Madagascar: MINING RECIPES – The state wants to play transparency

A website containing all information on mining contributions in Madagascar will be available. A tool to make transparency effective, but also to help attract investors.

The transparency card is being played. Statistics on the mining sector and the contributions of extractive companies will soon be available. By September, a new data center will be set up. In concrete terms, this is a website compiling data on revenues, royalties, and mining levies collected by the state or paid by companies. Thus, mining sector data will be made available to everyone. On Monday, during a press interview, Marc Sergio Clerc, Interim Executive Director of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), elaborated on the project. It is part of the corrective measures recommended during the third validation of the EITI standard implementation. “This initiative stems from one of the recommendations in the EITI standard. The provision in question will set up a platform to disclose data and information on the extractive sector,” he explains.

All mining-related figures will be included in this platform. Administrative institutions managing mining revenues will input their statistics. This will start with customs, the Directorate General of Taxes, the Directorate General of Mines, and any other public administration closely or remotely linked to the extractive sector. Similarly, the figures reported by extractive companies will be included. Everyone will then be able to compare them. “Mining companies will also be able to input the payments they have made into this platform. Indeed, in terms of transparency, there is often a discrepancy between the money declared by these companies as paid and the money declared as received by the state,” adds Marc Sergio Clerc.

Substantial debates

This project is funded by the U.S. Embassy. A memorandum of understanding has also been signed between the U.S. government and the EITI for this purpose. The first phase of the project involves acquiring servers that can host the data. The second phase will be the updating of the EITI website to include this information. It is also a measure aimed at providing citizens with basic information. This will also facilitate substantial debates for inclusive and positive reforms, taking into account public interest.

By extension, this site could also attract investors. They will have an overview of the contribution of the extractive sector in the Grand Island. The platform will be a kind of “Doing Business” for mining investors in Madagascar, with a whole range of data that can serve as a showcase. Transparency of statistics for the mining sector will facilitate the research of researchers and students in this field where access to financial data is often a puzzle for a layperson.

Itamara Randriamamonjy