Resource Revenue Transparency

In many countries, monitoring mining revenues is nearly impossible given that citizens do not know how much is owed to their governments or how much is collected. This gap can lead to the mismanagement, loss and outright theft of resource revenues that are critical for development. Resource revenue transparency empowers citizens to hold their governments accountable for how revenues are managed.

In 2012, the Mining Association of Canada, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, Publish What You Pay Canada and the Revenue Watch Institute formed the Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group, a ground breaking collaboration between the Canadian mining industry and civil society, to develop a framework from the bottom up, mutually agreed to by industry and civil society, to require Canadian companies to require the disclosure of payments derived from resource extraction to governments all over the world. This framework was finalized in December 2013 after being endorsed by all four organizations that form the working group. In addition to successfully developing the framework, the working group was able to demonstrate broad support from the mining sector and from civil society for this type of disclosure and enabled the Prime Minister of Canada to make a public commitment to implement such mandatory disclosure in June 2013 at the G8 summit in London, England.