The first meeting of the Board of the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) will be held at the UN headquarters in New York on December 6-7, 2006, Trend reports. The State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAR) informed Trend that an Azerbaijani delegation headed by the Executive Director of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAR), Shahmar Movsumov, will participate in the gathering.
A resolution on the formation of a Board was adopted at a third international conference of EITI which was held in Oslo, in October 2006. The key objective of the forum is to coordinate further activities and ensure international support to EITI.
Azerbaijan, a country that prepared four reports and the fifth one is in progress, was elected a member of the EITI Board. According to the decision of the conference, Azerbaijan is the only country that prepares the reports in accordance with the international standards and demonstrates a leading role amongst the world countries.
The EITI Board consists of 5 representatives of implementing countries Azerbaijan, Guinea, Gabon, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria and 3 supporting countries - the US, United Kingdom and Germany. The civil society organizations, extractive industry companies and an investment companies will also be the members of the Board.