Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Contracts of 24 firms out soon

LYDIA SHEKIGHENDA in Dodoma
THE government will soon disclose the identity of mining and natural gas contracts of 24 companies in efforts to enhance transparency in the mining sector.
In a report to the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Minerals, Tanzania Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (TEITI) Executive Secretary Benedict Mushingwe said here yesterday that all companies have since been informed about this latest government move.
"In implementing the requirements of the law governing TEITI, the Ministry of Energy and Minerals wrote letters to the 24 companies holding Mineral Development Agreements (MDAs) and Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs) informing about its plans to disclose (contents of the) agreements public,” Mushingwe said.
He explained that the companies should have responded by now, informing the TEITI committee whether there were any sections in the agreements which they wouldn’t want made public. But he added that of the 24 firms, just two had since submitted their recommendations.
He further noted that his committee was currently working on the recommendations as the parent ministry makes final preparations on such disclosures on its website.
On implementation of the 2016/2017 budget, Mr Mshingwe disclosed that the TEITI receives its recurrent and development expenditure from the central government and development partners.
For the year 2016/2017, he disclosed that over 1.5bn/- had already been set aside for the implementation of its activities, out of which some 115m/- would be generated internally and 1.4bn/- was expected to come from external sources to meet development overheads.
Up to the third quota of 2016/2017, some 38,164,201/- , or 38.18 per cent of the total budget had been collected, Mr Mshingwe dsisclosed, adding that another 1,274,576,000/- would be sourced from the European Union (EU) and Canadian government -- equivalent to 91 per cent of the budget.
The Minister for Energy and Minerals, Prof Sospeter Muhongo, commended TEITI for its good performance and pledged to help provide “sufficient funds” for its operations.
“TEITI reports make good reading … they are transparent on what they get … and what they spend … my ministry will continue to look for (more) funds from our development partners to facilitate its operations,” the minister said.

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