$12.73bn.
South Africa’s crack down on taxpayers is gathering pace after the Revenue Service, SARS announced it had appointed eight debt collection agencies to recover as much as possible of the $1.408bn in debt it is owed. The contract takes effect immediately and will run until February 28 2019. SARS estimates that more than 2.3-million taxpayers and traders owe the government just less than $12.73bn. SARS has a revenue target of $102.92bn for 2018.
100 tonnes
Uganda, the world’s fourth-biggest vanilla exporter, is boosting output to benefit from prices for the flavouring that’s more valuable than silver, and has forced growers to hire armed guards to deter thieves. The landlocked East African country will produce about 100 tonnes this year, with potential to double that in future, according to Aust & Hachmann (Canada), the world’s oldest vanilla company. While that’s far below the 1,600 tonnes top-grower Madagascar can produce, extra Ugandan output would diversify global supplies and see farmers reap as much as $600,000 per tonne.
$400m
Kenya cannot account for $400m in public funds, according to a damning report from the auditor-general that highlights the country’s failure to crack down on graft and misuse of state resources.
The report for the 2015-16 financial year describes a litany of misspending and poor accounting under President Uhuru Kenyatta, “Accounting for public funds is still wanting. Of $12.4bn in recurrent and development spending, only 3.45% was spent “lawfully and in an effective way”, according to the report.
$3.5bn
Angola has offered investors diamond exploration licences that previously belonged to Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the former president who is estimated to have $3.5bn in wealth. Isabel dos Santos is Africa’s richest woman with assets across multiple sectors in Angola and Portugal from jewellery to supermarkets. Her family has been a powerful force in Angola for four decades but her star has faded since her father, former president José Eduardo dos Santos, stepped down in 2017 but his successor, President João Lourenço, has promised to tackle family monopolies and make Angola more attractive to investors. A Forbes magazine article described in 2013 how Isabel dos Santos acquired her wealth by taking stakes in companies doing business in Angola, suggesting that her wealth comes almost entirely from her family’s power and connections
$1bn
Ghana must improve revenue collection and can’t keep reducing spending on capital items to achieve its fiscal targets, the IMF has said. This is one of the recommendations by the Washington-based lender during a review of the country’s $1bn extended credit-facility programme. While Ghana missed its revenue target for 2017, it met fiscal-consolidation goals, with the budget deficit declining to 5.9% of GDP.
