eProcurement
A recent report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development shows that a whopping sum of $88.6 billion leave the African continent every year through money laundering. Out of this amount, Nigeria alone is reported to account for about $40.7 billion. These huge losses are directly linked to the faulty procurement of materials and services, inefficient, corrupt and opaque contract awards by the three tiers of government at Federal, State and Local levels. If the losses from the upstream and downstream petroleum sectors, mining, manufacturing, banking and finance, healthcare delivery, education, defense, aviation, shipping, transportation, works, housing etc. is added to that figure, annual losses to Nigeria alone will be something in the region of $2.5 trillion. To be added again to the losses enumerated above are those that occur in the country’s mostly innocuous supply chain operations such as royalty losses, tax evasion and hidden offshore investments associated with the export of raw gold, tin, copper, tourmaline, beryl, sapphire, emerald and such other precious stones highly sought after by manufacturers in China, USA, Europe, Japan for cutting, polishing and used for making expensive jewelries. Nigeria is the acknowledged repository and home to the best quality precious stones coveted by miners from Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Gambia, China and other countries who converge on the country for their exploitation. Put together, these avoidable losses create enormous exodus of financial assets and capital from the coffers of Nigeria and is mainly responsible for the socio-political and economic instability the country has suffered since independence. When this phenomenon is extrapolated across the African continent and other developing economies across the globe, the loss suffered can go as high as $25 trillion or more on annual basis. Any economy that sustains such huge losses can never rid itself of a self-inflicted debt burden which the generosity of the developed world in aids can never cure.
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