Local Content Laws & Contractual Provisions
Resource-rich countries are increasingly inserting requirements for local content (“local content provisions”) into their legal framework, through legislation, regulations, contracts and bidding practices. If successful, a policy to increase local content can lead to job creation, boost the domestic private sector, facilitate technology transfer and build a competitive local workforce. However, local content goals are often unfulfilled and the opportunities are not captured.
CCSI has conducted a survey of the local content frameworks of a number of countries, identifying the key legislation, regulations, contracts and non-binding policies and frameworks dealing with local content issues in the mining and petroleum sectors. A profile was created for each country, summarizing the provisions in the legal instruments dealing with local content and highlighting examples of high impact clauses. The profiles examine provisions dealing with local employment, training, procurement, technology transfer, local content plans as well as local ownership, depending on the country’s approach to and definition of local content. In addition, the profiles look at implementation, monitoring and enforcement provisions, as well as the government’s role in expanding local involvement. CCSI also surveyed the relevant WTO agreements and investment treaties in each country profiled to identify the provisions that may prevent, counsel against, and/or shield local content standards.
The profiles are intended as a tool for policy makers, researchers and citizens seeking to understand and compare how local content is dealt with in their own and other countries, and to provide some examples of language that might be adopted in a framework to achieve local content goals. Hyperlinks are provided to the source legislation, regulations, policies and contracts where available.
As local content policies are so context specific, CCSI welcomes comments and corrections on these profiles from practitioners in the reviewed countries, including with respect to any omissions.
CCSI has completed the following local content legal profiles:
– Australia: Mining and Petroleum
– Ghana: Petroleum and Mining
– Indonesia: Petroleum and Mining
– Kazakhstan: Mining & Petroleum
– Mali: Petroleum and Mining
– South Africa: Mining and Petroleum
– Tanzania: Petroleum and Mining
– Trinidad and Tobago: Petroleum
CCSI is currently working on additional profiles.
CCSI is also researching other ways to leverage extractive industries to enhance the economic capability of the host countries. See our pages on Downstream Beneficiation of Extractive Resources, Employment from Mining and Investments in Land for Agriculture, Fostering Knowledge and Technology Spillovers of Extractive Industries, and Conceptualizing Economic Linkages to the Resource Sector. Also see our pages on the Mine of the Future to understand the future of linkages under automation, and the impact of trade and investment treaties constraining the policy space on linkage creation.