Africa could buy more vaccines if it reduces evasion

South Africa has been the first country to identify Ómicron, the new strain of the coronavirus, and therefore, countries in Europe, America and Asia have already announced the closure of borders for travelers arriving from that country, as well as from Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi.

These countries must combat the pandemic and tax evasion at the same time. South Africa loses 1 to 2.9% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a result of tax abuses.

The African Continent loses more than 17,117 million dollars (0.7% of its GDP) due to cross-border tax abuse by multinational companies and the practices carried out by billionaires such as hiding their money in tax havens, according to the report “The State of Tax Justice 2021 “.

This contributes to reducing tax revenues, thus weakening the provision of public services and undermining the ability of governments to redistribute spending.

The document reveals that of the more than 17,000 million dollars; 14,796 million are not collected due to tax fraud by corporations and 2,320 million are tax losses for extraterritorial wealth.

With the uncontrolled resources, the African Continent could buy 995 million vaccines and could inoculate 82% of the population.

Africa is the slowest region in terms of inoculation of its population since for every 100 inhabitants there are 17 vaccines, according to the research center “Our world in data”.

At the same time, in the South African case, for every 100 inhabitants there are 42 vaccines; in the Lesotian case for the same number of people there are 28 injections.

To put it in perspective, in the United States for every 100 citizens there are 135 vaccines or if we compare it with Mexico there are 101 vaccines for every hundred inhabitants.

In this vein, the Think Tank “Concerto, global public affairs”, argues that while several African countries are currently debating their budgets for 2022, there is a need to identify new sources of income to face the consequences of Covid-19 and vaccinate to the population.

Within the search for new sources of income is the Global Minimum Tax of 15% that has been prepared by the G7 and that is now on the work table of the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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