Open and Transparent Tracking of Public Investments (GH0034)

Problem to be addressed  Difficulty of tracking all entities in the state ownership portfolio  The state has invested the taxpayer’s resources in some 86 entities. Not all were submitting regular reports as required by law. In 2019 SIGA was established to exercise oversight of all these.

The commitment  The commitment is for SIGA to publish by December 2022 the register of specified entities in which the state has interest.  Publish evaluation reports;  Develop code of corporate governance. Contribution of commitment to solving problem ● Commitment will make it difficult for entities in which public resource has been invested to evade public scrutiny and accountability.

Relevance of commitment to OGP values  Commitment will change the way in which entities in which the state has invested huge amounts will be held accountable under a new framework.

Additional information

Milestone Activity with a verifiable deliverable Start Date: End Date:  Register of entities in which state has interest published by December 2022 Nov. 2021 June 2023  Evaluation reports of public entities published by January 2023 Jan. 2022 June. 2023  Code of corporate governance developed January 2023 Jan.2022 June. 2023

Action Plan Review

Commitment 7. Open and Transparent Tracking of Public Investments

● Verifiable: Yes

● Does it have an open government lens? Yes

● Potential for results: Modest

Results Report

Commitment 7. Open and Transparent Tracking of Public Investments

The Public Finance Management Act, 2016 (Act 921) requires state-invested entities to submit financial information to be included in the annual State Ownership Report. However, over 40 percent of entities failed to comply with this requirement. The commitment sought to address this by publishing a list of entities in which the state has invested, and their financial evaluation reports, with the aim of promoting open and transparent tracking of public investments and developing a code of corporate governance to provide a new accountability framework, thus ensuring all entities were submitting regular reports as required by law.

This commitment was not assessed in the early results section because the contribution to enhancing transparency of public investments remains limited by the institutions filing incomplete reports. Although the number of state-invested entities publicly providing their financial reports doubled during implementation, most entities provided incomplete financial information.

The Register of Entities in which the state has interest [39] and reports of public entities’ performance [40] was published on the SIGA website as well as the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. The evaluation report of public entities was published as the “State Ownership Report”. This report delves into the financial performance of state-invested entities, their achievements, hurdles, and areas for enhancement. During the action plan period in April 2022, SIGA published the 2020 edition, continuing a trend initiated in 2017 with the inaugural 2016 Annual Aggregate Report, subsequently rebranded as the State Ownership Report from 2017 onwards. Similar to its predecessors, the 2020 edition spotlighted the performance of the state-invested entities. The 2020 edition showcased progressive improvement in content coverage, expanding from 18 entities in the first edition to 132 in 2020. Other notable enhancements include the introduction of a new sub-category dubbed "Minority Interests," encompassing firms, mainly in mining, where the government held a shareholding of 10 percent or less. Additionally, it featured a focused analysis of key entities with substantial liabilities and a summarized result of the 2020 Performance Contract Evaluation implemented by SIGA. [41]

Whereas the milestones were implemented, the progress in transparency remained limited, as 79 out of 132 entities submitted complete financial statements in the 2020 State Ownership Report, as compared to 77 out of 130 in the 2018 report (published in 2019). Further, the code of governance was not developed, but inputs for a draft were collected at a consultative forum organized by SIGA and the Ministry of Public Enterprises, supported by Agence Française de Developpement (AFD), Expertise France, and the World Bank. [42]