Chamber pushes back at report on SA

THE Chamber of Mines published a second report from economic consultancy Eunomix yesterday, which has refuted allegations of “misinvoicing” by South African mining companies put forward last year in an Unctad report.

The Unctad report, titled “Trade Misinvoicing in Primary Commodities in Developing Countries: The cases of Chile, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia,” was published last year. It argued that under-invoicing of gold exports from South Africa amounted to pure smuggling of gold out of the country.

The report asserted that South African miners of silver, platinum group metals, gold and iron ore had systematically and fraudulently indulged in misinvoicing to evade taxes and other legal obligations.

Unctad alleged specifically that “between 2000 and 2014, under-invoicing of gold exports from South Africa amounted to $78.2 billion, or 67 percent of total gold exports”.

An amended version of the Unctad report backtracked to some extent, though still maintaining the original misinvoicing hypothesis.

In a statement, the Chamber said Unctad had used only the UN Commodity Trade Statistics (UN Comtrade) database and simplistically assumed that discrepancies in import and export data supplied by countries indicated “misinvoicing”.

The first Eunomix report, published in mid-December and focusing on the gold sector, showed methodological errors committed by the Unctad researchers.

The Eunomix report, commissioned by the Chamber, showed that South Africa’s gold exports were incorrectly reflected there but correctly reflected elsewhere, including in South African Reserve Bank, Stats SA and Chamber of Mines data.

The report argued that Unctad used only the UN Comtrade database and simplistically assumed that discrepancies in import and export data supplied by countries indicated misinvoicing.

The Chamber said using those figures had significantly reduced the discrepancy, leaving $19.5 billion unaccounted for. The second Eunomix report, published yesterday, addressed the “missing” $19.5 billion.

The Chamber’s chief economist, Henk Langenhoven, said they were disappointed with Unctad’s research. – ANA