This national report follows on from the project for sustainable forest management in the ACP African countries (GCP/RAF/354/EC) set up by FAO in the framework of its partnership programme with the European Community. Its aim is to aid national forestry administrations in ACP countries to direct their policies and institutions, as they should, so as to meet the goals of sustainable forest management in tropical African forests. The realisation of the above-mentioned aim comes through the knowledge and utilisation of flows of money from tax revenue on the one hand, and the public spending of the countries concerned on the other.
This study proposes presenting the tax system for forestry as it currently operates in the Democratic Republic of Congo before proceeding to calculate the flows of money from the forestry sector to and from the government. In order to present the study in this way, we have subdivided the work into six parts.
The first part deals with general points concerning Congolese taxation and ends with a presentation of forestry resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo and their importance compared to other forestry countries in the Congo Basin. In the second part, the report describes the tax system for forestry in operation in the country and analyses all the forestry taxes levied by the different bodies involved in tax collection. The third part of the report sets out the forestry tax administration of the country, the system for collecting taxes, the institutions that collect these taxes as well as the amounts of revenue collected. In the fourth part, the report presents public revenue granted by the State. The fifth part outlines State spending on forestry. Finally, the sixth part contains our comments and suggestions which the subject calls for before presenting our conclusions.
The drafting of such a national report in the absence of financial support and or logistical aid is all the more complicated when it is carried out in an economic environment where informality reigns and where collaboration takes place with a completely demotivated public administration in total decay.
Here, where all studies of a sector which do not translate into money, people, as resources of information, become mistrustful and retain information. To overcome this difficulty in part, at least with regard to public revenue from forestry sectors and other sectors in the economy, we decided to research this information a step down from the tax network, that is, with the ministries responsible for forestry and public finance.
With regard to taxes for which the rates are well known, we ourselves have collected taxable elements from different sources concerned by this study before going to calculate each tax and to compile all taxes. These calculations thus take out the total amount of revenue due to each service or business which could generate revenue.
In relation to information on the State budget (revenue and expenditure), we benefited from the aid of heads of the ministry responsible for forestry in order to obtain statistics on revenue generated in 2000 which we will outline in the table in the appendix.
Specialised work on forestry tax literature being lacking, we referred ourselves to publications of the time of the Forestry Management Support Project (FMSP), notably to the work entitled “Proposals for forestry taxation” (Ouellet, 1989) supplemented with the results of our studies of sectors carried out by the Forestry Development Bureau on the changes in proportional tax collected by the Fund for the Reconstitution of Forestry Capital (FRFC), as well as different texts, orders and decrees published by the ministry responsible for forestry to make up the contents of this report.
Financial difficulties have prevented us from having photocopies of documents consulted as FAO requested, however we outline, at the end of this report, a bibliography of publications consulted.
Finally, we would like to express our thanks to the FAO delegation in Kinshasa, the people responsible for the Congolese Monitoring Office and the General Office for Administrative, Judicial and Land Revenue and Contributions (GOALR) and all selfless persons for their contribution to the drafting of this report. We hope that it may contribute as much as possible to achieving the goals sought by FAO through its project for sustainable forestry management in our country.