World Bank supports transparency in Albania’s mining

TIRANA, May 8, 2013 -The International Board of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has officially declared Albania to be EITI compliant. This means that the country has corresponded to all standards that are demanded by this initiative, which has originally been set up by the Blair Government in 2002 to allow for the mutual publication of revenues and payments that stem out of the oil and mining sectors.
While most technical issues in mining and oil are rarely discussed in public, and revenues are being managed in a hidden way, EITI helps to bring light to these processes, and supports CSO organizations, in Tirana as well as in the regions, to actively become engaged in this process. Thus, with an appropriate amount of capacity building, they actually do have a say in the way mineral resources are managed in a country, and can influence decisions surrounding the industry.
The World Bank actively supported this process over the last 2.5 years, mainly through the EITI Multi-Donor Trust Fund (EITI MDTF) and accompanying parallel work on the small-scale mining sector and transfer pricing. “Less good news is the fact that the industry in general is underperforming, resulting in too little revenues being generated for the state and thus the public
Currently, the World Bank and the Government of Albania are about to set up a third EITI MDTF,” says the World Bank.