Makkal, let’s take a closer look at Sakti

By Anil Netto,

People should take another look at Sakti International Corporation.
Have a look here. Assuming the website is correct, all that money invested and so little revenue?
The period 1997-1998 seems to have been a busy time for the firm.
This article is about the FBI moving in to take up 95,000 sq ft of floor space in the Northern Life building.
Photo gallery of the Northern Life/Abraham Lincoln building.
This report is about the renovation of the Newhall Building in San Francisco.
Photos of the Newhall building.
On another note, you might also want to read through researcher David Brown’s dissertation on ‘Why governments fail to capture economic rent: The unofficial appropriation of rainforest rent by rulers in insular Southeast Asia between 1970 and 1999′.

The dissertation starts from the assumption that natural resources are easy for governments to tax, as they embody high amounts of windfall profit or “economic rent.” According to resource economics, it is optimal for governments to collect as revenues nearly all of the economic rent earned by resource extractors. However, the actual level at which governments collect economic rent from rain forest timber is generally quite small.
The study argues that government agencies fail to collect timber rent at optimum levels because they are prevented from doing so by rulers who use their positions to build and maintain hidden ties to the timber industry through which they appropriate vast amounts of timber rent.

The conclusion to the dissertation reads:

Cutting down rain forests is a double tragedy. Not only are tremendous ecological and social values destroyed forever, but when governments lack the autonomy to capture timber rent from these forests, this can negatively impact the ability of states to prosper. If there is a lesson to impart it is that as little timber rent as possible should be diverted toward patronage ends or enriching rulers. If the rain forest is to be saved, or at least not disappear without anything to show for it, developing nations must create and faithfully implement incentives for the timber industry that encourage greater efficiency and sustainability, including the optimal capture of timber rent (Brown 1999: 72-80). However, this will not occur unless nations restrain their own political elites. Such restraints will not be erected by rulers, or even bureaucrats, who generally lack the autonomy to make such reforms. Rather strong institutional restraints on elites are unlikely to arise unless civil society demands it.