.Retains largest employer of labour
Dangote Cement Plc has emerged the highest corporate income taxpayer among a pack of 10, and biggest employer of labour in the country for the year 2020.
Available data showed the Top 10 companies listed on the Nigeria Exchange (NGX), cumulatively pooled N351.36billion in which the indigenous cement manufacturer came top, followed by MTN Communication Nigeria Plc’s N93.6billion.
Dangote and MTN were the only two companies that paid so much tax, as the others were below the N37bilion tax range, with Guaranty Trust (GTCo) Bank in the third lead with N36.66billion; Zenith Bank, N25.29billion; while Nestle Nigeria paid N21.43billion, which placed them in the Top 5 of the table.
Other high income taxpayers for the 2020 financial year included Access Bank, N19.11; United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc, N18.1billion; Dangote Sugar, N15.85; International Breweries N12.51; and Stanbic IBTC Holding N11.51billion to occupy the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th positions respectively.
Dangote Cement Plc is sub-Saharan Africa’s leading cement company; with a production capacity of 48.6 million tonnes per year across 10 countries, with a total number of 16,199 staffers on its payroll, also retained its position as the highest employer during the period in review.
Performance analysis
In the performance analyses of 100 top elite corporate bodies on the NXG carried out by business magazine, Next Money, Dangote Cement was ranked the most capitalized company in Nigeria with N4,173.22billion.
Speaking on the analysis, publisher of Next Money, Ray Echebiri, said the performance index analysis of companies listed on the Exchange was carried out with a view to establishing the best performing ones among the over 150 of them.
Echebiri, a renowned financial analyst, explained that the exercise is to provide existing and potential investors with information that they can rely on when they are taking investment decisions. “The first step we took in the analyses was to extract the Total Assets of each of the listed companies from their audited accounts.
“We sorted the total assets of the companies from the largest to the smallest and cut off at the 100th. We tagged the hundred companies that emerged from this exercise “Nigeria’s Top 100 Companies”. Any company that makes it to the corporate elite club of Nigeria’s Top 100 Companies is automatically a candidate for further ranking by Revenues, Profits, Market Capitalization, Number of Employees and Tax Payment.”
…the information used in the analyses are extracted from the annual reports and accounts of the various companies published in 2020 irrespective of whether a company’s year-end is March, June, September, December, or any other month in 2020.
According to him, the rankings show how the listed companies stand on the corporate ladder with regards to the various performance indices. “This edition of Nigeria’s Top 100 Companies covers the 2020 accounting year. It is therefore a performance analysis of companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) based on their audited accounts for the 2020 reporting year.
“In other words, the information used in the analyses are extracted from the annual reports and accounts of the various companies published in 2020 irrespective of whether a company’s year-end is March, June, September, December, or any other month in 2020.”
Echebiri further pointed out that the analyses were restricted to publicly-held companies because of easier access compared to private companies. “Moreover, accounts of publicly-held companies are more believable because they are usually subjected to regulatory scrutiny and approval.”
He explained that his group had no doubt that there are many private companies that would easily count among the top 100 companies in Nigeria given their huge balance sheet size, the sizeable revenue they post yearly and the huge profits they declare.
However, private companies were not a part of the performance review and analyses because their audited accounts do not go through the kind of regulatory examination and approval that the listed companies face, and are, therefore not as believable as those of the publicly-held companies.
Although Julius Berger Nigeria Plc is not among the Top 10 taxpayers, it trailed behind Dangote Cement as the second highest employer with staff strength of 12,217, and UBA came third with 10,824.
