Working Papers

Developing countries face various challenges in raising adequate tax revenue to ensure sustainable and credible financing of their development needs. Some of the problems lie in the design of tax policies. In contrast, others emanate from weaknesses in implementation, including the low administrative capacity of tax agencies and political obstacles to tax reforms. Furthermore, resource-rich countries and those in post-conflict scenarios face extra challenges in tax collection. Yet, the low tax revenue in developing countries is not only explained by domestic problems. In particular, challenges to taxing cross-border economic activities also play a significant role in contributing to explaining the low tax collection in developing countries. For these reasons, bilateral and multilateral donors are actively engaging in assisting developing countries to address the challenges. This paper has two main objectives. The first is to assess recent developments in donor capacity support for domestic resource mobilization (DRM) in developing countries... (download) 

R. Houssa

La consommation des ménages peut être évaluée à travers les enquêtes sur les conditions de vie des ménages, à plusieurs fins. En effet, la consommation des ménages peut être mesurée dans le but d’évaluer le bien être des ménages, ou dans le but d’estimer la consommation finale des ménages au sens de la comptabilité nationale, ou encore dans le but de calculer les pondérations pour l’indice des prix à la consommation, etc.

Il existe donc plusieurs options de collecte, d’agrégation et de calcul de la consommation des ménages à partir des données d’enquêtes sur les conditions de vie des ménages; la finalité et l’usage de la mesure étant la proue qui oriente les options du statisticien dans sa tâche de conception et de collecte des données. Par exemple, selon l’optique comptabilité nationale, tout véhicule acquis par le ménage au cours d’une année pour son propre usage, est comptabilisé au coût d’acquisition; alors que l’optique de mesure du bien-être, elle estime un coût d’usage du véhicule qui est inférieur à la valeur d’acquisition du véhicule, car elle cherche à estimer le bien être procuré par l’utilisation du véhicule au ménage. Selon cette dernière option, le véhicule est un bien durable qui procurera un bien être au ménage sur plusieurs années. Alors que la comptabilité nationale valorise les biens et les services par la dépense monétaire qu'il faudrait effectuer pour en disposer, qu’ils soient acquis au comptant, ou à crédit...(download) 

H. Guene

Since the third international conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa (July 2015) and the proclamation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, September 2015), the aid industry has a new mantra: “From Billions to Trillions” , and Blended Finance is declared to be the outspoken path to get there.

The catalytic use of Belgian Development cooperation towards the private sector and an SDG engagement of the private sector requires a comprehensive Blended Finance policy. This paper wants to contribute to such a policy, by clarifying concepts, giving some necessary theoretic background, giving an overview of the state of global Blended Finance and situate Blended Finance in the Belgian and European context...

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H. Couderé

This research report provides an overview of existing practices and lessons learned from decentralized development cooperation support to subnational taxation initiatives in low and middle income countries. The focus is on programmes funded by local government donors from a selection of Western European countries: Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Three main working areas of donor support are identified: (1) improving tax policy and design, (2) strengthening the tax administration, and (3) encouraging constructive state-society engagement around taxes. Based on a review of the literature and case study analysis, potential mechanisms that can support and expand local taxation are identified for each of these working areas. The support modalities and the instruments used by donors are also critically assessed. The results of this study suggest a need to broaden the focus of donor support in order to include all three working areas where possible, avoiding a too limited focus on only strengthening the tax administration. Furthermore, locally elected politicians seem central to the success or failure of taxation efforts, so they should ideally be targeted in donor support programmes. It is also important for donors to deepen their understanding of the particularities of subnational taxation in the partner country and the partner local government. As to the support modalities used by donors, such as peer-to-peer exchange, financial support or a programmatic approach, they all have pros and cons so the choice should be made according to the goals of the programme. Using a mix of modalities could equally be an interesting approach. Finally, donors should strengthen their monitoring and evaluation systems in order to get a clearer idea on ‘what works’ in relation to donor funded support programmes for local taxation.

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D. Scheerens

J. Van Ongevalle