Publish What You Pay calls for an amendment to the rules for all oil, gas and mining companies listed on stock markets, which would require the disclosure of payments (taxes, fees, royalties and other transactions) made to governments for all countries of operation.
Companies wishing to have their stocks admitted to trading on stock markets need to disclose information about their activities and then when listed are obliged to report regularly about the company’s financial position, including providing information in their accounts on payments made to governments, both in the host country and to foreign governments. At present, companies from developed countries are not required to provide a country-by-country breakdown of payments made to foreign governments as a condition for being listed.
The advantage of incorporating revenue transparency requirements disclosure into stock market disclosure rules, from a business perspective, is that it would supersede confidentiality clauses in contracts which currently hamper companies that would otherwise be able to disclose their payments. Disclosure rules applied to major stock markets would capture most of the major international extractive companies, which are already listed, and would apply to other companies that seek to raise capital through the stock markets in future.
Publish What You Pay calls for stock market disclosure rules for extractive companies to be implemented internationally and by all national listing authorities. In particular, the European Union and the Securities Exchange Commission in the United States should jointly introduce these requirements, thereby ensuring that the majority of listed international companies are bound by these rules. However, because stock market disclosure rules would not apply to non-listed companies, in particular most state-owned extractive companies that also provide a significant amount of revenues to governments from resource extraction. Complementary measures are therefore required to ensure that such companies also publish what they pay.