Algeria: “12 000 Billion Dinar Centimes… Debts Of State Owing To Tax Evasion”

Mr. Boubekeur Salami, president of the National Association of Tax Advisers, said that the country’s fiscal debts amounted to about 12 billion dinars, more than 150 percent of the state budget for a full year.

He said on Tuesday on the waves of the first national radio channel, that Algeria has a treasury deficit of 40 percent of the oil levy, “This is due to the lack of great effort since independence to make oil levy a secondary part.”

“In the 1970s, non-oil tax revenues for Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and the UAE were estimated at less than 1 percent. Today, these countries have reached 20 percent, while Algeria has only 2 percent,” the spokesman said.

He also stressed that the Algerian economy depends greatly on hydrocarbons revenues and that “our tax system is unstable and complex and is an unbalanced tax system that witnesses great pressure on a few, while the tax base should be expanded, especially to institutions,” as he put it.

He further pointed to the existence of many untapped tax pockets, such as the informal market system, which is equivalent to 50 percent of the country’s overall economic returns.

He proposed to the Ministry of Finance and to the Tax Administration to seek the views of experts and expand the scope of discussion and consultation, so that the gaps are filled, with pressure being reduced and the tax base and law enforcement being expanded.

Finally, Mr. Salami underlined that there are more than 1300 tax advisers steeped in a situation of dispersion due to poor organization adding that there is no council for the profession, which is, he said, administered in a chaotic manner and is not subject to any fees or taxes.