For the year 2020, Dangote Cement Plc has emerged as the country’s greatest corporate income taxpayer and largest employer of labor.
The leading indigenous cement manufacturer ranked first among the top 100 elite companies listed on the Nigeria Exchange (NGX), paying a princely sum of N97.24 billion to the federal government, followed by MTN Communication Nigeria Plc, which paid N93.6 billion, and Guaranty Trust Bank, which paid N36.66 billion.
The prestigious cement firm, which has operations in several African countries, was named the company with the most employees, with 16,199 employees on its payroll at the time of the performance evaluation.
Dangote Cement was recognized as the most capitalized corporation in the country, with N4,173.22 billion, according to a performance analysis of 100 top elite corporate bodies on the Nigerian Exchange conducted by the reputed business magazine “Next Money.”
Mr. Ray Echebiri, publisher of Next Money, said the performance index analysis of companies listed on the Exchange was conducted with the goal of identifying the best performing ones among the over 150.
The goal of the project, according to Echebiri, a prominent financial analyst, is to supply existing and new investors with information they can trust when making investment decisions.
“The Total Assets of each of the listed companies are extracted from their audited accounts as the initial stage in our assessments.”
He said: “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 rankings, he claims, illustrate where the listed companies are on the corporate ladder in terms of several performance indexes.
The accounting year 2020 is covered in this issue of Nigeria’s Top 100 Companies.
As a result, based on their audited accounts for the 2020 reporting year, it is a performance analysis of companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).”
“In other words, regardless of whether a company’s year-end is March, June, September, December, or any other month in 2020, the information utilized in the analysis is derived from the annual reports and accounts of the various companies issued in 2020.”
Echebiri further pointed out that the analyses were restricted to publicly-held companies in the country and the reason being that the accounts of listed companies are easier to access than those of 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 the country given their huge balance sheet size, the sizeable revenue they post yearly and the mouth-watering profits they declare. However, he added that they 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.
The construction giant, Julius Berger trailed Dangote Cement as the highest employer of labour , albeit far behind, with staff strength of 12,217 and United Bank for Africa Plc which had a total of 10,824 people on its payroll.
The analysis indicated that while Dangote cement with market capitalization of N4,173.22 billion beat the rest of the companies listed on the NGX to emerge as the company with the largest capitalization, MTN Communications Nigeria Plc and Bua Cement Plc. as at December 31,2020, followed as the second and third respectively with market capitalization of N3,458.23 billion and N2,619.41.
Dangote Cement paid the highest corporate income tax during the year under and was followed closely by MTN Communications Nigeria Plc which paid corporate income tax of N93.66 billion and Guaranty Trust Bank placed third with corporate income tax payment of N36.66 billion.
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