The 1st Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI) Country Report was launched last February 3, 2015 at the Sofitel Hotel, Manila. The PH-EITI report contains financial disclosures of 30 large-scale metallic mining companies and six (6) oil and gas companies for the year 2012, covering a total of Php 52.7 billion in revenue. This also includes the shares of 33 local government units from national wealth coming from extractive industries within their localities. Moreover, taxes, royalties, transportation fees, custom duties, mandatory social expenditures and environmental fees, government shares, and payment to local government units were also part of the report.
Governor Alfonso Umali, Jr., the President of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) gave a response to the report, representing the local government units. He congratulated the 15 provinces, 16 municipalities, 2 cities and 1 barangay that submitted to the audit and complied for the report. He encouraged the LGUs to strengthen their goal in attaining full fiscal transparency and reforms in governance of extractive industries. He also urged the “national government to work together to pursue the increase of the share of the local governments and speed up the transfer of the amounts allocated to the LGUs from the excise tax”.
EITI is a global standard ensuring transparency of revenues from natural resources. It is a multi-stakeholder initiative led by the government, industry and civil society representatives. It provides a platform to systematically report on, review, and assesses what is being paid by companies and received by governments through a system of bilateral disclosures.
EITI is one of the nine commitments of the Philippines in its commitments to Open Government Partnership 2013-2015 Action Plan. President Noynoy Aquino signed Executive Order 147 on November 26, 2013 creating the PH-EITI Multi-Stakeholder Group (MSG), the governing body for EITI implementation in the country. A Technical Working Group (TWG) was also created to help the MSG in the implementation and completion of the report.
The Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) is a member of both the MSG and TWG, representing the local government units.