SAPRI Information Disclosure Agreement

February 1998

1. A comprehensive and open information policy is essential to SAPRI in order to provide all parties with equal access to information.

2. The Bank reiterates its support for as open an information policy as consistent with the interests of its member governments.

3. A depository of World Bank documents will be established at the Resident Mission in each participating country and a list of the documents in the depository will be made available to civil society (see paragraph 7 below).

4. Prior to the national fora, summary of the information for each country will be made available to the public. Each summary will provide detailed information regarding: 1) the overall macroeconomic framework; 2) general and sectoral adjustment lending as requested by the NGO steering committee; 3) expected outcomes of macroeconomic and sectoral adjustment policies; 4) what the government has agreed to do as part of the SAPs; 5) the conditionality attached to specific tranche releases; 6) what adjustment policies the government did and did not implement; and 7) the outcome of government policies.

5. Information Teams in each country will prepare the summary. The summary will be approved by all members of the corresponding National Steering Committee.

6. Each NGO/civil society steering committee will designate up to six representatives (including the regional coordinators) to serve on a joint Information Team with an equal combined number of Bank and government nominees.

7. The following set of documents will be made available for review to the Information Team: the Policy Framework Paper (PFP); the Government's Letter of Development Policy (LDP); Country Assistance Strategy (CAS); the President's Report; the Appraisal Mission Report; the Tranche Release Memoranda; the Completion Report; as will equivalent reports on sectoral operations in the participating countries and macroeconomic developments.

8. The timeframe during which the documents mentioned in paragraph 7 will be needed at the country level will be defined by the national steering committees.

9. The Information Team will respond to specific queries regarding adjustment policies from SAPRI participants. To respond to the queries, additional summaries will be produced from the documents in the depository; or parts of the entire documents from the depository will be made available to those who have made the request. The additional summaries will be as broad, and the information will be as detailed, as requested by participants in the local SAPRI exercise. For this purpose, members of the Information team will have access to the assembled documents throughout the life of the national SAPRI exercise.

10. The NGO/Civil society representatives on the Information Team will sign confidentiality agreements thus ensuring that caution is exerted in using sensitive information which is not included in the summaries and which might affect the success of SAPRI. In case of potential conflict regarding information to be disclosed (via summaries or specific queries), the members are committed to try to seek the solution within the Team. If this fails, the SAPRIN/World Bank secretariat will be informed of the problem, and, after a consultation with Information Team members, will propose a solution. The Bank will make sure that its representatives on the Information Team are fully aware of the policy and committed to a genuine partnership with the NGO/Civil society representatives.

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