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NATURAL RESOURCES TECHNICAL WORKING GROUP The Natural Resources thematic area is focused on enhancing transparency in natural resource governance. This includes the status of existing known resources, contracting and licensing processes and agreements, production, exports, employment, revenue and expenditure, and social and environmental governance. The interventions will build on some of the work being implemented by the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) that largely focuses the component of the resource chain (revenues). The commitments in relation to this area focus on reducing the opacity that characterizes the natural resource chain in Malawi and increasing citizen engagement in natural resource governance. The main challenges identified are as follows: a) Insufficient dissemination of information on mining developments and agreements to the public and relevant Malawian authorities such as Parliament. b) Contract disclosures limited to the first part of the resource chain which are only made public after the execution of the contracts with minimal opportunities to influence the fiscal regime embedded in them. c) Limited transparency on how and for what resources from mining are expended when the second part of the resource chain is disclosed through receipt declaration by Government agencies via the Malawi Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (MWEITI). d) Voluntary declaration and limited verification of beneficiary ownership data provided by mining companies which is primarily published in the MWEITI report. The interventions proposed to address the highlighted challenges include, a) An enhanced regulatory framework for the mining sector to ensure full disclosure of natural resource contracts and beneficial owners for better natural resource governance. b) The creation of a sovereign fund with clear and transparent rules of deposits and withdrawals to ensure that proceeds from mineral wealth are invested in public goods that connect the present to the future. c) Improved role and oversight of the parliamentary committee on natural resources and climate change natural resource governance e.g. scrutiny of draft contracts and review of proposed fiscal regimes to ensure optimization of government revenues from each mining project. |