The event, which had stakeholder representations from the international development institutions, civil society organisations and the media, provided an opportunity to review research findings from the database and to discuss the challenges that lack of solid, publicly available comparative data can have on revenue, expenditures and transfers by National Oil Companies to their governments.
“State-owned enterprises can weigh a country down or help propel development. Getting their governance right is crucial,” Mr Kaufmann said. He highlighted that NOCs are also revenue collector and producers of information for the country. However, many of these state-owned enterprises fail to disclose information critical to the oversight of public assets and revenues.
It was also noted that these 25 NOCs only transferred an average of 23 per cent of their gross revenue to their governments while many carry big debts, sometimes as much as 10 or even 20 per cent of their countries’ GDP. Several NOCs have required multi-billion-dollar government bailouts in recent years, becoming a costly drain on public finances.
He also advised the international aid community and local civil society organisations to prioritise the most persistent gaps in reporting expenditures, composition and distribution of transfers.