{"id":7968,"date":"2017-04-15T00:07:38","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T00:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/media.am\/data-on-real-owners-of-armenias-mines-to-be-available\/"},"modified":"2017-04-15T00:07:38","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T00:07:38","slug":"data-on-real-owners-of-armenias-mines-to-be-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/re-information\/2017\/04\/15\/7968\/","title":{"rendered":"Data on Real Owners of Armenia\u2019s Mines to be Available"},"content":{"rendered":"

The implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative<\/a> (EITI) standards in Armenia will help make data on the mining industry available. EITI is an international standard encouraging the open and accountable management of natural resources and currently has more than 50 countries as members. Since March 2017, Armenia has become an EITI candidate country<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A multi-stakeholder group comprised of government members, and representatives of mining companies and civil society has been assembled to manage and supervise the EITI implementation process in Armenia. The aim is to make data on the mining industry as open and accessible as possible. <\/p>\n

Armenia has pledged to publish the first EITI report in 1.5 years. It will include complete data on the real owners of mining companies. <\/p>\n

According to EITI expert of the RA Government Staff Lusine Tovmasyan, the plan is to create a website that will host all the information and documents related to mining in Armenia. But until then, all the information is uploaded on a special section<\/a> of the Armenian government website. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the important preconditions is that every document of the process must be public. Currently that platform is the government website. We hope we\u2019ll have the separate website during this year,\u201d says Tovmasyan. <\/p>\n

Hetq journalist Kristine Aghalaryan says the companies engaged in mining, their contracts with the state are not available to the public, including to journalists. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the guise of trade secrets, they are always kept confidential \u2014 though the subsoil belongs to the state, and any type of its exploitation must be transparent to the public,\u201d says the investigative journalist. <\/p>\n

According to Kristine, also not available is stakeholder information, which can assume big corruption risks. <\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, behind large mining companies are offshore companies, behind which are high-raking officials who, using their position and authorities, easily get mining and inspection licenses. Users of the subsoil must be disclosed; that is, the final shareholder must be known,\u201d says the journalist.<\/p>\n

Aghalaryan finds it hard to say how much the situation will change with EITI implementation. \u201cIn the same way, there are many good laws in Armenia that simply don\u2019t work.\u201d The journalist says there\u2019s a threat that EITI will be yet another reform that is not put into practice and there is no mechanism that individuals will be held liable if they don\u2019t adhere to the law.<\/p>\n

In the opinion of civil society representative in the multi-stakeholder group, environmental lawyer Artur Grigoryan, mining is not that transparent in Armenia, since the companies in the industry are registered \u201cin the off-shores,\u201d and that data is closed. \u201cFormally, the figures are published at the National Statistical Service; the reports, if you request them, you can receive; but to what extent they actually correspond to the real figures \u2014 that\u2019s another matter. EITI should work toward revealing the real picture, so that it will be impossible to conceal [anything].\u201d<\/p>\n

The group has a three-year work plan, one of the issues of which is publishing information about the real owners: \u201cThe companies will be obligated to publish data on the holders of shares, but we haven\u2019t yet decided holders of at least what percentage of shares,\u201d says Grigoryan. <\/p>\n

In his words, those who are interested will be able to get complete information from one website and won\u2019t be forced to search for that information on different sites. \u201cNow if I try to get any information, I have to contact the ministry, get an answer, and if not satisfactory, go to court. The information is scattered and posted on different websites. In the case of having the EITI website, all this will be eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data about Armenia\u2019s metallic mining will open in the first stage of EITI implementation.<\/p>\n

Anahit Danielyan<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards in Armenia will help make data on the mining industry available. EITI is an international standard encouraging the open and accountable management of natural resources and currently has more than 50 countries as members. Since March 2017, Armenia has become an EITI candidate country. A Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsroom","category-re-information","author_posts-anahit-danielyan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}