(ECA Watch, Ottawa, 30 June 2012) The OECD's Export Credit Division last released overall ECA activity statistics up to 2005 in January 2007. OECD staff have argued that difficulties in standardizing their databases for activities, operating costs and cash flows have prevented the issue of these statistics, which provide at least a modicum of transparency to taxpayers following OECD ECAs' respect for regulations and commitments to monitor environmental and social standards in their lending and risk insurance. OECD staff have even noted privately that there are some ECAs which still do not want too detailed reporting as they don't wish to reveal certain data about different "windows" of their portfolios.
This apparent weakness in statistical reporting and transparency could also be seen as problematic with respect to the WTO's dependence on OECD data to ensure respect for the "safe haven" clause of the WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM), intended to insure that ECA activities do not constitute subsidies by charging “premium rates that are inadequate to cover the long-term operating costs and losses of the programmes.”
In October 2006, ECA Watch noted:
Despite the apparent persistence of these accounting (and accountability) issues, the U.S. Export Import Bank in it's 2011 Competitiveness Report (pdf), nevertheless was able to provide data from other OECD ECAs on thermal power plant and renewable energy notifications, indicating that this data is available to them, presumably from the OECD, despite the latter's delays in publishing them.