Fiscal rules—permanent quantitative constraints on government finances—are an important tool to help mitigate the macroeconomic challenges associated with managing natural resource revenues. This paper sheds light on large gaps in compliance and oversight of fiscal rules, and provides policy recommendations on how fiscal rules can be further strengthened.
The Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) operates with the belief that an informed, strong civil society is essential to effecting transformative and sustainable change in natural resource governance. The organization’s theory of change articulates the need to enable civil society to “produce or drive reform ideas, participate in meaningful dialogue and hold their governments accountable.”
Oversight actors can detect and prevent corruption in the oil, gas and mining sectors if they ask the right questions. Corruption schemes can be complex and opaque, yet clear patterns and similar signs of problematic behavior do exist across resource-rich countries.
Four years after the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) began encouraging contract disclosure through its standard, this report assesses the extent to which governments of resource-rich countries have taken up the recommendation.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan has failed to avoid the risks associated with oil producing countries. Revenues are accumulated in a national oil fund, set up in 1999 to effectively manage the country’s oil wealth. Despite its transparency, the fund lacks accountability. The main risk is the government’s spending, which is too high and of poor quality. With oil and gas revenue expected to decline in 2015, the government will be hard pressed to finance its current expenditure and achieve sustainability in the future.