Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi
Adeosun, has lamented that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari
inherited an empty treasury from the Jonathan government.
She also said Nigeria is the
biggest loser of the 50 billion dollars illicit financial flows out of Africa
annually.
Adeosun spoke at a tax conference
organised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development at the
UN Headquarters in New York.
She said Nigeria had one of the
lowest tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio in the world at just six per
cent.
She regretted that Nigeria also
suffered from tax avoidance and evasion, saying Nigeria has no tax laws as the
tax laws are poor and weak.
The minister said the nine months
of amnesty given to tax defaulters through the Voluntary Asset and Income
Declaration Scheme to regularise their tax information would lapse in March
2018.
According to her, some foreign
countries, including the UK, have commenced with Nigeria the Automatic Exchange
of Tax Information.
She, however, lamented over the
frustrations the Nigerian Government encountered in getting illicit funds
stashed abroad repatriated to the country.
“On the part of the destination
countries, the simple that we have from the developing nations perspective is:
‘why do they not ask questions when the money is coming in?
“And yet when we turn up and say
this money was stolen, then they give you an entire questionnaire. We’ve
battling with the Swiss on Abacha.
“Abacha loot sat in the Swiss
Bank account, 320 million dollars, for 22 years. We’ve been battling through
the courts and we still have more recent cases.”
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