Stronger action needed on transparency says Euro MP

Following the publication of a key report by Transparency International today, Euro MP Arlene McCarthy, the European Parliament’s Rapporteur for the EU Transparency Directive said: “The good news is that there is an 11% increase in the number of companies reporting on anti-corruption programmes.”

“It is still however a matter of concern that 41 of the 105 companies researched by the report didn’t disclose any information at all about their activities in 3rd countries and the average rating for all companies in the report was only 4 out of 10. We are determined to deal with this in the new EU-wide law on transparency and ensure better public disclosure of payments to governments.”

Arlene added: “In 2008, exports of oil, gas and minerals from Africa were worth roughly 9 times the value of international aid to the continent ($393 billion vs $44 billion), yet many of these countries remain trapped in poverty. Developing countries around the world are being robbed of the chance to earn vital revenue from oil, gas and other mining resources.”

“Large multi-national companies are the key to unlocking the resource wealth of developing countries. The simple act of including country-by-country reporting in their accounts, especially project-level disclosure will allow local communities in resource-rich countries to expose any corruption and hold their governments accountable for using revenues towards development."

Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing the World’s Largest Companies: scored 105 of the top publicly-traded companies based on their public commitment to transparency.

Company scores ranged from 0 to 10, where 0 is the least transparent and 10 is the most transparent, and were based on public availability of information about anti-corruption systems, transparency in reporting on how they structure themselves and the amount of financial information they provide for each country they operate in.