The anti-graft Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) will publish its first report on West African gold producer Mali early next year, its national head said. Mali is a candidate country to join the EITI, a scheme under which resources companies and governments make public the amounts of money that pass between them.
"Our principle ... is to compare the sums of money paid by mining firms, with the flows of capital received into the treasury, publish those, and if there is a difference then explain that difference," Sidi Mohamed Zouboye, the EITI permanent secretary in Mali said late on Monday.
"To do that we are in the process of recruiting an audit office with financing from the World Bank," he said. "The report is expected at the start of 2009," Zouboye told Reuters. International lenders are increasingly making transparency of resources income a key issue when dealing with African countries. Last month, the Malian Finance Ministry said it would create a special account for its gold revenues. Other candidates to join the EITI include fellow African nations Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Ghana, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Congo Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.