The Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and other African Finance Ministers at the weekend met with the leadership of the World Bank Group to press for an urgent end to illicit financial flows out of the continent to developed nations estimated at over $50billion annually.
Briefing the Nigerian media on the outcome of their discussions with World Bank Group on Sunday to round off the 2014 Spring Meetings of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, USA, Okonjo-Iweala stated that the meeting was basically centred on how the Britton Institutions can support Africa in the battle to end the scourge of illicit financial flow from Africa.
The CME also stated that the finance ministers had urged the World Bank Group to support their quest to build social security nets including job creation and economic empowerment programmes for Africa’s poor.
She listed the various channels through which the $50billion annual loss to the continent are perpetrated by multinational agencies and other economic operators in the continent to include tax evasion, over invoicing, transfer pricing and other forms of corrupt activities in various places.
She explained that the World Bank Group had already agreed to provide capacity building resources to enhance the ability of the African governments to track such flows to reduce its hurtful consequences on the continent’s development aspirations. They also agreed to support their efforts to repatriate laundered monies back to Africa.
Okonjo Iweala who stated that Nigeria came to the year’s Spring Meetings with a solid background particularly with the acceptance of the recently rebased GDP by the IMF and the World Bank Group said the impact of the robust economy was already reflecting on the perception of global investors on the Nigerian economy.
She said “the fact that we now have a stronger measurement for our GDP is already encouraging foreign direct investment into the country as Blumberg Grains is currently discussing with the Minister of Agriculture to invest about $250million to make Nigeria a storage hub for agricultural produce for the African continent.”
The Finance Minister hinted that several other global investors were on their way to invest in various sectors of the Nigerian economy following its emergence as the largest economy in Africa.
Okonjo Iweala also said that the World Bank Group including the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Credit Guarantee Agency (MIGA) has already committed itself to investing about $700million on power transmission which she believes will further boost economic activities in various sectors.
On what the government was doing to further strengthen the reforms, she assured that the Federal Government was making efforts to rebuild its fiscal buffers including the Excess Crude Account and the reserves to shore up itself and be able to attract more portfolio and foreign direct investments to the economy.
Good to know that we’re already attracting investors as a result of the re-based GDP.