers, academics, anti-corruption specialists and campaigners.

They heard:

September 5th, 2013 –The Global Movement for Budget Transparency, Accountability and Participation (BTAP) urges the world´s 20 economic powers to set a good example and to commit to advancing budget transparency, accountability and participation in their countries. The G20 countries should not only focus on discussing how to advance transparency and fight tax-avoidance, they should also launch strong and decisive strategies to promote budget transparency and accountability in their own countries, setting a good example to the rest of the world.

US President Barack Obama and the media might be traveling to my country this week to talk about such ‘sexy’ matters as the US’ economic race with China or peace and security issues. However if America is truly serious about pushing democratic governance around the world, it’s the less ‘sexy’ matters that are even more crucial.

Fellow country men and women, the announcement posted by the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania through Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) last week for the 4th Tanzania Deep Offshore and North Lake Tanganyika Licensing Round at this juncture triggers serious concerns amongst civil society organisations in Tanzania.

21/5/2013

Chairman,

Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TEITI)

P.O. Box 9333,

Dar es Salaam,

Tanzania

Dear Sir.

Re. Consultation for Contract Transparency

Reference is made to the EITI International Secretariat updated Communique dated 14 February 2013 on the above subject.

WE, the undersigned Tanzanian Civil Society Organizations virtually convened on 13th March, 2012 to discuss the proposed EU regulations on mandatory disclosure on extractives and logging and its implications to the governance of Tanzanian oil, gas, mineral and forest sectors.

RE-AFFIRMour commitment to promote transparent, effective and efficient management of extractive resources in practice beyond just empty words; this takes strong, robust and credible monitoring mechanisms

Your Excellency the guest of honour, Honourable Peter Mizengo Pinda – The Prime Minister of the United Republic of Tanzania,

Distinguished guests at the high table,

Your Excellency representatives of diplomatic missions,

Representatives from government, private sector and civil society organizations,

Members of the press,

Ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning to you all.

On the 20th and 21st of September 2011, Policy Forum Secretariat was invited to attend the EITI reports analysis training. The training took place in Accra -Ghana at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) where the Africa Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub is situated.

Policy Forum and HakiElimu have urged institutions of accountability such as the legislature and the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) to become more effective in engaging in the budget process so that they can better scrutinize the budget proposals and their execution. This was said in the wake of the release of the Tanzania report of the Open Budget Index (OBI) for 2010, which will be launched tomorrow.

Policy Forum (PF) was invited to attend a workshop on the promotion of transparency and accountability of revenue from the extractive industries (energy and minerals) hosted by the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Revenue Watch (RW).We have reproduced hereunder what we observed and noted.Please treat these remarks with due caution, as they are merely indicative (and not authoritative) of what transpired.n

EALA WORKSHOP:Promoting Transparency & Accountability of Revenue from Extractive Industries