CHAMBER OF MINES RELEASES FINAL INDEPENDENT REPORT ON TRADE MISINVOICING
Calls on UNCTAD to withdraw its report and acknowledge its shortcomings
Johannesburg, 22 August 2017: The Chamber of Mines is pleased to release the third and final report in a series commissioned to examine the July 2016 UNCTAD report entitled Trade Misinvoicing in Primary Commodities in Developing Countries: The cases of Chile, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. UNCTAD revised the report in December, though its fundamentals remained unchanged.
The UNCTAD report purportedly found widespread underinvoicing which, it alleged, was designed by commodities producers to evade tax and other entitlements due to the fiscal authorities. For South Africa, the report calculated cumulative underinvoicing over the period 2000-2014 to have amounted to US$102.8 billion (in constant 2014 US dollars): US$620 million for iron ore; US$24 billion for silver and platinum; and US$78.2 billion for gold.
Introduction
The first two Chamber-commissioned Eunomix reports, published in December and February respectively, focused on UNCTAD’s gold scenarios. The third, which we publish today and can be found here, deals with the other commodities.