The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has made a significant stride towards greater openness by starting to publish data on its operations via the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
The EBRD has now made available data on its investment operations signed this year and key documents about its activity to the standard defined by the voluntary, multi-stakeholder organisation.
Transparency and accountability have been key principles guiding the EBRD’s work since its establishment in 1991 and occupy a prominent place in its Public Information Policy.
“This is an important moment for the EBRD and its commitment to openness and transparency in our modern digital world,” said Sir Suma Chakrabarti, the EBRD’s President.
“Making this information public to the IATI standard will help our shareholders, business partners, friends in civil society and the Bank itself gain an even better understanding of what we do and its impact.”
IATI seeks to improve the transparency of institutions such as the EBRD - and others – by providing common definitions and publishing standards for their activity, thus making information about their work easier to access, use and understand.
In common with more than 300 other organisations, the EBRD is now publishing the information about its work in IATI’s agreed electronic format (XML) and linking it to the IATI registry.
It has also made public its IATI implementation schedule in line with the agreed standard for DFIs (Development Finance Institutions) and IFIs (International Finance Institutions).
IATI was launched in 2008 at the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra. It was designed, in part, to support donors to meet their political commitments on transparency, as laid out in the Accra Agenda for Action.
At the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, 2011, development actors committed to “implement a common open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and forward-looking information on resources provided through development cooperation”.
