Tax and customs administrations play a vital role in financing public policies and creating an economic environment conducive to private sector development. They must therefore reconcile two complementary priorities: increasing domestic resource mobilisation to ensure the sustainable financing of public policies, while creating a simpler, more predictable and attractive environment for businesses and investors.
In recent years, a number of reforms have been undertaken across West and Central Africa to address these challenges, including the digitalisation of tax and customs administrations, the introduction of electronic single windows, the modernisation of customs systems, the development of Authorised Economic Operator schemes, and stronger mechanisms to encourage voluntary compliance by businesses. These reforms are helping to improve the quality of services provided to economic operators and foster greater trust between administrations and taxpayers.
Despite this progress, significant obstacles remain, including lengthy and costly customs clearance procedures, constraints on the import of productive equipment, and the scale of informal cross-border trade. These challenges continue to hamper business competitiveness and constrain further progress towards deeper regional trade integration.
Against this backdrop, the webinar provided an opportunity to put national and regional experiences with tax and customs reforms into perspective and to identify the levers that could simultaneously strengthen revenue mobilisation, private-sector competitiveness and trade facilitation. Discussions focused in particular on the modernisation and digitalisation of tax and customs administrations, corporate and investment taxation, as well as the harmonisation of tax and customs policies and regional integration within WAEMU, CEMAC and AfCFTA.
The webinar also sought to identify concrete avenues for reform, drawing in particular on the opportunities offered by new technologies, data use and cybersecurity, with a view to improving the efficiency of public administrations, the quality of services provided to users and the overall business environment.
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