Stakeholders met with officials of the Secretariat of Extractive Industries Initiative on Tuesday, May 7. 

Two officials from the Secretariat of international office of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) say Cameroon has made considerable strides in its last report and could gain the “Conformity” or “Compliance” status when EITI meets in a validation session on August 13, 2013. Tim Bittiger and Bady Balde made the assuring declaration yesterday May 7 during a working session with EITI stakeholders in the country.

The working session co-chaired by the Ministers of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey and his colleague of Industries, Mines and Technological Development, Emmanuel Bonde, was meant to jointly assess with the visiting team efforts made so far and what could be done to make the country’s report ready for the August session given that it would be the last chance for Cameroon to attain the “Conformity” status. “Cameroon has made considerable progress with implementing the EITI rules.

It has just published a report on the payments and revenues from the oil and mining sectors which covers 2009 and 2010 and there is a general agreement that this report is of much better quality than the previous EITI reports published by Cameroon. This gives the country considerable chances of becoming compliant with the EITI rules this summer. The board of EITI would need to take a final decision on this,” Tim Bittiger said. However, the visiting EITI team recommended a speedy publication of the 2011 report as well as a recruitment of a validator before the August 13, 2013 D-day when the country’s file will be examined by the EITI board.

One of the areas of interest at yesterday’s meeting was the presentation of the 2013 new rules of EITI which will be examined during the EITI Board of Governors meeting in Sydney, Australia, from May 24-26, 2013 , its implementation in Cameroon as well as its impact on the 2012-2014 action plan of the EITI national committee. On the point, the two-main EITI team said not much will change on what Cameroon has been doing thus far. “The new regulations are much broader than just the payment of taxes, revenues and royalties.

It will cover wider information about the oil and mining sectors, to make the EITI useful and the sector understandable and more accessible not only to the population but also to investors interested in investing in Cameroon. Cameroon has already fulfilled quite a number of aspects of the new standards which will be passed in a couple of weeks at the international EITI conference. The country has gone ahead to implement a number of them for which we congratulate it, especially the transit of oil for which Chad has also covered,” he noted.