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Finance Deputy Minster Miles Sampa today lectured Business Students on the importance of considering Africa as a good ground for investment.
Mr. Sampa urged Harvard Business and economics students to take keen interest in Africa saying the continent was endowed with huge reserves of raw materials, natural resources, and a rapid and economic population.
Mr. Sampa said Africa was fast becoming an attractive hub for foreign investors due to various economic, political and social reforms that were sweeping through the continent making it an improved business environment for foreign direct investments (FDIs)
ZANIS reports that this is contained in a statement signed by the Zambia Embassy First Secretary Patricia Littiya.
According to the statement, Mr. Sampa said this during a panel discussion organised by the Africa caucus at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government themed “Africa on the Move: A discussion with Experts from the Field.”
He revealed that the growth rate of the continent had gone up and was slowly revealing that Africa was on the brink of economic take-off like China and India did 20 and 30 years ago.
Mr. Sampa also encouraged the scholars to undertake research that not only highlighted Africa’s huge economic potential but also vices that deprived its people of their resources like transfer pricing which he said was daylight robbery worse than slave trade.
The Finance Deputy Minister said that expenditure was not the country’s immediate concern but tax evasion and avoidance by multinational investors in the mining and agriculture sectors.
“ In addition, the use of transfer pricing by most investors has ensured that they had no profits or income indicated in their financial books which in turn leads to them not paying taxes, “ he said.
Mr. Sampa explained that the ultimate result was that parent companies in the west became richer while Zambia lost out.
He lamented that the country was left with nothing in the treasury for government to use to uplift the living conditions of most Zambians most of whom lived below the poverty datum line.
He said government was committed to securing investment as Zambia had a lot of opportunities in Agriculture, Tourism, Manufacturing, Energy and Mining which makes the nation the 4th copper producing country in the world with reserves to last the next 25 years.
Mr. also told the panelists that Zambia was a beacon of peace having held four successive elections since independence all of which were categorised by peaceful transitions of power.
Other panelists at the discussion included Ambassador Amine Ali the Ambassador of the African Union to the USA, Mr. Charles Boamah, the Vice President of Finance at the Africa Development Bank (AfD) and an entrepreneur based in the USA originally from Ivory Coast Mr. Amadou Sanankoua.
