19 January 2006
The IFC shared a draft “check list” for investment officers on “assessment of risks to project benefits”.
On November 29, 2005, several NGO representatives met with the Information Finance Center's Department of Oil, Gas and Mining (OGM) in Washington, DC to discuss the development process for extractive industries (EI) governance indicators. At the meeting, the IFC shared a recent draft “check list” for investment officers on “assessment of risks to project benefits”, which merely suggests a narrow list of issues to consider when evaluating governance.
The IFC guidance note largely ignores many critical issues specific to EI development emphasized in the Extractive Industries Review, including human rights, political situations, and the absence of checks and balances on the mining and hydrocarbon ministries. In addition, the note provides no guidance on how the governance evaluation should be applied to project selection or sequencing.
The IFC stated that they were accepting any comments on the draft guidance note, however it is not posted on their website.
The meetings furthermore revealed that there is no active consideration of developing either EI-specific indicators or a short list of core threshold indicators. Furthermore, the IFC does not plan to conduct a broader consultation with stakeholders in developing countries to develop EI-specific or any other type of governance indicators.
Read the note: