Mario Ramirez, MASc Mining Engineering // Mar 7, 2015
Just before its first anniversary as a compliant country to the EITI initiative Guatemala got suspended for missing the next EITI report deadline. I guess I‘m not surprised for such decision, especially after reading that the extension request by the multi-stakeholder group (MSG) to the EITI board was made only 7 days before the submission deadline[1]. However, what surprises me though is that there was actually a person on December 24th making this request to the EITI board. Usually by that date, Guatemala is totally shut down due to Christmas festivities and so on. Sure it looks like a last minute resource to save face, however, I could be wrong.
Reading the agenda notes of the December 15, 2014 meeting held by the MSG group, it seems there was not a chance for the MSG to reach the EITI deadline. One of the key attendants, Ms. Lopez de Barillas who represents the presidential transparency commission, mentioned that a request of extension needed to be agreed upon the attendants due to the pending selection and hiring of the company in charge of working on the next reconciliation report. She also reported in that meeting that the acquisition specialist of the public finance department thought the hiring of the company was going to take place in the month of February 2015 (last month). I tried to follow up looking at the 2015 meeting notes but only a pdf with a list of attendants for the February meeting was found[2]. I could not find further MSG information to the previous pending points of prior meetings.
It is quite impressive to read that the last multi-stakeholder group meeting was held in February 23rd, and that the suspension as an EITI compliant member took place only 3 days after that meeting. However, the only information you can find on the reports of 2015 is the list of attendants I mentioned previously, and as I said, there is no evidence of critical discussion and communication regarding the suspension that was about to take place a few days later. Reading further I found there were 17 MSG meetings in 2014 and there is also a detailed work plan to be carried out to accomplish the EITI deadlines. However, even after all those meetings and a good work plan, it was no possible to achieve the desired results.
Hopefully, Guatemalan stakeholders are looking forward to become active members of the EITI initiative in the near future.
[1] https://eiti.org/Guatemala
[2] http://eitiguatemala.org.gt/ category/actas-de-sesiones- 2015/