Corporate Social investment

Without a doubt community development intervention by the private sector is and should remain voluntary. This is because the business of business is ensuring that business is conducted in a responsible manner that provides positive socioeconomic contribution for their different operating communities. The one way to do this is to continue to contribute a portion of their profits to the government in their operating communities through “accurate” tax payments. However, for a lot of communities in developing nations this is not enough. Successive years of corruption, wars and coups has led to gross neglect in development, leaving a large percentage of people in Africa wallowing in poverty, there is a dearth of infrastructure, massive energy poverty, illiteracy, poor health system, hunger and many more ills. What has happened is that the people have simply turned to the next best source of wealth for intervention – the private sector. In Nigeria for instance, whilst neglecting to demand for accountability and transparency in the “hows and wheres” of the use of tax money, lawmakers have simply turned again to the private sector to make community development initiatives compulsorily part and parcel of a business purview. By so doing most believe that they are further entrenching corruption, in a situation where there is no accountability, the tax payments made by these businesses will be added to the others that are diverted for the private use of a few.

The worst scenario painted in this instance has been that additional tax payments made by businesses simply means a hike in consumer goods, therefore, the cost of doing business will be transferred to the people, making them poorer still. The cost of doing business in the country will be more expensive, making investments in Nigeria more unattractive whilst other countries are doing all they can to make their countries attractive for foreign direct investments leading to the provision of more sources of employment and better living standards for their people. To this end we need to be extremely careful not to create laws that will make our socioeconomic situation worse.

George