Financial Transparency Coalition

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),has a budget of roughly $5 billion, and operates about 6,000 foreign aid projects throughout the world. Last year, UNDP decided that it wanted to be more transparent in reporting what it does to the world. It got a $225,000 grant (Hat tip: Corruption Currents) to create a cool new web app:

This week TIME Magazine opened polling to their readers to weigh in on their nominations for Person of the Year. Generally, I think their picks are pretty good, although sometimes their nominations are a little off the mark (Roger Goodell, really?). Anyway, the nominations got me to thinking what a Transparency Person of the Year would look like. Keeping with TIME’s definition, this would be someone who influenced the news, for better or worse, on issues related to financial transparency. Here are my picks. CARL LEVIN. I’m going to go with the most obvious one first. If I did this...

We often approach transparency laws from an anti-corruption, anti-tax evasion perspective here on the Task Force blog. But recent transparency regulations, like the recent oil, gas, and mining rules made active this month by the Securities and Exchange Commission, are also good for business. They will provide investors, creditors, and other financial actors with clear, verifiable, easily accessible data in which to make decisions. This will make markets more efficient, leading to better economic outcomes for all.

For many developing countries, natural resource wealth offers a potential way out of persistant poverty. There are few places in the world where this is as true as Niger, a landlocked country with a per-capita GDP of just US$400. The country has substantial mining exports and potential oil reserves, but an opaque financial system empowers a corrupt and increasingly autocratic regime, and little wealth from natural resources has reached the people on the ground. Niger ranks 186th out of 187 countries on the UN Human Development Index.