G7-based companies and investors cheated Africa out of an estimated six billion dollars in a year through just one form of tax dodging, according to a new Oxfam report ‘Money talks: Africa at the G7’, released Jun. 2.

This is equivalent to three times the amount needed to plug the healthcare funding gap in the Ebola-affected countries of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and at-risk Guinea Bissau.

According to an Oxfam briefing paper release in April this year, an estimated 1.7 billion dollars is required to close the healthcare funding gap to improve dangerously inadequate health systems in these countries. This figure is based on raising spending to the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that 86 dollars per capita is required to achieve the minimum package of essential services.“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school” – Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns

The new Oxfam report comes as G7 leaders prepare to meet their African counterparts at the annual summit in Bavaria, Germany from Jun. 8 to 9. African leaders from Ethiopia (Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn), Liberia (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), Nigeria (President Muhammadu Buhari) and Senegal (President Macky Sall) are scheduled to join an outreach session on Jun. 8.

Oxfam is calling for the leaders of the G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom and United States – to include action for ambitious tax reform in discussions about how the group can support economic growth and sustainable development on the continent.

In the United Kingdom, Oxfam is part of a coalition that has been calling on the recently elected new British government to show leadership by introducing a Tax Dodging Bill, which would make it harder for U.K. companies to avoid paying tax in the countries in which they operate – practices which currently cost some of the world’s poorest countries billions each year.

The coalition, which includes ActionAid and Christian Aid in addition to Oxfam, is currently running a Tax Dodging Bill campaign.

According to Oxfam, a well-crafted Tax Dodging Bill would also make it harder for big companies to avoid paying tax in the United Kingdom, and could bring in at least 3.6 billion pounds (5.4 billion dollars) a year to the U.K. Treasury, the equivalent of 600 pounds (910 dollars) for every household living below the poverty line.

“Multinational companies, many with headquarters in the United Kingdom and other G7 countries, are cheating African countries out of billions of dollars in vital tax revenues that could help vulnerable people get decent healthcare and send their children to school,” said Nick Brye, Oxfam’s Head of U.K. Campaigns.

“To fund the fight against poverty and to tackle worsening extreme inequality, we need action to ensure big companies pay their fair share, here and in the world’s poorest nations.”

Oxfam also notes that existing international efforts to tackle corporate tax dodging, such as the BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) process, led by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD) for the G20 group of the world’s major economies, will leave gaping tax loopholes.

It warns that these loopholes can continue to be exploited by multinational companies across the developing world and that many African nations have been shut out of discussions on BEPS reform and will not benefit from them as a result.

Oxfam is also calling for British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne to attend July’s Financing for Development Conference in Ethiopia which will play host to heads of states and finance ministers from around the world.

The talks, which will focus on how the international community will fund development over the next two decades, are an opportunity for governments to work together to start shaping a more democratic and fairer global tax system.

In 2010, the last year for which data are available, Oxfam says that companies and investors based in G7 countries avoided paying tax on 20 billion dollars of income through a practice called trade mispricing – where a company artificially sets the prices for goods or services sold among its subsidiaries to avoid taxation.

With corporate tax rates in Africa averaging 28 percent, this equates to nearly six billion dollars in lost revenues. In addition, developing countries as a whole lose around 100 billion dollars a year through tax avoidance schemes involving tax havens, according to the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“Reforming global corporate tax rules so that African governments can claim the money owed to them is vital to tackle extreme poverty and inequality and boost economic growth, said Brye. “That’s why Oxfam has been calling for a U.K. Tax Dodging Bill that would ensure U.K. companies do their bit to help poor families at home and in developing countries.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Bakau fish market, The Gambia. The plight of Gambian and other West African artisan fishers could soon see a change for the better following an historic ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Photo credit: Ralfszn - Own work. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons

By Saikou Jammeh
BANJUL, The Gambia, Apr 18 2015 (IPS)

It was five in the afternoon and Buba Badjie, a boat captain, had just brought his catch to the shore. He had spent twelve hours at sea off Bakau, a major fish landing site in The Gambia.

Inside the trays strewn on the floor bed of his wooden boat were bonga and catfish. Scores of women crowded around, looking to buy his catch.

“This is just enough to cover my expenses,” he tells IPS, indicating the squirming silvery creatures. “I went up to 20-something kilometres and all we could get was bonga.

“I spent more than 2,500 dalasis (60 dollars) on this one trip,” he confessed.

Badjie, 38, is not a native Gambian. Originally from neighbouring Senegal, he came here as a teenager looking for work. But the sea he has been fishing for almost two decades is no longer the same, he says somberly.

“This trade is about win and loss,” he added. “But nowadays, we have more losses. Recently, I went up to 50-something kilometres to another fishing ground but still no catch.

“The problem is the variations in the weather pattern. Also, we encounter huge commercial trawlers in the waters. Sometimes, they threaten to kill us when we confront them. When we spread our nets, they ruin them.”

But Badjie’s plight and that of thousands of other artisan fishers could soon see a change for the better.“The problem of oversized fleets using destructive fishing methods is a global one and the results are alarming and indisputable” – Greenpeace

In an historic ruling by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea – the first of its kind by the full tribunal – the body affirmed that “flag States” have a duty of due diligence to ensure that fishing vessels flying their flag comply with relevant laws and regulations concerning marine resources to enable the conservation and management of these resources.

Flag States, ruled the tribunal, must take necessary measures to ensure that these vessels are not engaged in illegal, unreported or unregulated (IUU) fishing activities in the waters of member countries of West Africa’s Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission (SFRC). Further, they can be held liable for breach of this duty. The ruling specifies that the European Union has the same duty as a state.

West African waters are believed to have the highest levels of IUU fishing in the world, representing up to 37 percent of the region’s catch.

“This is a very welcome ruling that could be a real game changer,” World Wildlife Fund International Marine Programme Director John Tanzer was reported as saying. “No longer will we have to try to combat illegal fishing and the ransacking of coastal fisheries globally on a boat by boat basis.”

The SRFC covers the West African countries of Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The need for an advisory opinion by the Tribunal emerged in 1993 when the SRFC reported an “over-exploitation of fisheries resources; and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing of an ever more alarming magnitude.” Such illegal catches were nearly equal to allowable ones, it said.

Further, “the lost income to national economies caused by IUU fishing in Wet Africa is on the order of 500 million dollars per year.”

The apparent theft of West Africa’s fish stocks has been denounced by various environmental groups including Greenpeace, which described “monster boats” trawling in African waters on a webpage titled ‘Fish Fairly’.

“For decades,” Greenpeace wrote, “the European Union and its member states have allowed their industrial fishing fleet to swell to an unsustainable size… In 2008, the European Commission estimated that parts of the E.U. fishing fleet were able to harvest fish much faster than stocks were able to regenerate.’’

“The problem of oversized fleets using destructive fishing methods is a global one and the results are alarming and indisputable.”

Unofficial sources told IPS that there are forty-seven industrial-sized fishing vessels currently in The Gambia’s waters, thirty-five of which are from foreign fleets.

Meanwhile, artisanal fishers, on whom the population depends for supply, say they are finding it hard to feed the market. Prices have risen phenomenally and shortages in the market are no longer a rarity.

“Our waters are overfished,” said Ousman Bojang, 80, a veteran Gambian fisher.

Bojang learnt the fishing trade from his father when he was young, but later switched gears to become a police officer.

After 20 years, he retired and returned to fishing. Building his first fishing boat in 1978, he became the president of the first-ever association of fishers in the country.

“Fishing improved my livelihood,” he told IPS. “While I was in the service, I could not build a hut for myself. Now, I have built a compound. I’ve sent my children to school and all of them have graduated.

“I transferred my skills to them and they’ve joined me at sea. I have 25 children; 10 boys and 15 girls. All the boys are into fishing. Even the girls, some know how to do hook and line and to repair net.”

Other hopeful trends for the artisanal fishers include the recognition by the Africa Progress Panel, headed by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that illegal fishing is a priority that the continent must address.

Another is the endorsement by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations of guidelines which seek to improve conditions for small-scale fishers.

Nicole Franz, fishery planning analyst at FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture department in Rome, told IPS that the small-scale fisheries guidelines provide a framework change in small-scale fisheries. “It is an instrument that looks not only into traditional fisheries rights, such as fisheries management and user rights, but it also takes more integrated approach,” she said.

“It also looks into social conditions, decent employment conditions, climate change, disaster risks issues and a whole range of issues which go beyond what traditional fisheries institutions work with. Only if we have a human rights approach to small-scale fisheries, can we allow the sector to develop sustainably.”

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris    

“Insisting on an ethnic balance in the armed forces of Guinea Bissau is not at all realistic,” says José Manuel Ramos-Horta. Credit: Katalin Muharay/IPS

By Mario Queiroz
LISBON, Oct 2 2013 (IPS)

Guinea Bissau is “close to becoming a failed state,” but not due to ethnic or religious violence, which has never existed in that small West African nation, argues Nobel Peace laureate and United Nations envoy José Manuel Ramos-Horta.

“The Guinea Bissau political leadership has never managed to have good relations with the military and vice versa, and it could be said that today the country is dangerously close to becoming a failed state,” Ramos-Horta, a former president, prime minister and foreign minister of East Timor, said in this interview with IPS during a recent visit to Lisbon.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named Ramos-Horta as his representative to mediate in Guinea Bissau – which experienced its latest coup in April 2012 – taking into account the East Timor leader’s personal and political credentials in the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP).

But the initial timetable outlined for the country’s return to the path of democracy, which included elections slated for Nov. 24, will not be met due to political and organisational problems, the foreign ministers of seven of the eight CPLP countries acknowledged on Sept. 25.

The seven countries were Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe (Guinea Bissau is the eighth member of the CPLP).

The CPLP has cut off dialogue with the regime in Guinea Bissau.

Q: Is there a real possibility of peace in that country?

A: I’m realistic and optimistic. To the contrary of what has happened in other parts of the world, including Europe, there has never been ethnic or religious violence in Guinea Bissau.

Churches or mosques have never been set on fire or destroyed and cemeteries have never been desecrated, as has occurred even in the European Union. To guarantee peace and establish democracy, what is urgently needed is for politicians and the military not to push the people too much.

Q: It would seem like the latest coup was the straw that broke the patience of the international community.

A: It’s true. There was not the slightest indication of why that last coup happened, except for the responsibility of these two elites, the political and political-military, for the sequence of violence initiated by João Bernardo “Nino” Vieira in 1980, when he overthrew President Luís Cabral, annulling six years of success in Guinea Bissau after its independence from Portugal.

Some 20 or 30 years ago, coups were routine in Africa. Today, the African Union takes even more radical stances on the defence of democracy than the EU. However, it is necessary to engage in dialogue, pragmatically, with those who have the weapons.

If there is no dialogue, what good is democracy?

It was precisely to have channels of understanding and negotiation that the U.N. secretary-general named me as his representative, and results have already been seen.

Q: Shortly after the coup, the AU, CPLP, EU, United States and United Nations indicated that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) reacted too mildly to the military’s seizure of power. After nine months in your mission, how do you see things?

A: The positions taken by those institutions and countries were totally correct. And it is also necessary to stress that ECOWAS intervened pragmatically to keep the situation from being further aggravated, and prevented the dissolution of parliament and the elimination of the constitution.

They have invested a great deal of money, but this situation is unsustainable. The important thing at this stage is to hold elections as early as possible, within five or six months I hope, to re-establish the democratic order and to put in place a strategy to help the country recover.

Q: Who is engaged in the dialogue today with the Guinea Bissau regime?

A: There has been no recognition from important governments or organisations, but there is a day-to-day relationship with the United States and Great Britain, which are in dialogue with the regime. Spain kept its ambassador there and France has always been active through its business attaché.

The EU imposed some sanctions, but it maintained its social and humanitarian programmes. Portuguese aid is channeled through non-governmental organisations and churches. Portugal’s position is due to something very simple: its long-standing relationship with the people of Guinea Bissau, who are and will still be there, independently of the regime that is in power.

Q: Besides the enormous fragility of the state, what are Guinea Bissau’s biggest problems?

A: Extreme poverty, with very poor social indicators, persistent political instability, the weaknesses and fissures in the army, the military’s frequent intervention in politics, and in the last few years, the penetration of Latin American drug cartels, in Guinea Bissau as well as many other states in the region, which exacerbates the difficulties in those countries because of the creation of new areas of crime and new tensions and dangers.

Q: With regard to this last problem, it has been said that Guinea Bissau is becoming a “narco-state”.

A: That is nonsense expressed by some academics who write reports that don’t have a strong foundation in reality, which have been repeated by the media without the slightest regard for intellectual rigour.

An academic makes an analysis, a news agency from a big country in the North picks it up, and after that all of the newspapers go to the same source, which may or may not be objective and impartial, since no one has carried out an exhaustive investigation.

Guinea Bissau is just a small country, victim of the drug cartels of Latin America and the mafias of the EU and Russia. They are the ones who are really responsible.

As a representative of the U.N. secretary-general, I cannot give the names of cities that are real centres of drug money laundering, where what you see is great opulence, with mansions, fancy buildings and luxury cars, while in Bissau all you see in the streets are goats and cows.

Q: Another frequently mentioned problem are the supposed “ethnic quotas” within the armed forces, where the Balanta people [the largest ethnic group, making up over one-quarter of the population] are clearly predominant in the leadership.

A: When false problems are raised, big difficulties are created. Guinea Bissau is multiethnic and multicultural, and has several religions. That is a wealth, not a disadvantage.

The Balanta were historically dedicated to agriculture and livestock-raising. But they are also a people with a strong warrior tradition…which forms part of their history.

There are other groups that prefer trade over weapons, and others that prefer to be government officials.

However, Western experts, unfamiliar with the situation there, often say ethnic balance in the armed forces is necessary. This is not at all realistic, because you can’t insist that a merchant become a soldier.

Excerpt:

The writer has just confirmed he had recorded the interview and taken notes of the conference, but he incurred in a regrettable error confusing António Soares (Toni Tcheca) with Emílio Krafft Kosta. This is of course completely unprofessional, and we have erased both versions of the story, in Spanish and English. Please accept our sincere apologies.