18. How does the RWI index compares to other governance indicators ?
19. How does the RWI index compares to other governance indicators ?
20. How does the RWI index compares to other governance indicators ?
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Notas del editor
The Revenue Watch Index is the first attempt to compare to what extent governments disclose information about the money they receive for the exploitation of oil, gas and minerals, and about their management of the extractive sector.
Brazil, China and the United States are included as producers of oil and gas. Even though these countries have diversified economies and are not considered to be resource dependent, they are among the world’s top 15 oil producers. Top World Oil Producers, 2008 (thousand barrels per day) Rank/Country/Production: 1 Saudi Arabia 10,782 2 Russia 9,790 3 United States 8,514 4 Iran 4,174 5 China 3,973 6 Canada 3,350 7 Mexico 3,186 8 United Arab Emirates 3,046 9 Kuwait 2,741 10 Venezuela 2,643 11 Norway 2,466 12 Brazil 2,402 13 Iraq 2,385 14 Algeria 2,180 15 Nigeria 2,169
From a total of 65 countries, this Index selected 41 countries for this study. These 41 countries contain almost half of the world population and are among the top producers of petroleum, gold, copper and diamonds. We selected these group of countries based on three criteria: Countries defined by the IMF as resource rich. Countries that participate in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative We added three countries that are important producers of oil and gas but with diversified economies.
This index is based on publicly available information. To guide our research, we asked what information would be available to any citizen interested in knowing how his government manages the oil, gas and mining sector. First, we looked for information disclosed by governments about the money they receive from the exploitation of oil, gas and mining. This report looks at a sector that provides essential resources to pay for public services such as health, education, poverty reduction and public infrastructure. Questionnaire researchers completing 55 questions that evaluate the public availability of information (any citizen might be able to obtain it through a request to the public authority) Mostly information available online Seven key areas of natural resource governance
This index is based on publicly available information. To guide our research, we asked what information would be available to any citizen interested in knowing how his government manages the oil, gas and mining sector. First, we looked for information disclosed by governments about the money they receive from the exploitation of oil, gas and mining. This report looks at a sector that provides essential resources to pay for public services such as health, education, poverty reduction and public infrastructure. Questionnaire researchers completing 55 questions that evaluate the public availability of information (any citizen might be able to obtain it through a request to the public authority) Mostly information available online Seven key areas of natural resource governance
We also asked questions about whether governments publish information on how they manage the oil, gas and mining sector. This is very important because in all these countries, oil, gas and mining belong to the state and are public assets. We asked what information governments published regarding their contracts with resource companies, whether they publish their legal framework, and what report are produced in case there are natural resource funds. Questionnaire researchers completing 55 questions that evaluate the public availability of information (any citizen might be able to obtain it through a request to the public authority) Mostly information available online
The report also asked about publicly available information about oil, gas and mining companies that belong to the state, transfers from the central to local governments and whether governments implement the EITI. Consultants gathered the information from November 2009 to April 2010 Peer review process completed in July 2010 Result: expert-based survey of revenue transparency Transparency questions aggregated into a single score for each country
1. This index shows that the majority of governments in resource rich countries are not providing essential information for their citizens to know how they profit from the sale of state-owned natural resources. 2. Disclosure of contracts between governments and resource companies is very limited. However, the fact that five countries (US, Colombia, Timor, Peru, Liberia) publish full text of these agreements proves that arguments about the necessity of confidentiality are without base. These countries publish contracts without suffering any competitive advantage. 3. the majority of countries that disclose the least amount of information are often those that are the more dependent of oil, gas and mineral income. 29 out of 41 countries provide limited public information on their natural resource sector. The Revenue Watch Index shows that levels of transparency in natural resource governance tend to be rather limited across the world, with the majority of the countries (29 out of 41) ranking in the two lowest categories of the Index. This means that citizens are missing essential information for knowing how much their governments are profiting from the sale of state-owned natural resources. 5 countries (Colombia, Liberia, Peru, Timor-Leste and the United States) publish their contracts in full: some countries do not disclose contracts even to legislatures Substantial room for improvement in all the countries covered
Although both indices are based on different research tools (CPI is a cross-national corruption perception survey), the relationship between the two measures can be useful to have an approximate idea of the connection between the perception of corruption and revenue transparency. In this respect, the correlation coefficient (r=0.386) shows that there is weak positive correlation between the two measures. However, there are also some interesting cases in which the relationship between the scores of countries is not so clear-cut. Specifically, countries like Brazil, Russia or Iraq seem to perform extraordinarily well in revenue transparency terms while at the same time being classified as considerably corrupt by their citizens:
As in the CPI case, there seems to be a high degree of association between the results of the index and alternative measures of corruption, such as the Global Integrity Report, which assesses the strength of anti-corruption systems cross-nationally. Indeed, a positive correlation between both measures (r=0.646) seems to be present, although there are countries like Yemen that despite showing good levels of revenue transparency (e.g. 62.2 points), the assessment of their anti-corruption institutions is not so positive (46 points):
A very interesting picture is provided by measuring the degree of association between the results of the index and alternative measures of transparency like the Open Budget Index, which aims at assessing the degree to which governments make information about public money available. This correlation is strong (r=0.646) and displays important contradictory examples of unequal performance in both fronts. For instance, countries like Kazakhstan, Yemen or Bolivia seem to perform relatively well on revenue transparency while having extremely low scores related to public access to budget information.