 Okay, let's get started. Friends, welcome to this event. It's how can tax benefits system support households through crisis. Let me start by thanking you all for being here and also thank the wonderful wider team for putting on putting on this event. Of course, led by Yucca, who you will Yucca Pirtula, who you will hear from but Anna and Maria and the whole team. Thank you very much indeed. My thanks also to our panelists, Joya Demelo from OECD and Marie LeBrand from University of Cape Town. Unfortunately, Claudia, Claudia Sanueza, the Treasury and the Secretary for the Government of Chile will not be able to join us because she's been called away to a parliamentary meeting to discuss tax reform in fact. But we'll have a good discussion on the issues. Let me just start by saying a few introductory words and then I'll hand over to Yucca for his presentation. So how do we let's let's start by thinking about the following setup conceptually okay. We have a distribution of market incomes, which are generated in a complex nuanced way highly context specific interaction or formal informal etc etc there's some market distribution of income. And applied to this is some tax and transfer system, which itself is complex and nuanced and applying to formal incomes and then there are transfer things which are in a different ways cash and so on and so forth. And then the outcome is a consequence of the application of this of this tax and transfer system to the market incomes that emerge from from from the operation of the of the economy. So that's the that's the structure that we have. How would we assess this situation, how would we assess the tax and transfer system which is being applied to the market incomes to generate the consequences. Well, we can, there's a tradition of analyzing these things, applying optimal tax theory in economics going back to Merleys and Atkinson and Stiglitz and so on. And what we need we need at least two things we need the objective function of the government. What is the quality of versus it what does it think about poverty, what uses it have on gender etc etc. And we need a model of the economy we need what sort of incentive effects might this tax system have, and how does how do the sectors interact etc. Putting all of these together, we can make an assessment of the current tax and transfer system as applied to the market structure, leading to the consequences which we evaluate using the government's objective function. And I think a lot of this, and I think economists do this reasonably well of course there are gaps in this and that and their data issues etc but I think by and large by and large. We seem to do this reasonably well. As I said there's a long tradition going back to Merleys and Atkinson and Stiglitz and so on. But here's something that I don't believe, or rather we've only just started thinking about over the last five, seven, 10 years. What happens when there's a shock to the system. What happens when there's a crisis. Okay, this is different from health shocks which are idiosyncratic and uncorrelated. We're talking about major economy wide shocks to the system, which of course changes the market distribution of income. And we ask ourselves a question, what then what happens then. Well, in practice, several things happen. Basically the system as it currently exists, responds through its own rules its own internal rules of operation etc etc it responds it has to respond to this to the shock to this change in market in the market distribution the distribution of market incomes. But also actually new schemes are put in place, because perhaps the government realizes that there are gaps in the existing system. In many countries and countries like India, for example, these schemes are usually given the name of the prime minister, it's called the prime minister's something or the other, or it's given the name of a stalwart of the ruling party from the past. In India will be the Bajpayee system or if Congress was in power will be the Indira Gandhi system and so on and so forth. But new new schemes are also put into place. And this is the practical response, and there are consequences so there's a shock which changes the market distribution of income, the system responds automatically, but also new schemes are put in place, and together we have a new set of consequences. And we might ask certain questions about this. We might ask, what are the features of a system, which gives better consequences. Of course, we have to define what we mean by better etc etc. What is it about a system that gives rise to better consequences from the point of view of our objective function. But the point is that these better consequences will always be crisis specific, because the crisis has changed the market distribution in a particular way. We have to apply the system and new schemes, and we get the consequences. What if the, what if the, what if the concept, what if the crisis is something different. What if it's not a, what if it's not a covert type crisis but it's a trade crisis or it's a refugee crisis or if it's this crisis or that crisis environmental etc etc. Okay. Well of course, then the system would have responded differently and the consequences would have been different. So if we think of a system, can we ask the question, could there be a system which addresses a range of crises reasonably well in the sense that it leads to consequences which are not not as bad as they are as they otherwise would have been. So the optimal design of a system to address crises to address a range of crises becomes an important interesting analytical question. And I think this is what we're, this is what we're heading towards is what we should be heading towards in this in this framework of thinking about responses to crises. Now you know the wider project and many other exercise that are going on are all contributing to the I think to this to this grand question that's being that's being asked. And I hope we can have a good set of discussions around this. What sorts of systemic responses should there be to crises whose origin we're not going to be we're not sure about entirely. Who's timing we're not sure about entirely, but we know for sure that they will be a crisis of some sort or the other in the coming three to five years or so. Just a couple of complications as well for just, you know, in terms of government responding to these crises is the question of should the government put some money aside, say for a rainy day in case the crisis arises. That's our question. And secondly, what if individuals are themselves responding to these crises. How should the government's response then change these are all complicating factors which I think make the analysis very interesting, but also the policy, the policy issue, much more nuanced much more complicated. So, let me stop there. And just as a, this is just a brief introduction, and let me hand over to you to make a presentation on following up on these things. Yucca, over to you. Thanks so much, Raleigh. Thanks for providing that excellent introduction to also to my presenters. So let me just follow through and just reiterate the what are the tax benefit and what are the goals of a tax benefit system. So of course, I mean, one key objective is to alleviate long term. So to offer social protection for those households who face adverse conditions in long term. But then, as Ravi said, the tax benefit system should also offer. Yucca, do your slides need to move forward? They are not moving. No. Oh, yes. Now, now, now, now we're on to the first slide. Yes. Do they move now? Yeah, that that now we're okay. We have the tax benefit goals slide. The tax benefit goals has just gone past and now now we're on to automatic stabilization in developing countries. Oh, yeah, I'm seeing the tax benefit goals. Yes, that's it. That's the one that's the one we have now. Sorry. Sorry. Yes. Yes. All right. Sorry about that. Right. So social, the tax benefits systems also provide some cushioning against negative shocks. And these shocks can, for example, stem from the economic crisis, which lead to unemployment. And then the government can come in and and open unemployment benefits for some of the cities. So this functioning can also be seen from the point of view of automatic stabilization. And what we mean by that is an automatic increase in benefits or people becoming eligible for benefits and a reduction in taxes when income is required. And colleagues in the southward project of UNU wider have analyzed the extent of automatic stabilization in developing countries. So, mainly, a webinar has a paper which examines this issue for three developing countries, Ghana, South Africa and Ecuador. And he calculates how well tax and benefit policies insulate households from these shocks. So this insurance, if you wish, can, in principle, range from zero to 100%. If there's zero insurance, then whenever people face shocks in the market incomes, let's say earnings, then also their disposable income declines in one to one minute. However, there could be, in principle, there could be also perfect insurance. Meaning that households with disposable income would stay constant despite the marketing decline. So here are the results from the annual value paper on the extent of automatic stabilization in these three countries. And these are calculated for a general shock of over 5% decline in pre-tax incomes. And as you can see, the social insurance offered by the Ghana system is very minimal. It's somewhat better in Ecuador and definitely more sizable in the case of South Africa. But especially, I mean, the Ghanaian and the Ecuadorian social insurance policies are very small. And how do these compare with what we know about the conditions in development at once? And here's information about the EU on average and the US systems from the DOL study done in the same way. And in the advanced economies, the extent of social insurance provided is much more extensive. And really similar results can be obtained when looking at this coronavirus pandemic. So there was a wider study by, yes, the last one and colleagues who analyzed the pandemic affected five countries in Africa. And again, the result was that the social insurance provided by these African governments was very modest. Maybe with the exception of ZAM. Why do we have so little automatic stabilisation in developing countries? So I think there are three key reasons. The first is a simple one. And it's related to the fact that the government's science and hence the level of taxes and benefits is much smaller in developing countries than they are in developing economies. The second reason is that there's a large share of workers who work for the informal sector as they don't pay tax. And if the incomes decline, the tax which they don't pay can't go down basically. And the third reason is that many benefits are not mistested against income. Rather they are based on what is often called a proxy means testing, which means that the eligibility for benefits is based on asset indices and calculating the eligibility requires data collection in order for the systems to reach new recipients. Let me now move on to discuss whether there could be reform options so that there would be better social insurance offered by the developing economies. And as Ravi already alluded to, public economics has a conceptual framework stemming already from the work from early 1971 in terms of optimal tax work. And there a key result is that other things equal that the chosen redistribution by the government should increase whenever the pre-tax income difference is increased. If society starts to put a greater value on equal distribution of incomes or for some reason the negative impacts of taxation on economic efficiency are achieved. Together with Ravi and Miao, we examine using the Burlesian set up how the Zambian tax and benefits system should react to shocks and if the shocks indeed lead to a greater pre-tax income inequality then also the redistribution capacity of the government should increase. There is also a question not only about the extent of social protection but also about the type offered. And this is related to how well targeted social protection policies should be in the developing country context if gross incomes are difficult to observe as they presume they are. Then means testing against income is not possible but rather the countries can use more targeted transfer systems which are for example of this BMP proxy means tested time or in principle they could also have more universal systems covering certain demographic groups like households with older persons or in principle also everyone and that would be the case of a universal basic income, UPI. And we think that there's a trade-off. So in normal circumstances if you like targeting works well because for the given money that the government needs to use for the system if targeting works well it's meant to minimize the poverty or maximize poverty reduction. But in the case of shocks if the profile of the needy household changes dramatically or drastically then the original targeting is not any more necessarily optimal and if it's difficult to swiftly change the targeting then this could be a case towards a move towards more universal systems. And in ongoing work, Gaby Travi and Adnan Sahir and Pia Rattenhooper of the EUI have examined this issue in the Ethiopian context and I think our results already indicate that the increase in the Ethiopian poverty numbers would be smaller when shocks hit under a more universal system than under the present more targeted system. So let me conclude. That the social insurance system requires resources, requires government revenues so that tax side cannot be ignored and of course it also requires the capacity to implement these transfers which is not an easy task. The desirable scale of the cash money is likely much greater than the existing one offered by many countries and one could also consider moving towards more universal systems especially if these shocks appear to be large and if they hit frequently. And I'll stop there and hand it over back to you Rob. Thank you. Thank you Yukka. If you could remove the screen share. Yes, that's great. Thank you. Thank you very much. So Mari and Joy, if you could come back on the screen. We have two great panelists to comment and discuss and give their own experience and the benefit of their own research on this. They can comment on whatever it is that they want to comment on. What I've said, what Yukka said, but I thought it might be useful for them at least to touch on the following two questions in this first round of exchanges, which is given their country experiences. How well did the existing systems cope in protecting the poor when a crisis hit. And secondly, whether it's good or bad, what features of the present system explain whether they did well or badly. If they could speak to that, but you speak to whatever it is that you want to speak to, then we can get a discussion going. Joelle, why don't you, why don't you start. Okay, sure. Well, good afternoon. Good morning for some and thank you very much for this invitation. It is an honor to be participating in this panel. And I'd like to mention that I couldn't agree more with most of what Yukka and Ravi have mentioned, so I'll just try to complement it. And just mentioned that my, I worked at the Center for Tax Policies so my area of expertise is in tax, but I'll try to complement and also touch other issues that are related from the point of view of the design of the benefit system. So, yeah, as we know the pandemic has had a biggest impact, has had a big impact in poverty, it has led to the biggest increase in poverty in the last decades, and also it has widened inequality. And this has happened despite unprecedented fiscal packages because governments, both in developing countries and advanced countries, try to support households and businesses significantly of course these packages varied in terms of the country's fiscal space, and it also varied in terms of the pre-existence of automatic stabilizers as you can mention. So, one thing that I think it comes clear from the experience of this crisis but that it was also already known before is that tax transfers are crucial to protect households during crisis, even much more than tax relief, right? And this is even more so in countries where there is informality. The transfers as we know they are especially important to reach the low end of the distribution. So, I think this pandemic has shown the importance of transfers, otherwise the impact on poverty would have been much worse. And so even in OECD countries, which I know a bit more of the experience, OECD countries relied a lot on job retention schemes to prevent mass unemployment, but then they also had to rely on direct transfers to households as there are many workers that are not covered by social insurance, and then there was this need to identify those in need. And in a timely manner, that's the problem in crisis, you need to do things fast and that has been also the experience in developing countries, and I think that some lessons from this crisis is that well, there is a huge importance of social registries, those countries that already had a very good developed social registry managed to do better. Also, it's very important to have efficient payment delivery systems, and it's also important to be able to communicate well and reach those who are hidden in the population and we don't know where they are and to so that they are aware that there are new transfers for them to help them. And so in this sense, I think like coming back to Yucca's presentation, I think the fact that that we know that the pandemic showed that there is a need to identify the vulnerable quickly because the response needs to be immediate. And that has revived this debate between targeting and universalism. And we know that targeting is cost effective given fiscal constraints and that's the advantage but then if vulnerable people moving and out of poverty, then targeting fails to protect them. And this is even harder when there is a crisis because things change quick. And if there is a crisis, what Yucca was saying that in the presence of a shock, then there might be a case for universal, universal responses, right. The connection between targeting and universalism also has existed previously and it's very linked intrinsically linked to the levels of informality that countries face, because as we know in developing countries where there is a high rate of informality, the middle income of the distribution usually is not covered by non-contributory schemes because they are not poor, but if they are informal they are not covered either by social insurance. And this phenomenon is called as the, is referred to often as the missing middle, right. So, we can argue that universalism in this context would not face this limitation as everyone would be covered. But the biggest problem as we know is that universal programs if we provide adequate benefits then they are extremely costly. And I do share and I think that this is among across many international organizations, there is some agreement that universal programs might be more effective if they're, if they focus what more effective now that they're less costly and they're much more justified if they focus on specific groups such as the children or the elderly. And there's also this view that universalism is expected to achieve better outcomes where most of the people in countries where there's a big share of the population that is vulnerable or poor. So I think overall I think there is a consensus on the need of providing universal social protection floors in terms of the normative aspects, but there is not really I believe there is not really a consensus on how to achieve these flaws in terms of the design of the benefit system. And there is neither a clear solution on how to find social protection financing gaps. And I would like to also mention briefly, another crisis that has been affecting all the world, which is energy, which are energy, which is the energy crisis, and their governments have had to support households and businesses to ensure that they can afford energy and also food. And in this case there have been also tax measures that have been introduced and also non tax measures as subsidies. Most countries have been introduced initially tax measures and then I would say that high income countries have introduced more non tax measures like transfers also to compensate in terms of counting how many measures. One could argue that high income countries have also and have also introduced many transfers and are gradually shifting towards transfers. And ideally in this case it makes sense to focus on targeted transfers as universal transfers would be extremely costly, but also tax measures that benefit the whole population can be very unequal. And they are also muting this signal in terms of prices that we need to transition to carbon neutrality. But what I would like to highlight from the energy crisis is that in this case for transfers, it has also shown that even the most sophisticated fiscal systems may not be ready for identifying the specific groups. But that has been also the case in Germany. When you need to identify specific groups that it's not only about income but it's also about regions or availability of alternative transportation modes, then even the most advanced fiscal systems are challenged. So I think this crisis has also highlighted the importance of data. And basically to sum up, I think shocks are here to stay, they are the new normality, and then this means that social protection is needed more than ever. And so to achieve greater resilience to crisis, I think definitely we need a significant domestic resource mobilization and in particular increasing tax revenues. But we need a new social contract as the Chilean government has argued for their tax reform. That means that citizens must agree to pay more taxes because we agree that their increased spending needs, for example, for climate change disasters. But this cannot be done magically, we need to increase trust in governments to manage to convince people to pay more taxes. And we finally, I would think that we need to reform the transfer system. That seems to be clear, but we need to design non-contributory schemes, not only non-contributory schemes, but we need to reform the whole social protection system in terms of the pension system so that they are coherent. And finally, I would like to really emphasize the need for better data, irrespective of what type of benefit system we have, we will always need more data to identify those in most need. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, Joya, the mail-up, OECD of course. We now turn to our second panelist, Marie Lebrun of the University of Cape Town. Take it away, Marie. Thank you, Raleigh. And I will bring the South African experience in this first round to this discussion, just as an example of what both Yuka and Jo have been saying about the fact that actually the context matters a great deal in terms of what the optimal combinations are and what the art of the possible is. And so obviously when COVID arrived, we were all thought short in terms of a well-thought-through plan for a pandemic. And I guess part of the purpose of today's discussion is to extract learnings and to see, okay, but how can that not happen again? But when COVID arrived, it arrived into a South African society that, as you all know, has extremely high inequality, a poverty rate of about 50%, just over 50%, and the bottom half of the South African income distribution is characterized by pretty weak links to the labor market. The bottom 30% are dependent upon a very extensive social protection system focused on the elderly and the young. So not anything in particular for the working age population. And then as you move up the income distribution, the links into the labor market strengthen, but up until the 50th percentile at least, it's characterized by access to informal work that need not necessarily be informal sector, but casualized work within the formal sector. And that's the society we have. And if you overlay that with the reality of the lives that people live, the vulnerable are often in informal settlements. Or in rural areas and we knew ex ante would battle greatly to cope with a lockdown. It was almost, you know, if you think as a policy person about your society and the people that you know the impact of this COVID pandemic. And then you're asking people to lock down and stay at home, and they're living in an informal settlement with very weak access to, you know, to tap order and to electricity and etc. Anyway, so that was the context within which covered a right and what's also distinctive about COVID of course was was that the concern was the labor market shock as well as Ravi was saying earlier. This is not exactly the same thing as a drought. You know, or an agricultural shock. It was this shock to the labor market so So what was the policy response and how did we get there. So, you know, February, March 2020. We're looking at the society and looking at our data and working on Okay, what can we do to protect those in the labor market. We're locking down we're stopping the economy. What are we going to do. And the responses were as follows to some extent the formal sector workers that were well integrated into unemployment insurance. And the response came in the temporary employment relief scheme that that offered through the companies. Some subsidization of the wage cost to prevent companies from laying off their workers through the UIF through through the normal channels, the official channels if you like. There was there was also some company attacks delays, etc. Also targeted at the formal sector. And, and those were implemented and could be implemented because the administrative systems were in place. So the big conundrum then was, okay, but what about the informed more casualized parts of the workforce and the informal sector in which those administrative systems are just absolutely not there. And so the design of those of us working with our data just profiling our data was actually to see, okay, if we top up the existing social grants, would they reach those informalized work workers. We need some we need, we need a connection between our existing social grants because that's eminently doable. You can top up your grants. Very good. Very good system in South Africa of administering these social grants they're not means tested they're not complicated. And, and it turned out that they would reach many of the informalized workers because they are in the they are in vulnerable families. And so one of the one of the innovations of the South African grant system was simply to top up those grants and that was a it was a success. It worked, but that's still left us with a conundrum to try and work out. Okay, but there's certain, you know, the in the in the sort of third, fourth and fifth deciles there's extremely vulnerable workers who aren't going to be reached by by that. So what do you do and so the country designed some emergency administrative procedures where people where these workers could apply for what was called the social relief of distress grant, pitched extremely low, about a third of the poverty line actually 350 Rand per person could apply and they put administrative systems in place it took about six weeks to do that. And put this grant in place for the first time in the country ever at the working age population targeted at them. It wasn't perfect. It's very low, but the evidence implied. It's amazing what South Africans did with 350 Rand a month in coping with the pandemic was absolutely key. And the one area where the country was really caught with this pan star, and we let our people down quite badly is that we don't have a food system, and that contrast greatly with other countries, we have school feeding. And then we have civil society that's very involved on the food side so in terms of dealing with the hunger. We did extremely poorly in particular because government was was quite reticent in its approach to the pandemic to actually integrate with civil society and all hands on deck and let's see what we can do. They wanted to run the policy but we have an absence of a policy about food. You know, so that's the terrain. So we did pretty well and quite innovatively on these on these grants and cash. And, and the fact that it was a pandemic seemed to free up the political space so that they just got on and design these interventions and didn't worry so much about the long run to stop the tax side of the of the thing. And, and the evidence was that we really did the grants really did help with poverty alleviation and food and nutrition and hunger in particular, but, but on the direct food support, we did extremely well. I'll stop there for now, Robbie and we can come back later. Thanks. Great well thank you very much indeed Murray for that in depth, in depth look at the South African South African case. Let me actually suggest to both to Joe and Murray that we that we go into an audience session now to see get some reactions and so on. Because there is another question that I wanted to put to the panel which which we'll get round to and actually the audience can also talk about this which is what was what will be your wish list in terms of pieces of analysis that that you would want to do, so that we could we could be better ready for the next crisis in South Africa and in of course other countries in Zambia, Ethiopia and so on. So let's let's let's invite members of the audience now to to make to make their comments if you could indicate that you want to speak. Then then you can, you can be led into the lead into the speak. So we have a Radwa Radwa, please introduce yourself and and say a few words and then God's power after that Radwa. Thank you. I'm Radwa Shady and from Egypt. I am working as a consultant mainly in social policies. So this topic is really interesting for me because our country is unfortunately share almost the same threats and same challenges. So of it we can say in the first phase of the first year 2020. Our government was taking this social protection very seriously, because there was an adoption of a structural reform program, which already negatively affecting the poor people. The poor was not ready for another crisis and unfortunately around 45% of the workers are in the informal sector, which makes them more vulnerable. However, the government started to make like recording and provide them cash transfer for around six months. Very small amount of money, however, it was a great step because it was the first time to collect the data about workers in the informal sector. There was a lot of, we can say a package of social policies adopted in especially in 2020, however, due to this recent war in Ukraine and the food security problem in Egypt. And also different inflation due to also the, you can imagine that we make, we can say depreciation of our currency in front of the dollar twice this year and we are expecting the third one. So all of these, because we need a lot of foreign currency exchange due to all of the threats within the couple of years before. So we are negotiating with the IMF to have another loan, which unfortunately will make the things worse for the poor people. That's why the government should make some consideration about the poor. How can, for example, we make some of the formalizing and all of these stuff. This was like a small brief about the current situation in Egypt. No, thank you. Thank you very much indeed Radva for that for the experience from Egypt. So let's move on to God's power now and then after that, Jose. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's Mr. God's power from Nigeria, West Africa. This topic is very up social protection. And my question is, is this I am as it is volunteer specifically for as it is it's 12 and four is very important to us in West Africa, Nigeria. Now, in you look at the economics financial sector, you see that it is those at the survival sector, you know, the poor people that usually suffer suffer from this and don't this don't really work for them. And then you look at that is West Africa now, and then you look at East Africa look at South Sudan because of also the crisis. So the question is how do we, you know, implement this out with this apply to the survival level of people in the survival economic level in Nigeria and in South Sudan, because they are the foresters in Nigeria. So in the next few months, elections and first approaching, and those are the survival economic level at the grassroots are the worst it and this topic is very up is coming at the right time is very important. So it's very critical. How does this apply, how does this apply in practical terms and how sustainable it will be the application. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed. Let's move to Jose, and then shocker after that Jose. Thanks, Robert. Good morning, everyone. Congratulations for this meeting and Jose from Venezuela and PhD doffing university and working for different international organization with a tough tax inspector we have boarded as a roster. I think in the American area inequalities, one of the principal issues, I think we need to resume the international tax system. I think the OCD initiative of Spillard to, I think it's, it's a good project to try to to eliminate tax incentive, because I think six percent of GDP of us in Germany gave it is basis in taxing sentences also. To improve BAT collation for digital tax savers, I think the different initiative is the OCD Inter-American Development Bank, ATF is a good option to try to to collect more ink revenue to try to give the different technical assistance for the poor people. I think in this moment I think we live in a crisis, I think also to rethink the international tax environment to try to improve the different social assistance in our country. Many thanks, Ravi. Great. Thank you very much indeed Jose. So Shaka, you had your hand up. Would you like to go now? Oh, yes. Thank you so much, Ravi. And I have a question for Marie. Could you introduce yourself please. Okay, my name is Shaka Bob and I'm a doctoral candidate at Stellenbosch University Department of Sociology. Okay, thank you. And it's good to see you, Marie. I've got a question for Marie, because he's been speaking about the special COVID-19 grant. But however, the special COVID grant is going to come to an end I think March 2023. And they've been calls for the introduction of a basic income grant. So civil society has been raising this voice about a basic income grant in South Africa. My question to Marie is, how viable is this grant? How do you introduce a basic income grant to replace the special COVID-19 grant? So I'd like to hear about the viability. Thank you. Are there any other questions from members of the audience before we before we have a second round. Please put your hands up if you if you'd like to contribute to this with your with your country experience or your analytical perspective on this. So then let me let me then just throw it back to the panelists and also actually to Yukka with us with the second round of question then Marie you can respond to the specific question on South Africa as well when we come to you. It's the following, you know, Marie gave a great detail about how South Africa did well or not didn't do well with respect to the specific crisis, the COVID crisis and he said we were caught with our pants down in these areas, etc. But of course there'll be there'll be the next crisis won't be this one. And actually we don't know what the next crisis will be. It could be some refugee type thing because something blows up somewhere it could be a financial meltdown so any any of these things. How do we think about that, in terms of being ready for the next crisis when we don't know what the next crisis is going to be that's a question I want to post you. But more generally, what are the specific pieces of analysis that you would like to that you would like to see now, in order to get us ready for the next crisis so let's go to joy then Marie, then you can then maybe members of the audience can also chip in just put your hands up. If you want to speak. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I think like, well, that's what the problem with what you were saying Ravi we don't know what the, what the next crisis will be so it's difficult to, to, to think of different types of responses, because they would be specific to each crisis. So in that sense, I think like, I think we still need to solve, and that would solve many issues, how we reach this universal basic floors. Once we we we have managed to do that which is a very challenging thing to do, then we will we have a we have a basic floor to start with no. So we will be better prepared for for for in the next crisis. That's my first point. And so the questions and the research I would I would mention our link to that, but then second one crisis that we will for sure know it will happen is climate change and climate change disasters. So in that sense, I think yes, the type of social protection response that we need to design rate to respond to this type of crisis would be very specific so we need some more research on that specific aspect that we know it will happen. So those were would be my two big points. Now, coming back to how to reach these universal basic floors as I was saying before, I think we have two big questions, how to achieve universal coverage in terms of the design of social protection schemes. And by this, I wonder like, what should countries focus on expanding coverage from contributory schemes subsidized by the government what we what some countries called matching contributions, or should they just focus on on expanding non contributory programs. My, my, my initial response would be what it depends on on the starting point of this country, whether there is a pre existing significant share of population covered by contributory schemes or not. But in any case we need research about that. And then any of these options will will will require a significant funding for this. So then the second big question is how to finance this universal basic floors. I don't know why there is doing some research the OECD is also doing some research on that but we need a lot of research on the topic, because it's very challenging like the DILO has estimated that for low income countries to cover these basic floors, they would need 16% of their GDP low income countries. So it's a huge gap that we need to to finance. So well then I have a couple of ideas of what we are considering in terms of measures but coming back to the, to the specific list of four pieces of analysis I think there it would be very important to carry out an impact evaluation of different matching contribution initiatives, for example in Malaysia Indonesia, there are many countries that are doing this, whether these these these programs are succeeding in permanently increasing contributory coverage. And then also what other other countries that have what that have managed that they are following and a strategy to cover the population via non contributory schemes, how this has fun function, whether this has had an impact on formalization or not. And then, especially which countries, I think case studies are very important, which countries are have succeeded in raising revenue significant revenue and like for example we have studied there are very few countries that have managed to to raise additional 5% of GDP in tax revenues in the last 10 years. And the amounts of funding that we need to cover so for social protection floors is immense. So it would be very interesting to to to study a specific cases that have been successful in doing so. So in terms like and this, what Jose was mentioning, but there are many, many strategies that we need to pursue in terms of raising revenues. I think that this should be strategies should be short term medium term and long term, but they span for all the tax system we need to review tax expenditures we need to review capital and income and capital and labor income taxation. We need to fight tax evasion but especially among the rich. We need to start evaluating alternatives for taxing the rich in countries where capital income taxation has not has not been has not been effective, like the case of Chile, like the case of Colombia so exploring inheritance taxation. Another property taxes. Network taxes, for example. And we also need to evaluate reforming fossil fuels and environmental taxation. Of course, these are very regressive taxes but we need to complement with compensatory mechanism and ensure and ensure that then the whole tax and transfer system related to that is progressive. And same holds for what we once we have good social registries when we can compensate the most vulnerable effectively, then we can start reforming but tax expenditures, but making sure we compensate the most vulnerable. That would be among the big ideas on how to finance these gaps but I think there is a lot of research needed and especially case studies impact analysis of these new programs that are being introduced. Thank you. Well, well I'd be shocked if a group of researchers didn't say that there was more research needed but Murray, I wonder whether you'll say that less research is needed. No, but but I do think that there's there's definitely some very, very key issues. Whatever the shock, whether it's climate change or it's clear to me that that that covered has pushed us into into needing to understand the connections between the economy and the labor market and the private sector, and the social protection system as an, as an interface together because obviously the viability of the social protection system, even in the, in the normal, if you, if you like, in a livelihood tracking sense, the viability if your employment creation is going really well and the economy is booming. You want, you want the social protection, people to be graduating out of the social protection system. So you need, there's huge issues around designing this interface under, you know, and and designing a nuanced flow both within government and how they, their programs interlock with each other, because that's crucial for targeting to, but especially this connection between support that is needed for the type of unemployed people that we have, not just in South Africa, but everywhere and the, and the fact that the bounce back from covert is not the same people getting the same jobs there's a lot of restructuring going on in the lab market you need to understand that and design your protection system so that you're supporting people in a way that when they do integrate into the lab market that graduate out of the system that's key to the sustainability of, of the system, I feel, and even key to designing basic income support so if you come to this argument about universalism versus targeted interventions etc, given the fiscal constraints, it's very hard to see how people that the standard argument for basic income grant if you like, is going to win the day in most African economies it's really a sort of a tailored intervention, certainly in the South African context to come back to Shaka's question. It's a tailored intervention about whether this country needs something for for the working age population. And, and given the support of the social relief of distress, the success. My answer would be that we do actually need something but it needs to be integrated with with the texture of South African unemployment so that you know very clearly is this the long term unemployed is this more akin to poverty alleviation but with good links to the lab market, or is this temporary support for for workers that are that are likely to to become employed and can graduate out of the system. So that's that's that's my my one key point. The country, as part of its, this is infrastructure, this is social infrastructure, there's just no way through I completely agree with with you and, and you can and everybody, it's become part of the discussion. The one point that I had wanted to make as well related to the basic income support is that you have to focus on the tax side. The civil society voice often is not really willing to look at the costing, or only in a very flip way, like in South Africa okay but let's impose some wealth taxes. Yes, but if you really do a hard look at the wealth tax side, it's not going to generate the revenue that we need to do this. So you have to look at the tax side so what about the research. Well, I want to put in an advertorial, if you like, for for the type of work that you guys introduced us to to the SA model the CQ, you know the benefit incidence exercises. But with better links to the labor market side. I think it's absolutely crucial because you do need to play out some realistic scenarios with, even in the civil society engagement, even, you know, to, to, to show, for example, in the in the South African case if you change a targeting rule in a small way, the the the each of the grant doubles all paths. Right. And so then you need to be able to look at the poverty impacts of that you need to be able to look at the tax implications of that. So these integrated models, I think are absolutely crucial to have in place. I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed Mario where we only we only have two minutes left. And in those two minutes I'd like to turn to you to say some to say some concluding concluding words and and bring this to a conclusion. Thank you. Thank you. I don't know if I managed to do that. But let me first follow me also. Thank you. Thank you for both joy and worry. Excellent points you make. I agree. I agree with what was been said. So, so 3.3. So the first is, I think there has to be more analysis of the suitability of various various systems, depending on the country circumstances. So it might be, might not be the case that the the the African countries cannot apart from South Africa perhaps and maybe some others cannot implement a completely universal system, but perhaps they could implement more. More universal systems than they currently run. So targeted to certain population groups like households with many children or people. And analyzing this, I mean, the suitability of the systems, depending on the country circumstances is one. And the second one, I think, I mean, is linking linking to the financing of the of this more universal system. So looking at the tax side. And then I think one of the one of the messages there is that you need to look at the tax benefits system as a whole. So not all taxes need to be progressive. It's sufficient if the system as the whole is, this is, it's sufficiently progressive. And then perhaps some finance is called as Joy already said, can be found from from the indirect tax. In order to benefit from this new corporate income tax arrangements, I think developing countries really need support in terms of mobilizing those resources. So there perhaps technical collaboration may help. And finally, I think we have made quite a bit of advances in the area of utilizing administrative tax data for tax reasons. And I think there could be more possibilities of also merging various administrative data sets to have a more complete picture of not only the tax side, but also the benefit side. So that that's also something that some of the countries at least can connect with. But really, I mean, that's my concluding comments. No, that's that. Thank you very much indeed. Huge thanks to our panelists, Joy and Murray and to the whole wider team for organizing this. And of course, thanks to our audience for for joining us and for your for your comments and observations. So with that, let us conclude this session. Thank you very much. Safe journeys. Thank you. Bye then. Thank you.