The removal of secrecy provisions in the Income Tax Act now allows the PNG Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (PNG EITI) to collect company revenue data from the Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) without consent from companies.
This will allow the PNGEITI to easily carry out its role by collecting revenue data on how much revenue is paid to the state.
PNGEITI Head of National Secretariat, Lucas Alkan, said amendments to the Income Tax Act gives them access to resource extraction companies’ revenue from the IRC.
Previously the PNGEITI needed to have signed waiver forms from companies allowing them access to the information.
Alkan says many of the challenges in obtaining revenue data from the extractive sector remain, however, they are slowly making inroads.
He said the country is beginning to realise the importance of the having this data available.
Recently, the EITI International Secretariat Validation Manager, Alex Gordy, was in the country as part of the validation process for PNG to assess the performance of the country in line with the provisions of the EITI Standard.
The EITI is the global standard for promoting transparency and accountability in countries rich in oil, gas and mineral resources.
So far the PNGEITI has published four reports with information on revenue from the extractive sector.