Press Releases

1. On September 15(Thursday) and 16(Friday), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will organize “G7 CONNEX Initiative International Conference on Capacity Building and Transparency” as a follow-up to the G7 Ise-Shima Summit.

2. The G7 initiative on “Strengthening Assistance for Complex Contract Negotiations (CONNEX),” launched at the G7 Brussels Summit in 2014, aims to provide developing country partners, which are advancing economic development through export of extractive products such as energy and mineral resources, with multi-disciplinary and concrete expertise for negotiating complex commercial contracts in order to secure fairness and transparency while protecting interests of the host country and investing companies.

3. At the G7 Ise-Shima Summit held this May, Japan led the discussion and placed CONNEX as one of the global efforts to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, focusing on the efforts on capacity building in the developing countries, improving transparency in extractives industries, and establishing a firm linkage among developing countries with natural resources, investing companies and various international institutions and aid agencies. As a result, the G7 successfully issued the “CONNEX Guiding Principles towards Sustainable Development” (PDF). Based on this achievement, Japan will organize this follow-up conference to disseminate the results as Chair of the G7 and to further develop discussions on our future efforts.

4. This International Conference invites experts from G7, international organizations and countries with natural resources and holds panel discussions on the current international situation of the extractives sector, challenges and opportunities in improving capacity building and transparency on extractive projects, and current trend of extractive companies’ efforts on transparency.