From Paul Collier in Prospect magazine:
Corporate opacity is not inadvertent: it is the cumulative achievement of the sustained effort of some of the most brilliant professional minds on the planet. These people should hang their heads in shame. In advanced economies their actions undermine the tax base and the public spending essential for the maintenance of decent living standards. Worse, their actions bleed the world's poorest societies of tax revenues, and facilitate the mass looting of the public purse. The resource booms of the current decade are Africa's decisive opportunity: if the history of plunder were to be repeated it would be a tragedy of awesome proportions.
He's right, even if I could not endorse all the ideas he puts forward in his article. PWC, KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and the International Accounting Standards Board have combined to create the opacity that denies billions the resources and income that is rightfully theirs. And they should be ashamed of themselves.
As a result the need for country-by-country reporting is compelling and even overwhelming.
This is what country-by-country reporting is.
This explains the benefits country-by-country reporting delivers.
And for the geeks, this is how to do it.
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‘The resource booms of the current decade are Africa’s decisive opportunity: if the history of plunder were to be repeated it would be a tragedy of awesome proportions.’
Unfortunately not ‘if’, Richard, the ‘history of plunder’ has been well underway on that continent – and many others – for decades. Indeed, it’s possible to argue that it’s never stopped – though in monetary terms what’s happened in the past decade probably outstrips anything that went before.
Furthermore, it’s already a tragedy of awesome proportions – and, unless we come up with an economic model that’s not based on one or more forms of exploitation by the few at the expense of the many – then it’s only going to get worse. And lets be realistic, as there’s very little sign of any serious attempt by any government anywhere at formulating – much less implementing – a new economic model it’s difficult to conclude other than that we are locked into a global race to the bottom as far as the economic and social prospects of millions of people are concerned. And before anyone jumps in to point out that in China and India, etc, new middle classes are being created as incomes increase I’d add that so to is poverty, inequality, and environmental and climatic damage with as yet only glimpsed at consequences.