Africa Tax Conference

We have already remarked on the fourth meeting of the OECD Forum on Tax Administration in beautiful Cape Town on January 10-11, and especially the speech by South Africa's Trevor Manuel.

Our attention has been drawn to plans for a conference on Taxation, Governance and Capacity Building in Africa to be hosted by the South African Revenue Service in late May 2008. (You will find the reference on p4, Section iii of the final communiqué of the January meeting.)

As the communiqué says:

"We propose that the conference in May considers the establishment of an International Tax Centre on the African continent with funding from donors and other interested parties. Overall, the Centre would focus on a more coherent approach to capacity building in the African continent. In doing so, the Centre would ideally work with interested international organisations and other institutions and donors to focus on the development and application of good practices. It would also seek opportunities to develop synergies as well as ensuring that maximum benefit is gained from the use of scarce resources."

We welcome this development, but we would like to see civil society groups having a good voice in this. (We would also like to think that by May, delegates will have had time to read this book. ) A precise date does not yet seem to have been set. We will let you know how this progresses.