Dashing Data Solutions
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Portfolio
  • Services
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Portfolio
  • Services
  • Blog
Search

Natural Resources in Data Blog

Who benefits from stringent reporting under Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act?

3/25/2020

0 Comments

 
America's top three (3) oil and gas companies - Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil, are behemoths. In fact, their combined 2019 assets total $670 billion (Global 500). If they were an economy, they'd be the 21st largest in the world.

Read More
0 Comments

Where do Sub-Saharan African countries currently stand?

3/23/2020

0 Comments

 
0 Comments

How much and how dependent?

3/19/2020

0 Comments

 
Natural resources offer host countries the opportunity to translate their assets into sustainable development. Having significant revenues enables governments to fund social services like health and education. But being too dependent on resource revenues also puts them at risk. The volatility of commodity prices can cause extreme shocks to their government spending especially if no systematic measures are in place for such occurrences. Hence it is important for citizens, policymakers, and journalists to ask how much government is making and how dependent are they from the sector.

Read More
0 Comments

How indebted are national oil companies?

3/11/2020

0 Comments

 
As oil prices plummet, so will revenues and government transfers of national oil companies (NOCs). Should this go on, some NOCs may face insolvency, debt restructuring, and costly government bailouts.

Read More
0 Comments

Reflections on my 5-year open extractives data journey

3/7/2020

0 Comments

 
On my first week at Bantay Kita - PWYP Philippines back in June 2015, I was tasked to create primers using subnational data from the Philippine EITI report. Open data was on its early days then. To be able to analyze the data, I had to… manually encode the data from the paper report. That task took so much of my time and I even got some data wrong. Fast forward to 2020 and we are now drowning in datasets with plenty of online portals publishing even more data. How far has our movement gone?

Read More
0 Comments

Who wins if Zimbabwe joins the EITI?

2/20/2020

0 Comments

 
Co-authored with Mukasiri Sibanda
​Recent news, which the government has not refused, suggested that Zimbabwe is not keen on joining the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). By joining EITI, the mining sector - the main engine for economic growth, would have been opened for citizens to question government and industry on how past and current mining deals are best tailored to contribute Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Read More
0 Comments

Five concrete ways communities can maximize the new EITI Standard

1/30/2020

0 Comments

 
The new Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard is like the latest smartphone in the market - it is fancy on the outside but packed with useful features on the inside. Implementing it comes with a real cost to its 52 implementing countries but by unlocking the potential of these new features can we say that it is actually worth it. 

Payments data from two years ago is so 2003. The EITI Standard is so much more than that now. Communities have a lot to potentially gain from the new and improved requirements - if and only if that potential is harnessed. Here are just some of the ways communities can use the EITI Standard to ensure that their natural resources are governed in a sound manner. 

Read More
0 Comments

Philippines: will TRAIN run over the mining sector?

2/14/2018

0 Comments

 
In his July 2017 State of the Nation Address, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he would tax miners to “death.” In December 2017, he signed Republic Act 10963--Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN)—the first of six packages of a comprehensive program. TRAIN took effect on 1 January.

Under the new tax system, mining companies that extract metallic or non-metallic minerals are now subject to a 4 percent excise tax on the value of their production—double the previous rate. This excise tax is equivalent to what most countries would label a “royalty” on mineral production. What does this 100 percent increase mean for the sector?

Read More
0 Comments

The data we take for granted

2/28/2017

0 Comments

 
Today I met with members of two mining affected communities in Palawan. This was part of a session we did for the Publish What You Pay Data Extractors Workshop last week. When I asked them if they've used EITI reports and other extractives data before, they said no.

I continued to ask.



Read More
0 Comments

Why we need financial modeling

11/5/2016

0 Comments

 
Prices of oil and minerals can go really high. A country may benefit given the right fiscal regime. During the boom cycle in the latter half of the previous decade, many resource-rich countries saw their budgets swelling (and their dictators happy). Along with it came their spending as well.

Then the unexpected happened. Prices reached all-time lows since 2011. Resource-dependent countries are now struggling with a fiscal crisis caused by their lack of diversification and prudence in spending in the past.

What can governments do about this? Plan for the long-term. ​

Read More
0 Comments

Making open data work for communities in the Philippines

10/31/2016

0 Comments

 
This post was first published in Extract-a-Fact on October 13, 2016.
There are two types of disclosures. One is disclosure for the sake of transparency, while the other is disclosure that actually works for the people it is intended to help. Ensuring the latter is the philosophy Bantay Kita has applied to its engagement with natural resources data.

Read More
0 Comments

5+ tools every Data Extractor needs to know

10/28/2016

0 Comments

 
This post was first published in the Publish What You Pay Website on October 28, 2016
Asking why we need to use data is like asking why we fall in love or breathe. We need to use data for the simple reason that it’s available left, right and centre. As advocates, data scientists, government officials, campaigners, and ordinary citizens, we have the key to making meaningful change happen in our own communities.

Read More
0 Comments

Why we need relevant data

7/12/2016

0 Comments

 
Data can be simply numbers for some while for others it can mean either having livelihood projects or none at all. Asserting one's right does not come from thin air. It starts with knowing what is due to you. This may sound simple if not trivial to the privileged but not for the marginalized. Transparency changes.

Read More
0 Comments

    Author

    Hey there! I'm Marco from the Philippines. I write mostly about natural resource governance, open data, and good governance. 

    Archives

    November 2022
    August 2022
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    February 2018
    August 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    July 2016

    Categories

    All
    Communities
    Data Visualization
    EITI
    Fiction
    Financial Modeling
    National Oil Companies
    Open Contracting
    Public Fiscal Management
    Resource Governance
    Using Data

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Portfolio
  • Services
  • Blog