‘Mining firms not cheating on tax’
By BUUMBA CHIMBULU ZAMBIA Chamber of Mines (ZCM) has said the US$3 billion tax avoidance claims by some stakeholders is not credible as it can be proved by the recent analysis undertaken by Maya Forstater, an American researcher and advisor on business and sustainable development.
Ms. Forstater’s research tracks down the source of the US$3 billion tax avoidance figure ($2.885 billion, to be exact) as the Washington DCbased think-tank, Global Financial Integrity (GFI).
ZCM president, Nathan Chishimba, has welcomed the analysis that dismissed as not “credible” the oft-repeated claim that Zambia was losing US$3 billion a year through tax avoidance by the mining industry.
“We at the Chamber of Mines have consistently argued that these claims of tax avoidance are simply not credible. It is heartening to see an independent study reach the same conclusion,
“One can only hope this puts to bed once and for all the ridiculous claims of billions lost to tax evasion. It seems to have become an obsession, and drains vital intellectual energy that could be better channelled into growing the economy and boosting employment,” Mr. Chishimba said.
According to Ms. Forstater, organisations that had allowed this myth to spread had not done any favours to the people of Zambia, and they had a responsibility to put it right.
“So, it is not surprising that people are still citing the large and assertively declared claims, and ignoring the quietly (or silently) made corrections,” she said.
Ms. Forstater said GFI had promoted its version of the Zambia billions story strongly over the years and it had been taken up widely.
She said the headline that ‘Zambia lost US$9 billion over a decade’ had been repeated by Reuters, in the Guardian, in the Globe and Mail and by Transparency International, for example.
“A fact-finding mission by the International Bar Association Human Rights Initiative, as well as a study by the Government of Finland, investigated the alleged illicit financial flows from Zambia. Their findings were never published which suggests that they “could not be confirmed,” she said.