 Hello. Can everyone hear me? How's everyone this afternoon? Good. Excellent. Special welcome. Great to see so many of you here in this plenary session and after a full day as well. I'm not sure what the situation is online but I hope that we have at least as many participants joining us virtually for this final plenary session where we'll talk about financing sustainable development. I am well aware that following a break, especially one that involves refreshments that's a bit of a tough act to follow but we have a wonderful panel whom I'm sure will keep us all engaged during this afternoon. I will just offer a few introductory remarks to background the session before we jump in to the discussion. By the way my name is Denise Wall. Now I'll be facilitating the conversation on how we can address the investment gaps hindering achievement of the UN sustainable development goals. We all know these are ambitious targets. They include eliminating poverty and hunger as well as promoting gender equality, good health and well-being, quality education, clean energy, water and sanitation, and decent work and economic growth for all. Excuse me. Before we go any further though I'd like to recognize the team here at UNewider. They are the kind organizers and sponsors of this important event. As you all already know UNewider is a think tank and a research institute that plays the critical role of providing economic analysis and policy advice to promote sustainable and equitable development. Now if you'll indulge me a little bit on a personal note I have called Finland my home for more than 20 years but my background is in the Caribbean and I've seen encouraging initiatives by leaders such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Motley to harness financing from multilateral banks and institutions to do things like accelerate the transition to net zero, advance worker empowerment and boost resilience while engaging with ongoing climate policy reforms. Now while that's undoubtedly a step forward I believe that scholars and policy makers are increasingly looking to see how we can advance the SDGs through domestic resource mobilization and I know that there's been ample discussion about that during the course of the day. But now let's take a step back to 2015 when the Addis Ababa Action Agenda established the foundation for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This program set out a framework to finance sustainable development by aligning financial policies and finance flows with economic, social and environmental priorities as well. Sadly though, global divergence from this path in the past few years, the pandemic which we've heard much about today as well and Russia's war in Ukraine seemed to have led us to a situation where the great finance divide as it's now known could translate into a wider and deeper sustainable development divide. In developing economies the financing gap threatening achievement of the SDGs is estimated at between 2.5 and 3 trillion US dollars a year. Moreover we've heard the World Bank warn that we seem to be inching closer to losing a decade of development unless we adopt ambitious initiatives to boost labour supply, productivity and investment. And of course to do that we need to aggressively finance sustainable development and that's what we're here to discuss today. With our esteemed panel of experts from around the world and they will help us understand the realities on the ground and to discuss ways to bridge the global SDG financing gap. Now after sitting patiently listening to me I'd like to invite our panelists to introduce themselves in 30 seconds or less so no pressure. One of our panelists by the way, Milly Naluquago is joining us remotely from Uganda. There she is. So maybe we can start with you Milly. You're 30 seconds or so to introduce yourself. Thank you so much Teniz. I join you to thank Unwider for hosting us. My name is Milly Naluquago Isingoma. I've worked with Revenue Administration for 27 years doing research and planning, research with Unwider. I am now working at the Bank of Uganda as Director of Statistics for one and a half years. Thank you once again for this opportunity. Thank you Milly. 30 seconds on the nose and I should point out that Milly has also overseen 80 national and international level research papers on tax policy and administration as head of research planning and development. Let's now move on and see how Dan Bannick does with his 30 seconds. Thank you. Dan Bannick. I'm a professor of political science at the University of Oslo where I also direct the Oslo SDG initiative. A couple of years ago I stumbled into academic podcasting so sometimes I'm also known as a podcaster. It takes a lot of time and sometimes I'm tempted to quit my job as a professor and become a full-time podcaster. Thank you. Looking forward to hearing more about that during the the break or rather during the reception Dan. Thank you for that introduction. Let's now hear from Rose Ngugi. Yeah my name is Rose Ngugi. I am currently the Executive Director Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis which is a government think tank and we focus quite a lot on economic policy in terms of building capacity for the policymaking process, researching on to give evidence for the policy process as well as having networks and engagement with stakeholders to discuss matters policy. Thank you Rose. A bit of background to Rose's introduction there. She was also in the Office of the Executive Director at Africa Group One at the International Monetary Fund. Moving on let's jump back to Peter Choula for his 30 seconds. Thank you and Peter I work at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. I'm in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs. We have a division called Financing for Sustainable Development Office which sort of handles the follow-up to the financing for development process and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the ongoing negotiations and discussions in New York. I work in the Policy Analysis and Development Branch which focuses on policy and research issues and particularly we lead an international task force called an interagency task force on financing for development which produces an annual report every year on the financing for sustainable development report which and I lead the chapters on domestic resource mobilization so that's why I'm here today to help walk you through some of what we've found in our reports internationally. Thank you. Fantastic. Peter also recently authored a paper on how beneficial ownership information supports fair taxation and financial integrity and helps reduce illicit financial flows while increasing the availability of resources for financing sustainable development. Last but not least Emilia Skirk. Hi. Good evening. Thank you for inviting me. I am practice manager in the department, Global Department of the World Bank that is covering fiscal policy and sustainable development in the department. We are responsible for the domestic revenue mobilization agenda and the whole revamp that World Bank is leading now internally. I have also my past in the public sector. I've been responsible for taxes in Polish Ministry of Finance and I have my past in the private sector working as an accountant to help companies optimize taxation. So I guess I have the broad range experience and will be happy to share with you today. Yeah and a more personal note. One thing I can say about Emilia is that she is an art lover so that's a conversation piece for when you guys break off for the reception later on. Well now that we've got the formalities out of the way let's get into the discussion and I should tell you that it's going to be divided into two segments. In the first segment I will lead a conversation with our experts and in the second we will open the floor for audience questions and comments and I'll let you know when that time comes. Now I know that you're all very experienced and experts in your subject areas and if you'd like to comment on each other's responses or contributions please feel free just raise your hand and I'll recognize you and I really would like us to have a sort of animated and informal exchange of ideas which means that I'm going to move away from this spot and come a bit closer to you so that we can get the conversation started and I will start with you since you're seated closest to me I'm not sure if you're you might be rethinking your you might be rethinking but Dan you wear many hats you're an academic you're an SDG expert you're by the way appointed by the Norwegian government and you're a podcast host as we just learned. Now tell us briefly about some of the methods or instruments that you feel will help finance the SDGs as proposed by this expert committee on which you sit. Thanks I must make very clear that I'm not a government appointee I'm here as an academic but I was a part of this expert group that the Norwegian Ministry of International Development put together and gave us a mandate for doing three things one had to do with how should we spend the tens of billions of Norwegian crown or the 1% of gross national income that Norway provides in aid how can we do this effectively to finance sustainable development a second part of the mandate we were given was to talk a little bit about or give some advice on global public goods and the financing for that and thirdly as you know there's a lot of debate in Europe about different types of ways in which governments are using the aid budget within their own borders whether there are certain exceptions to the official development assistance rules that we could come up with so very briefly I can highlight some of the suggestions that we've given in this report which is also available online the first had to do with being very ambitious you know aid is only one small part of the equation but we had to of course our focus was aid there's a lot of other things that can be done I'm sure we can talk about it but one thing that we said was that we need to increase from 1% to 2% of energy and of course this is very controversial you know every sector wants more money we want more money for aid so that was very clear why because there's a lot of demand for it Norway there's a lot of expectations on Norway because we are rich because we're earning more money because of the war there are all kinds of reasons but we also have financial muscle and capacity so we should increase from one to two percent that was the first recommendation the second had to do with coming up with an approach that required some sort of a change in the way we think so we should we actually suggest we should move from charity and donation to a framework that we call investing in our common future it builds on you know the Brentland Commission's report our common future so we want to you know use the concept of investments we would like the Norwegian government norad others to really revisit their portfolio and think about clear targets think about clear ways of evaluating their efforts so a focus on impact effectiveness evaluations that kind of stuff and then thirdly we wanted to make a difference between this growing interest in global public goods and poverty reduction when we and we interacted with you know all the UN agencies the bank the g77 a lot of developing countries low-income countries are really worried that the global north is going to spend a lot of money to finance global public goods and development will be forgotten so we suggest that at least if we are to stick to the zero point the one percent gni principle zero point seven percent of our gni the Norwegian aid should be ring fenced should be year marked for poverty reduction and zero point three percent but increasing over time to zero point seven or even one percent on global public goods to tackle climate health education you name it but poverty reduction should be ring fenced protected and related to this is also of course the support to the private sector because there's a lot of talk about private sector you know mobilizing capital in 2015 when the sdgs came into force there was so much hope put on the private sector that has been well bit of a disappointment there's a lot of talk about you know blended finance and how the public sector can de-risk and help private sector to invest we are basically saying that yes there is a role that government can play a very important facilitating role we have a Norwegian investment fund called nor fund that is doing a great job just yesterday the report was that between 2021 the the Glasgow cop and now nor fund was able to actually double finance for climate from seven billion to 15 billion by leveraging the power of the private sector particularly in relation to renewable energy so there's a lot that can be done but this doesn't mean it's win-win the private sector often wants you know help in different ways and finally i can say since i've been going on for a while one of the big debates in sustainable development is policy incoherence and so we thought that you know we could actually suggest that even in within our country that Norwegian government institutions should strive for that kind of coherence and have a team Norway approach and which basically means talking to each other and sharing information but i can expand on all of these later on if you wish thank you later on thank you so much thank you so much Dan now i something that you said struck me which was the idea of moving away from the the concept of charity to investing in a common future and being more intentional and more academic let's say by looking at impact by evaluating outcomes and measuring outcomes and Peter i see you nodding at me i'll let you come to that but i really wanted to ask Emilia how does that resonate with your thinking look i think that of course i think that more coherence and more focus on impact there is a night with everyone here and i think that this we have to find new ways how to mobilize revenues and how to bring a private sector in because we seen that you know the whole scene that that we are surrounded is is is not helping us and some of these issues have been discussed this morning but we we see basically that STG has that achieving them i mean the progress have stalled and we see that 98 countries percent of countries in particular in Africa has been not making progress as compared to three years ago we've seen there was discussion about you know the environment of growth not being favorable and and we know that growth comes with extra benefit of you know bringing more revenues and and finally we see growing investment needs but the same time fiscal space have been shrinking a lot and and i was shocked looking at the recent numbers as almost 50 percent of countries in in the group of low-income countries have deficit above five five percent so it which means basically that that the space to finance it it's it's it's much much narrower so all of these i think push us to think more into you know how to achieve probably not only bringing private sector more into equation and we can talk more how maybe how to do it we knew about it in 2015 we talked about it but but the question is actually how one can achieve the progress there and maybe even without increasing resources too much how to achieve these better results and and again you know in the bank there is a big effort because bank is thinking about capital increase and and and of course for the capital increase we need we need to really focus on how domestic revenue mobilization could be strengthened and how we can show that actually we are achieving results on the ground with all the funding that we will be asking and and you know that every every second day there is a country that has going through the debt restructuring and and and and we face it every day so we are asked why why why do you change focus on and how you could do better on the domestic revenue mobilization and in the bank the evolution road map and everything that is happening internally is linking to the better results orientation and how to bring private capital more and there is whole process that i can discuss a little bit more later sure i hear you on the point of domestic resource mobilization and i'd really like to bring Rose coming to you Peter really like to bring Rose into the conversation to ask about the role of domestic savings for example in financing the SDGs in the sub-saharan Africa region thank you very much moderator and i want to start by saying that when you talk about domestic savings you're looking at different levels whether it's the government savings she's talked about private savings and we are looking at farms or business savings as well as household savings and to emphasize that all of them actually do matter because we cannot win the war in terms of achieving SDGs if all of us are not making a contribution and just going back to the aspect of government savings you realize that a lot of infrastructure funding for low-income countries comes from external financing and this is because the the the fiscal buffers are usually very very limited and for that reason the only way that the government can finance effectively whether we are talking about infrastructure we are talking about energy projects we are talking about water related projects we are talking about social protection a kind of funding we need to mobilize adequately in terms of revenues and also in terms of getting the right mix as far as even external funding is concerned and recently we've been reminded that you know we need to focus more on concessional funding but concessional funding is usually very very limited and aspects of public private then partnerships come in so that we can finance adequately from the private sector you notice from the SDGs one of the key element that can sort out for us for example matters to do with poverty matters to do with hunger is actually the jobs but it's not the government that provides jobs it's the private sector and for the private sector to actually expand that space for for job creation it needs investment and for investment actually to be there then aspects of saving the coming but what you notice is the informality that is coming up in the private sector in this region which means that this is a sector that requires a some level of dynamism in the traditional financial sector in the sense that you know they may not necessarily manage to go to the capital market because they are too small to be listed to get funding you also realize that they may not go to the banking sector because they are very risky so you need also again to think about the de-risking of these of these informal sectors so at the end of the day it's asking how we can create then an environment that facilitates them to do their small savings yeah even if it is a dollar per day making sure that there is a system that can actually accommodate accommodate them and then as far as the housing sector I mean households are concerned every household need to feel comfortable they need to feel that they can smoothen their consumption today and tomorrow that they can meet their needs today and even when they grow older that they don't need to get back maybe to social protection issues from the government and the like which means that households then need to to save for their future and in in doing so it's also saying that we may need to change in the morning we are talking about behavior or change and I think it's the same thing that we may want to talk about such that aspects of saving are instilled from the very early age given that for example at the moment we have the youth and they need actually to contribute significantly absolutely savings thank you thank you so much Rose and it sounds like a really complex interplay of factors that's not easily solved so let me come to you now Peter thank you for your your patience so two things I'd like to hear from you listening to Rose and the scenario that she has painted there added to the fact that we know that many developing countries are also dealing with financial and economic stresses at the macro level for example high debt and stretched public finances how can these regions finance sustainable development and I'd also like you to weigh in on that very interesting point that Dan mentioned earlier which is to move away to have a sort of a a perceptional shift away from charity to investment in a common future thank you I so I mean let me start by saying this is a very complex environment and I think that's one of the real strengths of the discussions at the FFT process that member states have with each other is that it it is so multifaceted and it tries to bring together the private sector and the public finance both the domestic and the international public finance and it's one of the real values of having those conversations in the in the UN at the FFT space is that you can bridge those conversations across different sectors and and issues but I think the other thing that we've also seen very clearly in the FFT space is that there's a real need to bring together domestic reforms and policies with international structural reforms and policies and and we've had that here at the conference today and I think that's really valid that it's great that we've had that because it's really important to match some of those domestic reforms with some of the issues with international norm setting in the international enabling environment and I but I'm going to skip the international ones for now because I think we can come back to that and I want to talk a little bit about some of the the domestic things and I think the investment environment the investment perspective is right is that countries need to have a need to really look at you know how things are going to pay off in the long term and that requires a lot of domestic reforms to do that and it is complex one of the tools that member states agreed in the Addis agenda that can be very useful as something called an integrated national financing framework so many countries in Africa and across the world have started to try and draw up these frameworks and the real aim is to is to unify both the way you treat domestic resources and to have a strategy for using those alongside a strategy for using private resources for using international private resources and international public resources alongside domestic ones because the real emphasis that countries made in the Addis agenda is that all of these sources are needed and they're complementary to each other they are not substitutes right they can each do unique things and it's really important that countries think about how to get there right so that your policies for dealing with you know sort of a small business that might not be able to register on an exchange or raise financing that way the policies for how you help them are aligned with the policies that you want to tax them right that you want to make those things coherent with each other so that you're you're strict you're strategizing appropriately now so the but fundamentally at the end of the day i sometimes get in trouble for reminding people this you have high debt burdens in africa and other countries those debts are only going to be paid off by domestic resources not this year not next year but over the very long term that is domestic resources so one of the essential components is domestic resource mobilization and revenue mobilization by the state because that's the only way to fund public goods and services which are essential for delivering so many of our stgs they're also essential for delivering you know inequality reductions and but also for macroeconomic stability and management right you're not just talking about delivering education and health care which is what a lot of people think about with taxation but those social protection you know policies we saw during covid times were absolutely critical and there was a presentation earlier today on this that they were absolutely critical for smoothing you know household consumption in a way to make sure that people are not falling into poverty and hunger and unfortunately we haven't the world hasn't done enough it's very clear that during covid times we haven't done enough and there's much more to be done here um the the financing for sustainable development report this year delved into a couple specific issues but we deal with different issues over the years we've dealt with lots of them um you know from how you might want to deal with this year we talked specifically about some energy windfall taxes that you could use in order to raise revenue at a specific times when the energy prices are high um and we uh this year we also talked about um how you might align your tax systems uh with your gender responsive strategies right to make sure that your tax systems are are really promoting gender equality but we've we've covered a range of issues climate environment and it's really important to align all these things uh at a national level so uh you know it takes a lot of work there will be and it's really important to emphasize that reforms in the tax space and domestic revenue space including to generate the kind of resources you need for the large-scale investments we need it's going to take time to bear fruit so some of the things that Emilia talked about in terms of you know long-term financing increasing the capital size of the bank so that they can support countries for doing that really important to do as well and that's why the FFD space where you can bring these things together is really helpful great thank you so much that sounds like a great point at which to bring Millie into the conversation because Millie from where you're sit where you sit you are looking at uh you've worked with the Uganda Revenue Authority you're now at the Ugandan Central Bank Bank of Uganda and perhaps in light of the conversation that we've had today you can tell us about what uh the tax authorities in Uganda and the role what they're doing with this regard in terms of financing the SDGs the role they're playing in helping mobilize domestic resources thank you thank you Denise and I hope you can hear me yes we can hear you please go ahead Millie okay thank you so much yes revenue authorities in sub Saharan Africa Uganda Revenue Authority what we're looking at is domestic revenue mobilization strategy and I know because of time I'm not going to the details and all these have been presented but I'll just give our story so we set out in 2020 2017 2018 and worked on a domestic revenue mobilization strategy that was to run from 2019-20 to 2020-23 now the key about this strategy was to work with a number of agencies it was a long period very collaborative led by the minister of finance and the revenue administration I was actually part of the team and and when you said I've led over 80 research papers this is now the guest I present the side of the user we worked with the EU DFID World Bank a number of development partners Norway and MDS research firms interacted with civil society and brought in everything so we come up with this strategy that looks at policy and tax administration looking at the strengths weaknesses threats and opportunities we were able to put this together and I can say that so far despite the COVID that disturbed us along the way we have seen revenue grow in 2020-21 we had 11.42% growth 21-22 we went to 11.4 you know we were just coming out of COVID and in 2022-23 we registered a growth of 16.2% in revenues bringing on less tax policies but a lot of tax administrative initiatives supported by by research and for that I must really appreciate you know wider ICTD and all these research firms have been working with another area that tax administrations are looking at and specifically Uganda revenue authority is investment in technology for data and research they are modern systems not only for Uganda but for a number of sub Saharan African countries where tax collection is now online and also automated systems that collect transaction data so if this information is put together so what it's very important for this information to be used so as Uganda revenue authority we invested in a data warehouse I know that some revenue administrations have had data leaks and all these but together with that collaborated now again with expert researchers with research firms within the country and across the board together with Unwider we've also put together a data lab of anonymized data to be able to attract external researchers to bring in policy and I liked what was presented before that that how do we invest in our future together and for me I see this is where the gist is is that as as sub Saharan African countries as Uganda I have wrote data that if I put together an expert researcher from a development economy can can feed on to give me insights that will help me be able to attract more revenue and I must say that even the models that Milly Milly can you hear me can you hear me this is beginning yes I can hear you Milly can you hear me okay thank you so much I see where you're going I just need to point out that one of your colleagues here on the in-person panel would like to make an intervention so I'm going to give him the the floor please Dan would you like to comment on on what Milly has been saying so far it was actually a comment for for all of us and it had to do with domestic resource mobilization which is absolutely crucial but I want to refer back to what our Kenyan colleague raised this morning basically saying that there are all of these taxes exemptions etc that we give to companies and and that that is a huge problem and in many of the countries I do work in the government is just simply interested in getting some company to come and invest and they're willing to just give land water if there's electricity even that for free and so it is important to keep up appearances in the newspaper etc to say that the government has got this big investment you know lots of jobs are going to be created the details are never really outlined the kind of contracts and the conditions are never really spoken about so I think that that aspect is something that we can't do away with so to know how you know companies can basically negotiate and say oh you're not going to give me a good deal I'll go somewhere else that that I think is extremely crucial I had a couple of other points but I don't want to interrupt our colleague I think that's an interesting point and now this is a question for anyone on the panel whoever is fastest on the buzzer what is the role there for this kind of policy coherence and this kind of coordination globally and perhaps regionally maybe globally is too ambitious although we we are in a situation where we do need to be ambitious but perhaps at least regionally what is the role of regional governments coming together to try and nip this kind of situation that Dan is outlining in the bud yeah floor is yours rose yes I think I want to approach it from different angles and one of the things that you've seen happening in the african region is efforts for economic transformation and economic transformation through the african continental free trade area and the key focus for this is to try and see to it that from the regional level you can actually enhance productivity you can also enhance markets because when you have many micro and small enterprises which cannot go to the international level especially for trade then it makes a it gives an opportunity when you're talking about continental free trade area to provide an environment where the businesses can find opportunities for trading opportunities for sharing and opportunities also for learning from each other so I believe that when these opportunities are coming in they are actually enhancing at regional level whether it's a cultural sector whether it's micro and small enterprises but at the same time providing opportunity for what you'd call positive externalities yeah positive externalities in the sense that you know even when we are negotiating with the international community we may not necessarily have to negotiate as Kenya we may not negotiate as Nigeria but we can actually negotiate as a as a region and have better trading relations at the at the international level yeah yes thank you please go ahead Emily yes I wanted to to a pickup on that point you know on the structural transformation because some of the you know points that have been raised this morning and I think you brought that you know we should coordinate and and provide the consistent advice why not to introduce some of these extra incentives I think that there is enough of literature saying that actually other matters like you know country market competition political stability skills increasingly matter smart more in the long term than these tax incentive in the short term but still countries have been using it into the daily business so I think that going into the direction of structural transformation structure investing in infrastructure building these other comparative advantages away that is much more beneficial than provide these incentives on the coordination itself it's probably my example is more on the IFI side on the institution international financial institutions we have this platform for collaboration on tax that is a joint initiative between ICD IMF World Bank and UN and it actually is used for us to discuss some of these issues like international taxation minimum tax how to actually introduce frameworks to assess tax incentives their cost their impact then another global issue environmental taxation that is a global also global issue what is the what is the framework are we using are we total total carbon price how we're calculating and then later on we go with the same kind of devices and frameworks to countries or at least on the IFI side we speak we try to speak with one voice to two different nations and different regions and so maybe maybe I wanted to highlight that point on the coordination thank you yeah I mean I think this is really critical to have coordinated view from the system to but that that which also happens with our our report the financing percent of development for the World Bank contributes a lot the IMF contributes a lot so that we can try and you know round together and and come out with good advice on the specific issues of tax incentives yet this is something that we covered this year where you know there is a real issue with you know countries undercutting each other this way and undercutting their own systems and I think what Dan said was really interesting that the government say they're going to provide water and infrastructure and etc but they get nothing in return I mean in terms of tax revenue because they've given and what we've tried to promote for many years now is is kind of a concept of social contract right you provide services and goods and taxpayers pay taxes in return and that's really a critical concept for building trust and legitimacy in the state in order to you know then have a good cycle with improving tax compliance and we're undercutting that by having all these tax incentives and other things that are provided to businesses so one thing that we can definitely do at the first level we've asked for is transparency right not even every country says what their tax incentives are and we need to make sure that countries are doing that for accountability to their own citizens so that they can you know citizens can see well who's getting tax incentives and what are they being used for and then we've recommended things like regular renewal of these incentives review and renewal before you you give them out again things like this so I think this is really critical component of what can be done but at the international level you can do some coordination it's very hard there's no doubt about that you know nobody can see how difficult the pillar two conversations have been at the OECD but I think there is space to do this at the regional level you know the EU does it the African Union is going to move in that direction with the Africa you know trade pack because that the open borders are going to force them to right and I think that's that's not a bad thing that that will force some conversations on how to scale back some some of these incentives the question is if we could get a full global approach that would be that would be nice it's something that we should aim for it's not something we should give up on but it will take time thank you for that Peter so we'll go to Dan for his intervention but I'd like to actually unfortunately sort of wrap up this segment of the panel discussion already by closing with Millie because I think Millie probably has something to say about how all of this part of the discussion is going to affect the work of not just the Ugandan tax authorities but tax authorities across sub-Saharan Africa so Dan please thanks I just want to respond to Rose and Peter so there is a growing movement in many parts of Africa where citizens are actually increasingly questioning their governments the kind of contracts that the governments have signed and the newspapers are playing the media is playing a very important role Kenya is a very good case in terms of Chinese investments there's a lot of interest in knowing more you know and so I think in many parts of the world one needs that kind of transparency and I don't know how that is going to be done or if it's possible because most governments are interested in just showcasing the fact that they were able to get this investment social media is is playing a role I hope that increases there's something else I want to raise here and that has to do with state legitimacy because in many parts of the world where I do work I'm not going to name names of countries the revenue authority is jokingly called the robberies authority right so if the revenue authority is not to be trusted then you know it's everybody thinks it's it's it's a free for all and finally I just want to respond to Peter in terms of the international level one of the more interesting things we did as part of this expert group and we were interacting with the leadership of the World Bank but also the UN agencies was it was actually quite funny to hear them complain about how little money they had so capital increase is important for the bank but more so I mean UN agencies don't often like what the bank is doing they often don't like each other so there's this enormous dysfunction I think in the international system that we don't talk about that's the elephant in the room within the UN but also across the board so we all need more money but some of these agencies are absolutely struggling and they're out competing each other and final point in relation going back to Rose I think in relation to the Chinese projects particularly a lot of African countries are thinking more and more about negotiating as a block and I think that if we could have a system where everybody agreed at least certain countries agreed we will not have this company come in and extract revenue from you we will also say no so I think the ability to say no is going to be pretty crucial but it's very difficult for a politician to say no to a very attractive investment yes the power to say no that's that's the thing let's close the segment of the conversation with you Millie we've heard discussions terms thrown around that I think are super important in the context of this conversation terms like transparency accountability social contracts how do you see that affecting the work of the tax authorities in Uganda and certainly across sub-Saharan Africa thank you thank you Denise before I come to that I wanted to to make a comment on tax exemptions and I wanted to make reference to the presentation made by Dr Moses from from Kipra is that the sub-Saharan African countries have have done whatever it takes to attract to attract investment but it's not working so as we are discussing the tax exemption discussion I think we need to look at at it widely are there any challenges being faced by some of these countries that is driving them them into that and that said I'll go back to Denise what what you were talking about is that all this discussion has been great and that the issues about the social contracts and and whatever is going on impact revenue administrations and indeed we need to have that bigger conversation and collaboration because a number of sub-Saharan African revenue administrations unlike nowhere no rats are kind of left alone in this whole domestic revenue mobilization journey that they are always pointed that so it's important for us to collaborate and work together and speak together and like has been said all those regional blocks we send together and support each other so that we can protect the domestic revenues as they come in but that said also we also need to build the capacities within the revenue administrations and also make everyone count I know rose talked about savings but also in terms of revenue collection everyone needs to count and a quick example is that in Uganda we have attacks as low as 21 US dollars per year for for someone who is doing business so everyone needs to count if we are to come out of where we are in order to mobilize revenue as aid is declining that is coming to us thank you Denise thank you so much Millie well it's been an interesting conversation so far and I think it's time to get the participants in the room and online involved in the conversation I have to take my glasses off now to see what's happening out there do we have any questions from our audience or is everyone just looking forward to wine during the reception yes we have a question from the gentleman in front here Johnston Makubu from South African Revenue Service perhaps a comment we are finding that increasingly at least in South Africa in Africa that in the compilation of tax statistics tax administrations are increasingly starting to report on tax expenditures I'm trying to deal with the issue of investments and incentives without accountability and visibility and I think the effort of tax administrations in Africa at least to ensure that visibility on tax expenditures is created as a first step towards ensuring that there is a review of these incentive schemes that are being discussed and I think it's important that we do take that effort to create the visibility into account I think as tax administrations in the African context we take the importance of ensuring that we hold ourselves accountable to the incentive schemes when necessary to pronounce on the efficacy of some of these incentives as we move forward and I think in the South African context sunset clauses have been considered on some of these incentives so that the discussion is left with with that appreciation to an extent thank you moderator thank you so much do we have any further questions I'm Alex Colvin from the Tax Justice Network I wanted to pick up on a point Peter Chow raised about the international aspects of this it feels like you know we're halfway through the sustainable development goals which in 2015 produced the first global target to curb illicit financial flows of which corporate tax abuse is the biggest part and that's in the UN statistical definition we agreed that tax was the primary means of implementation and we committed to international cooperation to make sure that lower income countries who lose the greatest share of their current tax revenues to tax abuse would be fully engaged in the benefits of improvements since when all of the evidence is clear that the problem has got worse and we have put nothing in place that includes lower income countries so only now are we at the position that we might begin negotiations on a UN tax convention is it that this doesn't register politically is it that the opposition of high income countries is is really what's blocking this and is it that the international agencies themselves haven't got involved and pushed this hard enough or is there some other issue here why why do we go around in this circle talking I wonder about whether we can make our tax administration slightly more effective when we're not giving them the tools or the data to get the international corporation to allow them to make the kind of big reforms that would really deliver on you know what we estimate $480 billion of revenues are lost each year to this with direct impacts on child mortality and all sorts of other outcomes and we do nothing each year it seems is this the year are we going for a UN convention are we going to fix this feature that's a it's a big question all right thank you Alex so I I I cannot speak on behalf of the UN secretary general when I answer that kind of question so I will give some personal reflections the secretary general has issued a report recently so you can see that that is his you know official view I can plug I was also in the secretariat of the financial accountability transparency and integrity the high-level panel a couple years ago so I've left some copies of the report over there on the on the side it looks like a little memory stick because we nobody prints papers anymore so it presents a lot of recommendations for these kind of these kind of measures right to really strengthen and really makes the point that we do need to scale up international cooperation in a more inclusive and effective way member states are taking action and I have to commend the Africa group has really come together to take a leadership role in that you know as you've said they they're really working in Africa to try and do some of these things and so in New York they've also really moved together to really push the tax agenda in New York they tabled the resolution last year and they've you know led the negotiations really for many years on tax issues within the g77 and within the whole general assembly so I mean the Africa group is absolutely present and it's absolutely front of mind to them as far as we can see I think there are you know long-standing political questions that are up to member states to decide we you know as the secretariat we should not force our views on member states member states have to come to a decision you know one of the things that that our secretary general has talked about is the real importance of participation and inclusion we've talked about that a little bit at the domestic level right about how you have a social contract that really people feel invested in the national tax system and the national fiscal system and they're they're getting what they need out of it as well and that's why they want to pay into it I think it's the same at the international level right countries need to feel invested in the international tax norms and the international tax system and then they will contribute appropriately to maintenance of that system and to ensuring it's effective for all and I think we haven't seen that yet that sense that there is you know that everybody's invested in the systems we have now and that that produces some of the dissonance we're seeing and you it's easy to go look at the the inputs that were made for the UN's tax report the official report from the secretary general that was released about a week or two ago to see that you can see very differences of opinion amongst member states about either whether the current system is functioning or not right and and whether they think it needs to be changed or not changed and I don't think we can as the secretariats can overcome that for member states member states have to come to that view themselves and I think there's a role for domestic accountability for how governments perform in the international environment and maybe that's something that you know Dan mentioned that earlier in his conversations with the Norwegian government about that I think that's something that that is the only way forward is to see citizens taking that up to make sure their governments are doing what they want in the international environment thanks for that Peter I also think what I don't know Alex can correct me about this but I also feel that the floor member might be getting at a sort of a power imbalance between the global north and the global south but Dan I don't know Alex if this was part of your question but I want to just go back to the domestic issue of political legitimacy of some of these institutions I think I don't know if we really talked about how independent some of these institutions are and to the extent to which they are subject to political pressure and in certain countries the revenue authority is often used politically to target opponents and so that aspect I think is something that we often overlook but that's not something that international actors or donors can actually talk about this is a domestic issue and I think some of these questions become rather uncomfortable to discuss thank you rose I'll take rose and then we'll come to you Amelia yeah I think there was an aspect of accountability in mobilizing resources and maybe I just want to give an example of what's going on in my country in terms of enhancing accountability in mobilization of the non-tax revenue that is the appropriation in a year so recently what Kenya government has done is actually to centralize the channel through which all government agencies including personal bodies including ministries receive appropriation in aid and the whole exercise is meant to create accountability in terms of the flows of money that come through A&A and the idea is not necessarily to gag the the the agencies in terms of receiving funds but it's saying that the way the reporting has been done is actually not necessarily providing adequate information on or anything everything that is coming through appropriation in aid so that's one thing I wanted to bring in the second one is at the policy level what is it that a government is doing and I would say that if you listen carefully to our president you will find each day he's reminding Kenyans that we have to save and one of the saving a channel that has come in is what we call the financial inclusion fund or it's called the Osso Hasla fund and it's playing two roles one is a enhancing accessibility by the small person the small firms to credit small credit but when you get to start repaying that credit yeah there's a proportionate share that you have to save and the whole idea is that you can actually mobilize resources from even when you are just borrowing maybe one dollar and you are repaying it a small proportion some sense put aside as part of saving and the whole idea is that at the end of the day this can be a very revolving fund at the end which is financed from the savings that are coming from everybody so it's a it's a very clear direction and policy derivative effort that the government is making to facilitate domestic savings mobilization thanks for that concrete example Rose Emilia thank you just just two observations so one on the on the efforts in the tax incentives and that those mentioned that you know there is a lot of progress and I believe we see a lot of progress in a lot of countries being more transparent trying to report but you know that's that's the first stage in a sense of the reform because not all the tax incentives are bad and only when you start to measure the impact intended impact then you can try to assess whether to keep it or maybe there is you know cost efficiency increases when you do it to direct support for instance not to tax incentives so and I think that a lot of organization are getting to advise on you know second stage of the reforms but it's it's really I think the progress on the first stage of reform has been tremendous and and I think we're getting now more to this second stage conversation in many countries on the lack of progress a little bit I will take it from the different angle I think the question about you know that 2015 had these high goals and I look I think that we went through the two big crisis no and we have countries that face you know drop of growth but 10% and I don't think recovery is there and and given all of these I think there is still some progress in a lot of countries that have very low revenue mobilization we've just looked at the recent numbers countries that are below 15% of GDP that is one of the thresholds that is discussed as a threshold that would allow finance them public services at a certain level every year we see 20 30 countries making an effort around 0.5% of GDP is being increased so it's not like there is not progress maybe there is not enough progress but we have already a lot seen a lot of crisis it's on the way so one one have to be mindful and I don't want us in this panel to be too critical we see there is a gap but I think we have to also recognize the progress and in the bank itself one percent on of our lending goes to DRM related effort is it big or not from four billion dollars one percent looks like small but for certain countries it is it is a lot and I think what at least we try to reflect on because we have supported through financial instrument a lot of policy reforms and we see a lot of reversal so we support something and then governments go back so now we are trying to move to this more financing link to the performance so we actually build capacity and we pay against results it's a cold result based lending it has its own challenges because the getting results is much more difficult so then our portfolio looks very bad because we don't disperse because the results will not happen so that's that's have another issues but I think we all learning how to support this agenda and I think probably progress needs to be we want to see more progress but I think we have seen a lot of progress despite all these crises thanks for that intervention Emilia I think it really was important to have a sort of reality check to indicate that things are not all going downhill I will now give the floor to Millie you've got your hand up Millie please go ahead thank you so much and I want to build it up from from Emilia is that there's all this support given to sub-saharan Africa developing economies but we must appreciate that even us as these economies we really have to to step up our game and I'll give an example of Uganda Revenue Authority where we've used data and statistics collaboration is very key and we've grown the taxpayer register from 1.3 million to 2.1 million 800 thousand taxpayers within six months and this is because we are we are getting out of this ourselves so for me what I want to put on table is that collaboration coherent policies and yes support is good for these revenue administrations and countries but like Rose said we have to serve and we have to pay taxes our citizens have to pay these taxes and we are putting in place easy ways for paying we are educating we are making it easier for everyone else to pay so that the pressure on giving us aid is reduced and we also get to feel the development of our respective countries so the needs what I wanted to put on table is cross-agency intelligence coordinated efforts coordinated enforcement across the countries the East Africa countries the ECOWAS the WATAF that all these revenue administration regional bodies work together and improve trade across the countries as well as improve revenue administration and revenues within the respective countries as we also serve but also we need to bring in revenues from from external for example we need to look at remittances as well an example Philippines where they are bringing in quite a lot of remittances from out there as sub-Saharan African countries we need to look at some of these other revenue sources in order to build our revenues and start to win ourselves off aid thank you so much yes that's that's the dream do we have any questions from the audience at this point no I just like to we're coming up to the close of the panel but I just want to re revert to you for a moment Emilia you talked about a new approach or a new movement toward offering finances against results and if we think about the fact that you yourself alluded to the fact that we've had a global shock shock in terms of the pandemic which was then followed by a war that has made things a bit more difficult and there are many vulnerable economies that are struggling in situations such as those to show results and I did follow a session that you were in earlier this morning where you talked about doing things in a new and different way how can we support these kinds of vulnerable economies to show results and to get the financing that they need to achieve the SDGs in that kind of environment yes so thank you I'll be trying to be short so to give father also an opportunity to comment on that look I think that the results even small results matters no and I think that what we have seen there is a big demand to build counter specific capacity and there was discussion about tax administration digitalization how much digitalization of tax administration help to you know close compliance gaps all these you know new and behavioral experiments that are used in tax administration but you know to influence taxpayers but also to influence policymakers so some of these issues I think are achievable even in the difficult circumstances some of these are not politically costly so I think what we try to do is to structure long term programs and it would try to achieve step by step some of the results so result could be for the first year the example of tax incentive would be to report a second year could be to assess and further to decide on streamlining so I think this kind of step approach where we kind of try to identify these medium term strategies using some innovative approaches either to you know using the digital digitalization or using these behavioral approaches I think administrations are very very receptive to that so I want to mention this but what I also want to mention because in this conversation I think it a bit I probably missed that part it's also very important to link the domestic revenue mobilization and some of the results expected to more broader fiscal policy aspects because I think what we forget in this discussion is that there are you know spending in efficiency and how we use our money influence also the gap and then the need for mobilization is even more and I believe that we all need to also base some of this result based approaches on you know how to spend more efficiently how to spend on something that could crowd in private sector and and I think that's super important to not forget that this equation has also spending side and and we are also giving up to to advise countries on how to tighten wage bill you know in public administration or how to more efficiently spend on education health etc so I don't think it's new but I believe that the more comprehensive approach and more faced approach with smaller results spread through the years and the disbursement against some of these results is something that I think we are heading into so thank you so much Amelia I think we'll close the conversation with remarks from Dan you've got your your hand up so please go ahead very quickly just to respond to Amelia so there's certain low hanging fruit that we'll actually outline in our work in this report one has to do with just showcasing what countries are doing in this financing for sustainable development field so one easy way would be to showcase this through the TOSSD framework the TOSD which is which tracks the kind of flows that governments provide for this this is currently under the DAC sec secretary in the OECD the UN may want it I mean there are all kinds of governance issues but the United States seems to be very interested and and reports under the TOSD framework Norway should be doing it just to showcase what people you know the different kinds of flows the second has to do with again a low hanging fruit when you talk to the private sector they say well firstly MIGA etc they can be very slow they do this due diligence that takes such a long time by the time you know the the proposal is approved you know you've moved on the private sector often loses interest so one of the things that a lot of companies want is actually support in the project proposal phrase not you know when they've come further so that's something again the public sector in many of our countries can can support and finally in relation to some of the low and medium income countries I think we haven't really talked about loss and damage but there is this interest in getting more money and one thing I keep hearing from a lot of the ministers including my own minister here is that well it's fine with the money but we need to see a viable plan and I think there's something there that that we could in partnership do with the tax administration with the revenue authorities with the political authorities coming up with something that can be sold as a viable plan that money could you know be used usefully used for excellent thank you so much for those closing remarks Dan and I think it's a somewhat positive note that we've ended on so sort of chronicling you know the small steps the small movements toward progress that that countries are definitely making and encouraging more creating a sort of a positive feedback loop because I think the more people hear that things are making are moving and are progressing the more they're inspired to do more and also reaching for the low hanging fruit but I'll give you the final word Peter since you and I want to end on a positive note as as you're leading us to that so you know there is and to get back to something that to kind of marry the comments from Amelia with Alex I think governments are capable of doing things in the domestic environment and making progress domestically and making progress internationally at the same time they can do both it is possible we've seen it we're making progress but we can do more and I think that's definitely the case the the positive note is that there are opportunities to do more specifically in the international environment right so you have the discussions that will happen in the UN a general assembly on how to take forward tax cooperation we will have also international summits on financing it's called a summit of the future next year and probably member states will agree to have a fourth international conference on financing for development in 2025 and and I say that these are positive because the kind of big changes that some people want you can get some low hanging fruits but I can feel the desire for big changes you to get those kind of big fruits the high hanging fruits right that are really the juiciest and most succulent we need to take the political environment to a place where it can where it can make those kind of far-reaching changes and so at those kind of big international opportunities next year and the year after are some places where where governments can do that and I hope we can all get our governments to the places where they can pluck those nice juicy fruits at the top not just the low-hanging fruits at the bottom everything everything wonderful thank you so much for those closing remarks peter and thank you to all of our panellists rosin googie emilia scrooke peter trawler dan bannock and mille mille nilako goye i'm sorry i've got your name wrong um but mille please forgive me i will make it up to you in another forum i think there's a lot to think about and there's a lot to talk about and there's an excellent opportunity upcoming for you to continue the conversations the discussions the deliberations to reach for the low hanging and the high hanging fruit to go for small increments and big steps to act locally regionally and internationally and let's just make this thing happen thank you so so much all of you for joining in for attending for giving us your attention this afternoon after what i'm sure has been a very long day thanks again