Georgia Revenue Watch and the Transparency of Public Finances Coalition

Following the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, new leadership in both countries have guided their nations through a period of economic growth and reform. Subsequently, central authorities have become more supportive of grassroots efforts to influence political and social reforms. Revenue transparency of transit industries plays an important role in improving economic, social and political conditions in disadvantaged regions but due to poor information about transit payments, inconsistent measuring and reporting of benefit streams and convoluted governance structures of transit activities, determining the exact amount of revenue collected by the state is a difficult task. Revenue Watch supports the Open Society Georgia Foundation (OSGF) and local coalition partners in its proposition to broaden the agenda of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) to encompass the transit sector and to encourage the Georgian and Ukrainian Governments to launch an EITI Transit Initiative.

OSGF has a long history of partnership with RWI. Through RWI's support, OSGF has established the Alliance for Transparency of Public Finances (TPF), a coalition which has been in the forefront of transparency work in Georgia for the past few years. In 2007 OSGF and (TPF) launched a major campaign advocating for Georgia's implementation of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) in connection with its sizeable BTC pipeline revenues. The OSI program initiated a letter writing campaign to high-level ministers, organized a multi-stakeholder EITI Conference in Tbilisi and a post-EITI conference, and instituted a journalism competition to encourage reporters to conduct their own investigations into budgetary issues. With RWI support, the program also translated the official EITI Sourcebook into Georgian for distribution among interested nonprofits and parliamentarians. More recently, OSGF produced a report on "Transportation of Hydrocarbon Resources" which reflects the existing problems in transit sector transparency as demonstrated by a group of experts from Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The group is developing a sample reporting template for oil and gas transit revenues.  Such a template has been discussed by the EITI Board, but has not yet been created by the EITI Secretariat or its supporting parties. It could have important applications in other hydrocarbon transit countries, including the Ukraine.

Additionally, the TPF coalition action plan includes partnerships with government stakeholders, major companies, and policymakers to increase civil society's leverage in the development of transparent government processes. TPF projects include an analysis of existing legal frameworks; the development of alternative EITI reporting templates; the translation and dissemination of EITI materials in local language; foreign aid monitoring of Millennium Challenge funds; budget analysis; and capacity building for coalition members and local media outlets. For more information on the activities of the Coalition "For Transparency of Public Finances," please see www.osgf.ge or www.publicfinance.ge.