Business
Don Tasks Multinationals On Tax Remittance
A Senior Fellow at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Dr Jibrin Ibrahim, has urged multinational companies to ensure regular payment of their taxes to prevent illicit financial flows in the country.
Ibrahim made the call yesterday at a consultative roundtable on illicit financial flows organised by Trust Africa in collaboration with CDD in Abuja.
He said Nigeria was losing huge amount of money due to the lack of remittance of taxation by some multinational companies as a result of its weak tax system.
Ibrahim, noted that the significance of the roundtable was to identify the amount of money that was lost from tax avoidance, which was massive and sufficient to develop the country.
“This will enable us to suggest possible ways to addressing leakages in taxation to get Nigeria and Africa out of illicit financial flows.
“We have realised that there is a lot of money missing in Nigeria and Africa from tax avoidance.
“Some multinationals do come here to invest and make billions of money in mining, solid mineral and manufacturing without paying their taxation,” Ibrahim said.
He appealed to the Federal Government to be proactive in the fight against the menace of corruption in the public and private sector.
The Executive Director, CDD, Ms Idayat Hassan, said corruption was the major causes of illicit and volatile financial flows in the African continent.
“All conversations around illicit and volatile financial flows focuses on corruption in a manner that narrowly detaches it from deeper-level structural and policy regimes as well as the politics of policies.”
“Why should companies hold us to ransom and refuse to renegotiate agreement; Niger, Guinea Conakry mining contracts agreements are examples,” Hassan said.
She called on all stakeholders in the Nigerian economy to actively engage the process, saying “it is high time we start placing this conversation in the context of what this money can do our economy”.
Hassan expressed optimism that the meeting would address problem of financial flows in Africa’s emerging Development Agenda, African positions and advocacy in the post-2015 international Development Framework.