The OECD held a press conference on Friday after holding its Forum on Tax Administration Meeting.
Dave Hartnett represented the UK. Asked about country-by-country reporting he said (near enough):
Not so much [discussed] at this meeting - though it has been discussed in the OECD. Growing recognition that country-by-country reporting brings additional transparency - particularly regarding how TNCs operate in emerging and developing economies.An idea which is gathering momentum and which we will, imagine, discuss more.
Good news.
It has to be part of the tax administrator's armoury.
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Paul Collier – Bottom Billion
(http://users.ox.ac.uk/~econpco/)
May I recommend this book to anyone who reads this website.
Paul Collier is director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford and a former World Bank economist.
This is his unsentimental take on what needs to be done to rescue the bottom billion people stuck in the (mostly sub Saharan African) countries where economic growth
has steadily been reversing over the past thirty years. It’s a radical turnabout in traditional thinking on Africa, aid and development.
Here’s a bit of what he has to say about the problem
1. Sudan, like most bottom billion nations has seen growth has fallen by 0.7% pa steadily for the past twenty plus years now. In Ethiopia, incomes in real terms are lower now than in 1980, (the pre Live Aid years note.)
2. The Democratic Republic of Congo will need fifty years of peace for income levels to return to the level they were at in 1960, when it first received independence from Belgium.
3. He estimates that thirty eight per cent of all military spending in the bottom billion countries is inadvertently financed by aid.
4. Despite garnering $280bn in oil sales over 30 years, the “real” economy of Nigeria remains more or less on par with those of other bottom billion nations. (Guess why?)
What is probably going to be of most interest to everyone on this website however is chapter 9. He assesses just how much cash may have been lost from Africa through illegal capital flight. He shows a mystification about why the banks are allowed to get away with this behaviour that’s almost charming to those of us better versed in the wiles of international tax evasion and the people paid to facilitate it. “Pimping bankers are no different to any other sort of pimp” he concludes.
Colliers argument isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. He has some tough things to say about the big aid agencies, accusing them of a “headless heart” syndrome and chaotic mismanagement that on the ground is often creating more problems that it’s solving. He also advocates military intervention in some countries to bring a period of enforced peace allowing economies and democracies to get established, on the model of Sierra Leone, the alternative being Somalia.
But it’s only 200 pages long, very readable and funny in parts, “diamonds are a guerillas best friend”.
Certainly a change if you’ve tried to plough through Amartya Sen.
If you care about Africa (like me) and are baffled why, despite such vast natural wealth and human potential,
it continues to fail on virtually every measure then this is a very persuasive argument.
Lou
You’re right
I know the book well
It’s not easy for some
Paul is tough
But it is an essential read
Richard