From Indonesia to Peru: RWI Partners Meet to Confront Sub-National Resource Revenue Challenges

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The struggles and opportunities for sound extractive revenue management vary among the producing regions of resource-rich countries. To build information-sharing and collaboration, and capture the early lessons from our innovative sub-national pilot projects, Revenue Watch and OSI’s Local Government Initiative convened a one-week meeting with our partners in Ghana, Peru, Nigeria, and Indonesia working on effective policy-making, revenue management and transparency at the local and regional levels. The effort is supported with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Institute. 

The gathering in Piura, Peru was co-hosted by our Peruvian grantee REMURPE.  Our Indonesian and Peruvian participants joined in a week of face-to-face discussions. Because of logistical challenges, our colleagues in Ghana and Nigeria participated virtually.

A key theme of the meeting was the intersection between resource sector volatility and the planning and budgeting cycles of local governments. As the global fiscal crisis wreaks havoc on commodity prices, regional and sub-national officials face even greater revenue management challenges, working under budget cycles which are already unbalanced from one season to the next.

"The meeting was a great opportunity for the local teams to exchange information and experiences, understanding both the similarities and the particularities of their experiences," said Revenue Watch Latin America Coordinator Carlos Monge. "It also allowed us at RWI and LGI to fully appreciate the wealth of experience and knowledge that our counterparts can provide to capacity building processes. And it enabled all of us to better explore the intersections between planning and commodities´ volatility, and has resulted in concrete plans to better understand the issue and respond to the challenges volatility poses to sub-national planning."

Combining the concrete experience of partners and grantees with institutional knowledge from Revenue Watch and LGI, the full project community will be working hard during 2009 and beyond to create tools that teach and equip regional leaders and advocates for more effective sub-national resource revenue management and to meet the particular challenges of regional planning amid global economic volatility.

During the meetings, participants had the chance to compare experiences from the remote mineral-rich provinces of Peru to the emerging oil economy in East Java, Indonesia. Several advocates and organizations based in the Piura and Cusco regions joined the event and shared their local expertise and their questions about municipal and regional planning, the features of fiduciary funds, and related topics.

Through interactive sessions, local site visits and lectures, the meeting focused on building technical skills, improving storytelling and communications within local projects, fostering community among all partners, and providing direct feedback from partners to RWI and LGI.

Because Piura, Peru, is itself a resource-rich region with particular governance and revenue management challenges, participants met with various government and civil society leaders.

The presentations and local narratives created during the event served as the beginning of a shared online library, which all project partners will continue to use to share new tools during the implementation phase and capture the lessons of the projects for future incarnations.

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Getting Local: In the mineral-rich town of Sechura, Mayor Santos Querevalu demonstrates real resource revenue transparency during the town's anniversary festival … 

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In follow-up evaluations, meeting participants said "there was an exchange of knowledge and experience between countries" and that "[it] was an open atmosphere … and fostered strong ties between groups."  They requested more of "this type of approach/workshops in the future." Revenue Watch and LGI are eager to build on the event feedback so that our shared expertise in revenue management amid volatility and planning at the regional and sub-national level can help us create an integrated approach for this pioneering project. Participants' feedback has already helped RWI and its partners and grantees plan together for future workshops.

Revenue Watch and LGI express their most sincere gratitude to officials from the Andino Central Mancomunidad and to CIPCA, PIDECAFE, Red Agua Vida y Democracia and the PDRS – GTZ for their hospitality and generosity providing expert advice from decades of local work.

LEARN MORE

• Sechura, Peru: Seeing Transparency in Action
• Helping Local Leaders and Communities Manage Resource Revenues