The Société minière de Boké (SMB) is challenging the ranking of the biggest contributors to the Guinean economy. This ranking, made by the Guinean tax revenue service (Direction nationale des Impots) and revealed by our colleagues at Émergence Magazine, lists the 30 companies that contribute the most to the country's economy without SMB, the leading exporter of bauxite in Guinea.

According to this ranking, the telecommunications company Orange Guinea ranks first with more than 1,160 billion Guinean francs contributed to the Guinean tax authorities from January 1 to May 18, 2022, followed by its Orange Finance Mobile branch, which also paid nearly 200 billion Guinean francs in taxes to the Guinean state. The Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) is in third place with just over 125 billion.

The Société Minière de Boké (SMB), which exported a little more than 31 million tons of bauxite in 2021, disproves this ranking and is keen to make some clarifications.

"The SMB notes with surprise the dissemination through the press of information about it, falsely indicating that it is not among the 30 largest taxpayers in the Republic of Guinea", said the SMB in a note sent to the press.

Four hundred and seventy-eight billion Francs of taxes paid in 2022.

In the same note, SMB reveals the amounts of taxes it has paid to the Guinean state.

“SMB informs the national and international opinion that for the current year (2022), it has exported 10,335,020 dry tons of bauxite and has paid to the Guinean State, as extraction and export taxes, the sum of 54,250,019 US dollars, or about 478,371,403,813 Guinean francs. For the year 2021, SMB has paid the Guinean government the sum of 118,100,684 U.S. dollars, or approximately 1,144,431,736,022 Guinean francs, in extraction and export taxes.”

According to these figures, SMB is the second largest contributor to the Guinean economy after Orange Guinea.

SMB, an important partner for Guinea.

The company's share capital is made up of the Singaporean Winning Shipping Ltd, a leading Asian shipowner; UMS, a French transport and logistics company that has been present in Guinea for more than 20 years; Shandong Weiqiao, a leading Chinese company in the production of aluminum, with 160,000 employees; and the Yantai Port Group. The Republic of Guinea, a partner in the project, has a 10% stake. SMB operates in the bauxite zone of the Boké region.

As part of its activities, SMB has already built a railroad line in a corridor from Boké to Télimélé via the prefecture of Boffa. In its mining convention signed with the Guinean state, the company is to build an alumina refinery in the prefecture of Boké.