 |
| African Development Bank logo | credits: services.logbaby.com |
The African Development Bank on Tuesday said that Nigeria had
recorded a cumulative illicit financial outflow of about $83.3bn in the
past 51 years.
The Country Director, AfDB, Dr. Ousmane Dore, stated this in Abuja
while delivering a paper entitled, “Domestic resource mobilisation for
Nigeria’s development: Need for national compact against illicit
financial flows.”
He spoke at a multi-stakeholders meeting on ‘Illicit financial flows out
of Nigeria’ organised by a political think tank called Centre for
Democracy and Development.
According to him, the loss accounted for 5.6 per cent of total goods
traded without proper invoicing in the last 51 years, between 1960 and
2011.
Dore added that the recent Global Financial Integrity report also ranked
Nigeria seventh among the top 10 countries with highest illicit capital
outflows in the developing world.
According to him, Nigeria has for many decades experienced a very
serious problem with trade mis-invoicing, in the form of over-invoicing
of imports and under-invoicing of exports for the purpose of shifting
money out of the country.
He said, “Between 1960 and 2011, Nigeria experienced cumulative illicit
financial out flows totalling $83.3bn or 5.6 per cent of a total goods
traded through mis-invoicing only. Export under-invoicing takes the
larger share of $44bn while the balance of $39.3bn was due to import
over-invoicing.
Also speaking, the Director, CDD, Hajia Idayat Hassan, said the nation
has sufficient resources to meet its developmental needs.
According to her, the illicit funds can be used to provide about 870, 000
schools and 400, 000 hospitals, among other things.
She however, attributed the widespread illegal financial outflows to
governance challenges including weak institutions, inadequate
regulatory environment, lack of transparency and accountability.
Hassan said the situation had, for many years, strained the capacity of
governments in various ways, thereby discouraging wealth creation
and development-oriented policies.
Source : The punch
Posted by Adebayo A J