Maputo — Although mining is currently making only a modest contribution to Mozambique's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this is likely to rise significantly in the near future, the Minister of mineral Resources, Esperanca Bias, said on Thursday.

She was speaking in Maputo at a seminar held jointly by the government and the World Bank, on the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which Mozambique intends to join.

"The contribution of mineral resources to GDP, to exports and to tax revenue is still fairly modest, at about five per cent", said Bias.

But this was considerably more than in the recent past. Extractive industries have experienced significant growth in the past few years. Thus in 2004, the export of natural gas began, along a pipeline from Inhambane province to South Africa. In 2007, the mining of titanium ores from heavy mineral sands at Moma, in the northern province of Nampula, began.

As from 2010, millions of tonnes of coal are expected to be mined in the western province of Tete, mostly for export. When electricity supply problems are solved, a second huge deposit of titanium-bearing mineral sands will be mined in Chibuto, in Gaza province. And hopes are high that the companies exploring in the Rovuma basin, in Cabo Delgado province, will strike oil.

Bias stressed that actions were under way to strengthen the regulatory framework for mining, and to strengthen the government's capacity to negotiate with investors, to ensure that the country benefits from mining concessions, and to increase the participation of Mozambican businesses in the sector.

The government had already struck one blow for transparency by ensuring that the geological data base is publicly available. "Anybody interested in acquiring mining titles for the exploration or production of minerals has free access to the geological data base and to the mining register", she said.

Tove Bruvik Wesberg, the ambassador of Norway, the country where EITI is based, stressed Norway's willingness to support Mozambique in all the technical aspects concerning its membership of the initiative.

The EITI is a coalition of governments, companies, civil society groups, investors and international organizations, set up to ensure that companies operating in oil, gas and mining publicly declare how much they pay to governments, and governments publicly declare how much they receive.

The EITI website claims that the initiative "has a robust yet flexible methodology that ensures a global standard is maintained throughout the different implementing countries. The EITI Board and the international Secretariat are the guardians of that methodology. Implementation itself, however, is the responsibility of individual countries. The EITI, in a nutshell, is a globally developed standard that promotes revenue transparency at the local level".

The initiative was launched by the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.

No country has yet been certified as EITI-compliant. There are 23 candidate countries, 16 of them in Africa (including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Ghana). A country is declared compliant when it completes an EITI Validation, which is an independent assessment of the progress achieved towards transparency in mineral exploitation.

Mozambique is not yet a candidate country. To achieve this status, it must first meet four "sign-up indicators". These are: making an unequivocal public declaration of commitment to the EITI; a government commitment to work with civil society and companies in implementing the initiative; appointing a senior official to head EITI implementation; and publishing a fully costed work plan, containing measurable targets, a timetable for implementation, and an assessment of capacity constraints.

Mozambique has already met the first two of these demands, and the third is not a problem. But it may still take time to produce the work plan that the Initiative requires before the country can become a candidate member.