Guidance on infrastructure provisions and barter arrangements (4.3)

The exploration, extraction, transformation, and transport of oil, gas and mineral resources often requires large scale and long-term investments. In addition to the capital needed to develop these resources, countries often have other priorities for infrastructure development.

In some cases, resource rich countries with limited access to capital and credit are considering “package deals” to develop their infrastructure in exchange for their natural resources.

The resources involved may include exploration or production rights for oil, gas, and minerals, and other elements such as access to land, energy and water resources. The infrastructure projects may include railways, roads, ports, power plants, schools and hospitals.

These agreements are interchangeably called: “infrastructure provisions”, “barter agreements”, “minerals for infrastructure”.

In the EITI Standard, these deals are addressed in section 4.3.

Examples from countries

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

2012-2014 EITI Reports have a comprehensive overview of a barter agreement - SICOMINES - Chinese government agreement. See for example 2014 Report, pp. 27.

All of the DRC's EITI Reports can be found here.