TOTAL REVENUE COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION

Table 13 shows the changes in the different sources of national forestry revenue (as recorded by the public revenue department). It concerns the part of revenue from uncontrolled, guided and controlled harvesting and registered transgressions and market sales of confiscated products. For the past nine years, the total amount of revenue collected by the public revenue department reached 1,466,420,775 FCFA. This gives an annual average of 162,935,640 FCFA.

It should be noted that the levying of hunting tax began with the opening of the hunting season in 1997. Revenue from hunting tax for the year 2000 covers the January – June period. Hunting has not been re-opened since its close in July 2000.

It is also important to observe that the greatest amount of tax collected by the public revenue department comes from wood production and particularly that of woodfuel from uncontrolled harvesting. This portion represents just over 80% of the total amount of tax collected by the public revenue department. Harvesting in zones under development, which currently represents 10% of total revenue, should increase in the years to come with the growth in the setting up of rural wood markets.

Total annual revenue increased significantly from 1992 – 1996. This is certainly due to the efficiency of forest monitoring, to the modernisation of the tax system on forest produce and to the increase in the tax rate in accordance with the SED, a policy adopted by Niger in 1992 thanks to Energy Project II.

A decline in revenue is also perceived from 1996 – 2000 in spite of the institution of hunting taxes. It should be remarked that during this period, several factors contributed to reverse the normal growth of this revenue. They include among other factors, the socio-economic climate of the country which did not encourage regular monitoring of tax payments, fraud, huge misappropriation of funds and the suspension of programme and project funds by sponsors who supported the introduction of the SED.

In the case of rural wood markets, a member of the Local Management Structure regularly completes an administration notebook. In this notebook, the number of stacked cubic metres of wood harvested is recorded, as well as the number of stacked cubic metres sold, turnover (and its distribution among woodcutters, the administrator and the village fund), the total amount of tax collected (and its distribution among the State, the community and the Local Management Structure where the tax is levied).

Rural markets were monitored from 1992 – 1997. This allowed for determining total revenue generated by the rural markets, the distribution of this revenue to different areas as well as the average price of the sale of wood before and after tax per region. Table 14 gives the amounts for the average price and the average tax (rate of allowance deducted) per stacked cubic metre levied in each region.

It should be mentioned in passing that all rural markets in Say and Maradi are of the controlled type. Say’s rural markets are in the second category, whereby the applicable reduction in taxes is 10%. Maradi’s markets are in the third category, whereby the applicable reduction is 20%. Torodi, Kollo and Zinder’s markets are of the guided type and in the second and third categories.

It should also be pointed out that an annual harvesting quota is fixed for each rural market. This annual quota depends on the availability of wood resources, the area of land to be harvested and the facilities of the rural market to sell its produce.

From 1997 onwards, monitoring became less regular. A great deal of data was missing. Establishing a figure for revenue as well as for the distribution of taxes from 1998 – 2000 in Table 15 was done on the basis of averages obtained in Table 14 and annual harvesting quotas allocated to the different rural markets.

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1997

Year	Amount of tax collected	Distribution
		Local Management Structure			Communities						Public revenue department
		Total	MF	DF	Total		MF		DF		Total		MF		DF
1992/1993	4,877,970	1,680,020	1,008,013	672,007		1,192,224		715,334		476,890		2,005,726		802,290		1,203,436
1994	15,235,193	4,712,987	2,699,488	2,013,499		3,208,994		1,925,396		1,283,598		7,376,312		2,950,525		4,425,787
1995	22,717,245	7,207,223	4,128,309	3,078,914		4,935,498		2,804,479		2,131,019		10,574,525		4,229,810		6,344,715
1996	31,424,180	9,809,250	5,699,000	4,110,250		6,640,997		3,838,662		2,802,335		14,973,933		5,989,573		8,984,360
34,231,712	11,272,615	6,262,019	5,010,596		7,848,862		4,308,426		3,540,436		15,109,652		6,043,279		9,065,791
1998	38,641,000	12,910,402	7,086,384	5,823,392		9,046,301		4,830,952		4,215,340		16,684,297		6,673,718		10,010,578
1999	37,541,728	12,628,061	6,894,065	3,030,378		8,869,888		3,547,955		5,321,933		15,193,791		6,415,911		9,924,563
2000	58,554,428	18,486,712	10,631,835	7,854,877		12,631,268		7,210,609		5,420,659		27,436,448		10,974,579		16,461,869
TOTAL	243,223,456	78,707,270	44,409,113	31,593,913		54,374,032		29,181,813		25,192,210		110,500,784		44,079,685		66,421,099

Table 15 thus shows the overall situation for revenue obtained from rural markets and also for the annual overall amount of tax collected by rural markets for sales of wood from 1992, the year of the first rural market, until 2000.

Table 16 gives the allocation of revenue from forestry taxes collected by rural wood markets at different levels. This table illustrates that investment in forestry can be made at all levels with the Management Fund (MF). This management fund exists at the levels of the LMS, the territorial communities and the public revenue department. The management fund is the fund that should be invested in forest management after harvesting in view of the need to restore vegetation, to follow up harvesting of resources and to make other forestry investments. The development fund is the fund that belongs to the LMS, communities or the State, which can be used for purposes other than investment in forestry. Generally speaking, populations use the fund to provide small loans or to build health and educational infrastructures. For communities and the public revenue department, it includes the single development fund for other purposes.

To this day, the application of the new policy has enabled the establishment of approximately 140 rural markets nation-wide. This represents only 10% of the potential at the national level. For these 140 markets, revenue from taxes collected by the LMS amounts to almost 60 million FCFA per year.

As was outlined earlier, the monitoring fund is an account credited with 40% of all payments from production revenue paid to the public revenue department by the Water and Forestry Service (see Table 17).

This fund is directly paid out again to the regions for the needs of monitoring and administrative follow-up of forest harvesting.

As was mentioned earlier, in the context of the role of administration at different levels, the oversight of forestry revenue is centralised within the Territorial Brigade for the Protection of Nature (TBPN). In terms of the revenue from production taxes paid to the public revenue department, this procedure allows for monitoring of the pace and the way in which payments are made by the different decentralised services.

Revenue recorded by the public revenue department is real revenue, the total of which is obtained from transfer sheets sent (after deductions) by local authority managers having forest harvesting in their area. These are in fact the amounts that are credited directly to Account 3001 and which can be withdrawn by the administration responsible for forestry for monitoring requirements. Revenue registered by the TBPN is obtained from sheets sent by decentralised forestry services that have forests for harvesting in their area. Following payment, a Water and Forestry Staff member then forwards these sheets to the local authority manager.

It is important to note here that there is always a difference at the end of every year between revenue recorded by the TBPN and the revenue recorded in the public treasury department. These differences highlight the irregularity of payments made at different levels of the administration and can prompt a monitoring operation.

The fact that Niger is not a producer of industrial roundwood means that all transformed products derived from wood are imported. Customs revenue (see Table 18) is extremely important.

Table 19 illustrates that Niger is not a major exporter of forest products. These exported forest products are mainly wooden craft products (statuettes or wooden masks) and woven articles such as mats and baskets made from palm leaves. Other taxes levied come from products (cardboard, toilet tissue and other) passing through Niger from Nigeria or the Ivory Coast to neighbouring countries.

Total revenue (see Table 20) does not tally with the number of visitors. The gîte permit was introduced in 1993. Outside of Park W, it is difficult to make the distinction between revenue generated by national tourism and that provided by the forestry sector in particular. However, areas like the Air and Ténéré reserves and the giraffe zone generate tourist revenue. In order to get a better picture of the revenue from tourism, it would be important to consider this revenue.