British Prime Minister Cameron has announced that standards for multilateral information exchange, increasing transparency of the ownership of trusts and companies, and reform of global tax rules will be key items on the agenda of the G-8 meeting this June. These are policy positions that NGOs have promoted for many years. We have written to Prime Minister Harper to urge that Canada take a progressive position on these issues and help move them forward.

In this letter to Export Development Canada and the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Chilean and Argentine organizations express harsh criticisms regarding the public agencies' due diligence processes concerning Barrick Gold's application for support for Pascua Lama.

General Observations

The undersigned civil society organizations believe the latest drafts of the Sustainability Policy, Performance Standards, and Disclosure Policy respond usefully to some issues raised previously by many civil society organizations, including, for example, several issues related to gender, resettlement, and climate change.  Many of our most significant concerns, however, remain unaddressed, including centrally important issues related to due diligence, transparency, and accountability, and other issues related to substantive concerns.

Fred P. Hochberg
President
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Washington, D.C.
[Via e-mail]

May 10, 2010

Re: Pascua Lama

Dear President Hochberg,

It has come to our attention that the Ex-Im Bank has received a request to finance the binational Pascua Lama mine. We are writing to strongly urge that the Ex-Im Bank reject financing for the Pascua Lama mine.

Brussels, 26 March 2010

Mr. Steve Tvardik
Head, Export Credits
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
Paris, France

Dear Mr. Tvardik,

Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments on the on-going review of the Sector Understanding on Export Credits for Renewable Energies and Water Projects (Sector Understanding) by the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits (Participants).

We have outlined our comments starting with our overall concern about ECA financing of fossil fuels and then following this up with specific inputs to sections of the Sector Understanding. It ends with a short conclusion bringing together the main issues to concentrate on.

Overall Issue: The need to end fossil fuel financing

Commenting on The Social and Environmental Sustainability Policy, Performance Standards and Disclosure Policy

Introduction

The undersigned civil society organizations have prepared this joint submission to provide an overview of many of our concerns related to IFC’s Policy on Social and Environmental Sustainability, the Performance Standards, related guidance documents, and the Disclosure Policy. We believe these concerns should be explored and addressed further through IFC’s current consultation and review process.