Beneficial ownership transparency involves collecting and disclosing information about the real human beings who own and control companies and other corporate vehicles. Collecting and publicly disclosing company beneficial ownership data can help reveal money laundering, conflicts of interest, improperly awarded government contracts, and tax evasion. Beyond corruption, knowing who ultimately owns or benefits from a company can also help to identify responsibility for other violations of law, such as environment or labor rules.
The Open Gov Guide is the go-to resource for open government reformers. The guide provides concrete recommendations for policy makers, civil society representatives, and more on how to apply open government principles to real-world challenges. Readers can also use the guide to learn more about how governments at the national and local level are putting these values into practice through OGP action plans and beyond.
Learn more about this policy area in the “Company Beneficial Ownership” chapter of the Open Gov Guide.
As part of the Open Gov Challenge, the OGP Support Unit would like to recognize some of the most inspiring commitments made by participants to date. Read more about these exciting reforms on beneficial ownership below.
For a full list of Challenge commitments submitted by members, visit our Open Gov Challenge Commitment Tracker.
Open Contracting and Beneficial Ownership Transparency
Legal loopholes make public procurement vulnerable to corruption. To address this, Malawi has begun to strengthen its legal frameworks on public procurement and beneficial ownership and create an online procurement system that uses beneficial ownership data.
Open the Beneficial Ownership Registry to the Public
North Macedonia has been working to improve the transparency of public procurement data and politically exposed persons, but more work needs to be done to increase beneficial ownership transparency so that these datasets can be jointly used to curb corruption. The commitment aims to publish the owners of companies that have bid on or won public procurement contracts.
Explore all beneficial ownership commitments from OGP members.
The following list reflects commitments submitted through national or local action plans. For more details, visit OGP’s Data Dashboard.
Filter the commitments according to three categories evaluated by the Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM): ambition, completion, and early results.
| Country/Locality | Year | Commitment Title | More |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | 2025 | Guidelines for the Implementation of Beneficial Ownership for the Private Sector | + |
| Armenia | 2025 | E-procurement system: Automated transfer of data of beneficial owners | + |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 2025 | Raising awareness about beneficial ownership | + |
| Uruguay | 2025 | Registro Único de Subvenciones y Beneficios | + |
| Romania | 2025 | Increase transparency of political funding | + |
This table shows all commitments that match the filters selected at the top of the page. At least one filter must be selected to populate this table. Use the tags above the table to further filter by commitment quality (e.g. ambitious, complete). Click on commitment titles to learn more about each commitment. Click on “Featured” icons to access stories, where available.
This table enables finding existing commitments in specific policy areas, regions, and years, as well as top-performing commitments by using the built-in table filters.
The commitment performance metrics (e.g. ambitious, complete) are derived directly from IRM reports. See the terms below for details. The Year field shows the year in which the commitment was first submitted. Icons in the Featured field indicate that a story is available on the OGP website.
Malawi has made considerable progress in advancing public procurement by strengthening its legal frameworks, digitizing the process, and linking this data to beneficial ownership information.
Learn how Kenya aims to increase the proportion of contracts awarded to marginalized groups while improving the interoperability of its procurement system in its current open contracting commitment.
Kenya joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP) at its inception in 2011. In this report, learn how the national government and OGP Local members have advanced open government reform.
With $148 billion in infrastructure investments on the line, the Philippines is ushering in a new era of open contracting.
Discover initiatives submitted to the Open Gov Challenge by OGP members and beyond, through OGP action plans or as standalone commitments.
The Open Gov Challenge is a call to action for all members of OGP to raise ambition in ten areas of open government to help strengthen our democracies.
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