Dangote and his companies have had their fair share of criticism from competitors and consumers over the years stemming from their strong hold on areas where they have business interest. One of such is the continual criticism of its “anti-market activities” in terms of pricing policy for sugar, which is one of the commodities Dangote Group produces. Dangote Sugar made a strong response on Page 2 of a Nigerian daily, the Guardian Newspaper for Friday January 11, 2013.

Whilst their response must have satisfied their supporters and shareholders and perhaps drawn further criticism from competitors, I am more interested in a piece of information the company brought to the attention of the public. In a detailed breakdown in defence of its policies termed “THE FACTS”, bullet point 5 is particularly interesting. It reads as follows;

In year 2012, our unaudited financials shows that we recorded a net profit of about N11billion while we paid the Federal Government a total of N20.25billion which includes: VAT N8.2billion, income tax N5.4billion, duty/other charges N5.8billion and withholding tax of over N800million. In effect, the Federal Government’s income is almost twice our profit”.

So there you have it. The Nigerian Government generated a whopping 20.25 billion naira ($128 million) from Dangote Sugar’s operations alone. Whilst this assertion is resounding, it is important to note that the VAT of 8.2 billion naira ($52 million) and Withholding Tax of 800 million naira ($5.1 million), totaling 9 billion naira, was paid by consumers and other companies who supply goods and services to Dangote. Dangote simply acted as an agent and collected the revenue on the government’s behalf. However, the 11.2 billion naira ($70 million) in taxes and duties came out of the revenue of the company which by the way is still astonishing!

Culled from Ugometrics