Research/academic paper

Contract Transparency in Uganda’s Petroleum and Mining Sectors

The objective of this study was to assess the level of transparency in the contracting processes in the petroleum and mining sectors in Uganda and compliance with best practices related to contract transparency in the extractives sector. The following conclusions can be drawn from the study: Provisions on contract disclosure and transparency exist in Uganda’s legal framework for the extractives sector. These include among others; the Constitution, the Access to Information Act 2005 and the Public Finance and Management Act, 2015. However, the use of these legal frameworks has not been successful at ensuring that citizens gain access to information on the details of the extractive’s contracts. The Production Sharing Agreements signed between the government and International Oil Companies do not explicitly prohibit disclosure of contract information. As such, the PSAs were made public in the parliamentary library. However, the manner in which the contracts were publicly disclosed does not enable the public to comprehensively analyze and interrogate the contracts in order to ascertain what the government negotiated on their behalf.