Background

The financing needs of MEFMI member countries are huge and continue to widen, on the back of the increasing pressures to finance climate change and food security issues. Despite the member countries’ huge potential for collecting revenues, the average domestic revenue to GDP ratios for the past decade have ranged from 12% to 20% amongst the MEFMI member countries. This variation reflects differences in domestic revenue mobilization efforts and economic structures among the member countries. For some countries, these ratios have even declined over the years, contributing to a widening financing gap and weakening their capacities to finance development needs and poverty reduction programs. The member countries also need resources to respond to climate change amidst declining support from donor agencies. There is an urgent need to significantly enhance the capacity of member countries to generate more domestic revenues to finance their substantial and growing needs, rather than resorting to additional borrowing, which often leads to unsustainable debt. It is in this regard that MEFMI will be offering a course on domestic revenue mobilization to help member countries to improve their tax systems and to strengthen their domestic capacities for domestic revenue mobilization.

Objective

To equip participants with skills to mobilize additional domestic revenue to reduce fiscal deficits as well as finance their development needs and poverty reduction programmes.

Content

The course will cover the following:

• i. Introduction to Domestic Revenue Mobilisation (DRM);
• ii. Tax gap analysis methods for the various revenue sources (income taxes, consumption taxes, international trade taxes, non-tax revenues);
• iii. Experiences and practices in mobilizing revenue from untaxed economy including the informal sector;
• iv. Mobilizing revenue through strengthening the fiscal social contract;
• v. Widening the tax base through sustainable and inclusive growth;
• vi. Effect of tax expenditures on DRM;
• vii. Designing, approving and implementing effective tax policy and tax administration measures;
• viii. Political economy of DRM reform; and
• ix. Monitoring and evaluation of DRM reforms.

Target Group

This course targets junior to mid-level officials in member countries’ tax authorities at both central government and local government levels and in tax policy units.