Cape Town - Too many big companies are shifting their profit centres to parts of the world where they can avoid paying tax, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Tuesday.
He told Parliament's standing committee on finance he had encountered a growing optimism around the world when it came to South Africa and the continent as a whole.
"That optimism is about new resource disoveries. It's about the revenue from those resources being used in a responsible way," Gordhan said.
The "resource boom" was leading to a new fiscal base for many countries to work from.
Multi-national companies were asking Africa to build fiscal capacity.
"At the same time these very businesses are the ones that participate in... tax avoidance, which undermines the fiscus as well."