3 October 2005: OECD Countries and Civil Society Organisations exchange views on export credits issues.

Representatives from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) met in Paris on 3 October 2005 with OECD Members to exchange views on issues relating to the work undertaken at the OECD by the Working Party on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees (ECG) and the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits (the Participants). The meeting was chaired by Ms. Nicole BOLLEN from the Netherlands, Chairman of the ECG and of the Participants. This was the eighth such annual consultation meeting.

The CSOs included representatives from the ECG and the Participants, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee of the OECD (BIAC), the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the OECD (TUAC), the European Banking Federation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and representatives of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) from International Alert, Amnesty International, Transparency International and 16 other NGOs under the umbrella of ECA Watch.

The attendees of this outreach meeting focused their debates on:

• The latest version of the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits, which had come into effect from 1 July 2005. The new text had been adjusted to include special terms and conditions for Renewable Energies and Water Projects for a two-year trial period; to cement in the Arrangement the previously temporary special terms and conditions for project finance transactions; and to allow some flexibilities in the profile of repayment terms. Discussions focused on the issue of whether the extant guidelines for assessing hydro-power projects, which are included within the new agreement on Renewable Energies and Water Projects, were sufficient to comply with the relevant international standards and, if these needed to be augmented, how this should be achieved in practice. Some CSOs sought the introduction of augmented environmental and social guidelines for assessing such projects; other CSOs considered the extant guidelines sufficient or that they needed only minor enhancements.
• The latest developments in the areas of tied and untied aid, including the updated ex-ante guidance for tied aid projects and the publicly available information on the OECD Web site in respect of ex-ante notifications of untied ODA credits.
• The review of the OECD Recommendation on Common Approaches to the Environment and Export Credits (the OECD Recommendation), which is due to be completed by the end of 2006. Some CSOs called for the ECG to consider augmenting its provisions on transparency, monitoring and compliance, environmental and social standards and human rights; other CSOs commented on the need to balance any enhanced transparency provisions with concerns over business confidentiality and proposed that the ECG consider enhanced con-operation between OECD Members in multi-sourced transactions.
• The review of the Action Statement on Bribery and Officially Supported Export Credits, which is currently taking place in the ECG. Several CSOs made detailed comments and proposals for enhancing the Action Statement, particular in respect of agents’ commissions, due diligence procedures, appropriate actions and sanctions, and definitions of key terms; others, whilst agreeing that bribery was detrimental to business, cautioned against adoption of some of these proposals, noting that Export Credit Agencies were not investigative or enforcement agencies.
• The ECG’s work on unproductive expenditure, including the 2001 Statement of Principles and the recent agreement to extend reporting of officially supported export credits from HIPCs to include IDA-only countries. Some CSOs called for an extension of the Statement of Principles to all developing countries and for OECD Members debt recovery and cancellation activities to be made more transparent; however, they also considered that more generally the issue of access to finance by developing countries should be considered by development agencies rather than Export Credit Agencies.

Some CSOs called for more frequent consultations with the OECD on export credit issues, especially in light of the current and future work on hydro-power projects, the environment and anti bribery measures. In particular, the CSOs requested additional consultations next year on the review of the OECD Recommendation. The Chairman concluded that she would report the deliberations of this meeting to the ECG and the Participants at their November plenary meetings and would inform the CSOs of the outcomes of these meetings with regard to standards for hydro-power projects and timelines and consultations for the review of the OECD Recommendation.

OECD Secretariat
October 2005