Remapping Science — in Science (the journal of the American Society for the Advancement of Science) points out that during the past 500 years, only eight European countries (comprising England, France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal) colonised 68 per cent of the world becoming imperial overlords during and between the 16th and 18th centuries.
Alec Gordon and K.S. Jomo dissected archived colonial records to show that besides the raw materials extraction in colonial Malaya were taxes levied, land and mining concessions gained, profits from opium sales, and diverting dividends to British metropolitan capitalism to enlarge colonial wealth draining.
The 1955 World Bank mission to colonial Malaya has had estimated 3 to 17 percent of its gross national product was lost.
Sultan Nazrin Shah data for the export surplus during the 1900 to 1939 period:
To explore further: Trends in the political economy of Malaysia.
Meanwhile, illicit financial outflows to offshore tax havens –will be costing Global South countries US$4.7 trillion over the next decade, (icij 2024) – thus further draining precious developing countries foreign exchange and government resources, (KS Jomo, 2024).
To compromise developmental efforts, transnational corporations (TNCs) exploit legal loopholes in low-income countries (LICs) to avoid or minimise tax liabilities by applying a practice known as ‘base erosion and profit shifting’ (BEPS). Under such circumstances, tax havens collectively would cost low-income countries loose some US$200B – more than even the foreign aids of US$150B that they received annually, (Jomo, June 2022).
Indeed, TNCs-supported agents, and lobbies, have blocked the International Tax Cooperation initiative, (Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Sundaram, June 2021) to ensure tax equity and revenue intake equality, (see also STORM 2023, International Corporate Taxes – issues of misdeeds).
Postings in the week that was:
1] Capitalism and Imperialism, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik
2] On trauma among Gazan patients and medical professionals, Dr. Khaled Alser
3] Somalia and Somaliland dispute, ThinkBRICS
4] China-Africa Cooperation Forum Summit, The China Academy
5] Economic Growth but Economic Underdevelopment, STORM
6] MOMENTUM #215
7] FRIDAY FILES 06/9/2024