EITI Multi-Stakeholder Group had Its 1st Meeting of 2022  

On April 27, RA Deputy Prime Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan presided over the Multi-Stakeholder Group session of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Armenia. Since June 2020, this has been the first real-time meeting. The quorum of the participants of the session was ensured.

Welcoming the MSG meeting participants, Hambardzum Matevosyan stated with satisfaction that although the opportunities to hold the MSG meetings and discussions in an offline mode were interrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this did not prevent the members of the MSG group and EITI Armenian Secretariat from implementing the important activities planned by the action plan of the Initiative, which allows us to state that "the introduction of EITI in Armenia is already an established fact".

The Deputy PM reminded the participants that next year, the Republic of Armenia should pass the second international validation by the newly approved model of the International Board, which implies greater participation of the Multi-Stakeholder Group in the validation work. Hambardzum Matevosyan emphasized that Armenia will be able to maintain the current high rating only with the active involvement of the stakeholders in the pre-validation works and everybody's joint work.

MSG members then resorted to the discussion of the agenda points. The discussions resulted in the approval of the EITI 2022 revised Work plan by the Multi-Stakeholder Group, as well as the technical tasks (TORs) for preparing the 4th EITI National Report of Armenia. The participants were informed about the activities of disclosing the beneficial owners of the companies, the Opening Extractives international program, the creation of an IT system for systematic data disclosure in the mining industry, and the development of the mining strategy. During the session, a number of proposals were made about the upcoming actions, based on which the Deputy PM assigned appropriate instructions to the authorized bodies.

The minutes of the meeting of the Multi-Stakeholder Group are available here.