Tax administration - an entry point for reforms
The conference was jointly organized by Norad, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chr. Michelsen Institute and the World Bank.
For countries that have or are in the process of exploiting new stores of extractive/non-renewable natural resource wealth, it is increasingly recognised that key determinants of success are the overall governance/institutional framework and the political economy of rent extraction and management. In all too many cases, the discovery of oil or mineral resources has been associated with devastating political conflict and economic setbacks. Only a few countries have managed resource revenues in a way that promotes sustainable economic growth and poverty alleviation.
The Oslo conference aimed at eliciting lessons learned from recent efforts to improve the management of natural resources in developing countries. The major objectives of the conference was:
i) Share experience on how natural resources are taxed in different countries;
ii) Explore the way forward in the taxation of this sector and also consider any future risks;
iii) Lay down a foundation and possible opportunities for how donors can contribute to support institution building in this area.
The conference and subsequent workshop brought together selected key experts and policy practitioners around key entry points for linking domestic and international efforts to harness extractive resources for development. The one day plenary conference highlighted promising areas of supporting development in resource rich/dependent economies. The issues of revenue diversification, transparency in the use of extractive industry resource beyond EITI, and the special challenge of illicit capital flows from resource rich settings featured the plenary contributions during the first day of proceedings. The second and third day workshops assessed preliminary cross-cutting and country findings from the World Bank global activity, covering selected cases from sub-Saharan Africa (Angola, DRC, Ghana, Nigeria, Niger), East Asia (East Timor, Laos, and Mongolia), and Latin America.
