 Minua kiitos, että tuntuu, että olen pari puhelista, mutta haluan ehkä esitella minulle. Joten minun nimi on Maria Kurikkala. Minulla on ympäristöreli. Tättäen tässä on tuntu minulle järjestelmällä poliisimmatioon tehtyä. On aivan yksinkertaisesti kertomaan, että on todella Se on todella onnistuminen minulle, että se on seuraavaa keskustelua järjestelmässä, jossa on tullut järjestelmä ja kehitystä. Mutta toivottavasti voin ottaa jotain ympäristöksiä. Nyt, kun mietin kommentteja, haluamme sanoa muutamaa, jolloin Finlannissa on tullut, in this sector, taxation and development, and what are our priorities in this sector. First of all, what is quite interesting is that Finnish tax system seems to be very efficient and performant, because the fiscal deficits here in Finland is one of the smallest in the world, and I guess also politicians have done something right, because willingness to pay taxes is very high here in Finland, so almost 80% of the Finns are so-called happy taxpayers, and I believe that the reason for this is that people see the benefit of paying taxes, schools, hospitals and so on, but another factor might also be that the system is very transparent and you can get easily information about how the taxes you have paid have been used. So it's not a surprise that one of the out of four priorities of the Finnish development policy is to strengthen democratic and effective societies, and strengthening the tax base in developing countries is an important element of this work. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that in 2015 Finland, together with other donors, committed to doubling its support for developing countries domestic resource mobilization by 2020, and this was in the context of ADIS tax initiative. Against this background, it is quite logical that we try to do our share of the work to help developing countries to strengthen their systems together with excellent partners like you and wider, and our government actually drafted some years ago an action program to do this, and this program is for the years 2016 and 2019, and I have highlighted two objectives that are particularly interesting and relevant in today's discussion. So especially the objective two, the need to strengthen developing countries taxation capacity, and the objective four, need to support research, are relevant. The fourth one especially because we really believe that all political decisions, whether they are taken at international level, let's say international tax rules, or at national level, for example national fiscal policies need to be based on as good and as reliable information as possible. So it's quite clear that that UN wider's work that we are now discussing fits really well into our development policy objectives. Well, this was what I wanted to tell you about, let's say, the background of the Finnish policies in this sector, but I also want to mention a couple of starting points that are very important for us. First of all, we believe that we need comprehensive approach, because well, it's not only about collecting more taxes, but it's also about good institutions, good governance, and responsible use of the resources that are collected. And I believe that research has a key role to play in this, because we really need information on how the money that has been collected is used. And I already mentioned that evidence-based decisions are key. Well, I will now go to my comments, and I don't have a PowerPoint presentation about them, but I will just run them through as quickly as possible so that we will have time for discussions. And you know that I am not an academic, so I'm not going to comment the scientific or methodological issues of the presentations, but I will leave that to the researchers who are in the audience, who are more qualified to do that than me. So I came with the view of a donor, and so my points are probably slightly more political ones. I was actually asked to tell you about donors' knowledge needs, and I don't probably need to repeat why tax data is so important. It does really have a lot of potential also for improving policymaking. And I must say that as a donor I was very happy to read that the data itself already exists, that in Africa tax and revenue authorities collect a lot of data on individuals and firms, but this data is not used. And so it's extremely positive that this data already exists, and can be made available according to what I've heard at reasonable cost, which is always positive for a donor. Well, we have also heard about the problems of data quality and all the challenges that are related to that, so I'm not going to go to that. But I go back to the donor's knowledge needs. Well, these needs are of course great because there's not much scientific research and evidence, it seems, about the impact of taxis in developing countries, the type of information that decision makers could use when they make decisions on fiscal policy. And you might be aware that the hot topic right now, especially at the EU level, is how to strengthen economic growth that is sustainable and creates jobs, especially in Africa. And I believe that there's a continuing need for systematic and clear information about the impact of governments fiscal policies to issues like foreign investments, job creation, local companies, in particular the SMEs that create a lot of jobs. The second issue, and this is of course linked to the first one, the job creation, how the taxes are, that are collected are used to reduce inequalities. What kind of impact do they really have on people? We are now in Finland, so I have to mention especially on women. And this was quite poorly discussed already yesterday, in yesterday's panel on tax and benefit policies. It was really interesting. Lastly about information needs, the GRD as well as you can done in South African cases can probably produce useful information for addressing illicit financial flows. You already mentioned tax avoidance, so some numbers can be quite revealing. And also all the information we can have that is related to national resources is of course extremely valuable for a donor. Then just a couple of broader comments about the three presentations. What I found also extremely valuable and interesting was the strong capacity building component of these projects. It seemed to me that capacity building is somehow kind of built in the nature of this project because in addition to training activities the cooperation between international and local expertise is so close. So the work that is conducted in joint teams consists both local experts and international experts. So I believe it's a learning experience for all of them. Then the issue of ownership. It was quite clear, we could all hear that the commitment from the Uganda revenue authorities was very strong. But my question is also how big is the ownership of the political decision makers to use this information? Because that will be the determining point on how we receive the real impact on the ground. And if you have any thoughts about this, I would be very interesting hearing also about the GRD, how the developing countries governments have reacted to that, are they interested in using that information? I think this is my last point. What was also very interesting for a donor was the idea to use Uganda and South Africa as examples for other African developing countries. GRD also has a role to play in this. I believe it's very important to put emphasis to the comparability of data. I heard that there are a lot of challenges in this as well but happy to hear more about these issues in the discussion if possible. Thank you.