The Executive Secretary of ATAF, Mr Logan Wort, made official visits to the organisation’s Council members in the aim of determining the areas in which they require ATAF’s support due to the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic, as well as strengthening collaboration with members. One of the areas under discussion was ATAF’s New Decade Project.
The New Decade project is an ambitious programme which builds on the outcomes of the impact analysis of ATAF’s first decade,and aims to support members to address the devastation caused by the global pandemic, through effective mobilisation of resources necessary for recovery. It seeks to revisit the organisation’s strategic orientation and its modus operandi in order to adapt to the new challenges affecting revenue administrations in Africa. Part of the strategic refocusing proposed by the plan includes:
- Broadening of scope of ATAF’s work to Tax policy and tax-related issues arising from customs and trade
- Bringing the organisation’s programmes closer to its constituencies through regionalisation
- Enhancing the existing capabilities in tax administration, standard setting, data and statistics etc. and
- Implementing a sound financial sustainability model for the organisation
Wort’s official visits included Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. The Commissioners General of the respective Revenue authorities welcomed the initiative and support of ATAF in the New Decade.
“ATAF’s scope of work has expanded well beyond the realm of tax administration in the past five years and is likely to do so even more in the coming decade. The New Decade Project therefore seeks to bring structure and a level of control to this otherwise organic evolution” Wort explained.
“African revenue administrations are faced with new challenges arising from continental and global changes such as the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade area, the increasingly critical global environmental agenda, the COVID-19 pandemic and the digitalisation of the global economy to name but a few. It is therefore imperative that we, as ATAF, relook at our strategy if we are to support our members effectively in their responses to these challenges”, he added.
The New Decade Project will be presented to the rest of ATAF’s Council on the 28th and 29th of October 2021 as the body holds its second ordinary hybrid meeting of the year, in Cape Town, South Africa.
