Natural Resource Revenues

Public policies in taxation and revenue management are key to ensuring natural resource wealth results in economic development. Tax policy and systems should ensure that whenever natural resources are extracted, the host state receives a fair share of revenue. Revenue management policies are required to ensure that government revenues from natural resources are wisely used to finance sustainable economic development. This Economic Paper analyses key issues in natural resource taxation and revenue management and recommends policies that can improve countries’ economic performance. The discussion draws on economic theory, empirical evidence and the work of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Many developing countries have significant natural resource endowments, presenting a remarkable opportunity to boost long-term growth. However, this opportunity comes with enormous challenges. To maximize social and economic benefits, strong governance and institutional capacity are essential. Effective and transparent tax administration is crucial for properly managing revenues from natural resources so the country may benefit economically and socially from its natural resources. Revenue Administration describes the challenges that developing countries face and presents good practices to help build countries’ long-term institutional capacity.

Debate on the question of who should receive the surplus revenuegenerated by natural-resource exploitation -- Ottawa or the provinces-- is usually carried on in terms of history, politics custom, law,social values, and environmental considerations. This collection ofessays presents analyses of the question from the economist's pointof view.

In nearly every country, subnational governments receive public funds, either through direct tax collection or through intergovernmental transfers. However, in more than 30 countries, distribution of non-renewable natural resource revenues to subnational authorities is governed by a set of rules that are distinct from the rules governing distribution of non-resource revenues. Resource revenue sharing is being touted as an answer to the 'resource curse' in several conflict-affected states, such as Iraq, Libya and Myanmar. But while these systems can promote economic development and help mitigate or even prevent violent conflict in resource-rich regions, they can also generate perverse incentives for transforming natural resource wealth into wellbeing. In some places, they have exacerbated boom-bust cycles and regional inequalities. Worse, depending on how they have been designed and implemented, they have intensified violent conflict rather than alleviating it.This report by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) gives an overview of resource revenue sharing mechanisms around the world and provides advice to policymakers establishing or reforming their systems.

The paper presents an update on the status of the standard template to collect data on government revenues from natural resources, originally presented to the Executive Board in January 2014. The paper discusses: (i) the field-testing of the standard template in six countries, which confirmed the feasibility of applying it more broadly; (ii) the final version of the template based on outcomes of consultation with the international community and the field-testing visits; and (iii) the adoption of the template by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) International Secretariat as a mandatory reporting requirement for its member countries. The standard template serves as a companion to the Guide to Analyze Natural Resources in the National Accounts. The standard template was developed to support fiscal policy formulation and analysis in resource-rich economies, which constitute about one third of the Fund’s membership. The standard template is based on the revenue classification of the Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014, thereby facilitating the collection of resource revenue data in methodologically sound, analytically relevant, and cross-country comparable format.