The African Development Bank, AfDB, has revealed that illicit cash flow has cost Nigeria a total of $83.3 billion.
Nigeria has lost about $83.3 billion to illicit cash outflow, the African Development Bank, AfDB, revealed on Tuesday, July 7.
The AfDB Country Director, Ousmane Dore who spoke at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD’s) Multi-Stakeholders meeting on Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) out of Nigeria, in Abuja, said the loss accounted for 5.6 per cent of total goods traded without proper invoicing in the last 51 years starting from 1960 to 2011.
Dore stated that the recent Global Financial Integrity Report also ranked Nigeria seventh among top 10 highest illicit capital outflows in the developing world and first in Africa.
He said: “Between 1960 and 2011, Nigeria experienced cumulative illicit financial out flows totalling $83.3 billion or 5.6 per cent of a total goods trade through trade through mis-invoicing only.
“Export under-invoicing takes the larger share of $44 billion while the balance of 39.3billion was due to import overinvoicing.
“In the literature, exchange controls has been identified as a basic driver of trade and misinvoicing in developing countroes, especially Nigeria, because they tend to create black markets in foreign exchange where foreign currenciess can be bought and sold at a preminum over official rates."