DAI’s Enrique Giraldo Presents Best Practices in Fiscal Reform at High-Level OECD Events

December 09, 2014

Since the passage of El Salvador’s Access to Public Information Law in 2011, DAI has assisted that government to promote fiscal transparency initiatives including a public-private sector agreement on fiscal transparency policy, adopting International Public Sector Accounting Standards, upgrading the Government Financial Management Information System, implementing an e-procurement system, and launching a revamped Fiscal Transparency Portal.

These initiatives and more are what DAI’s Enrique Giraldo will share at two upcoming events hosted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD): The Symposium on Anti-Corruption Development Assistance: Good Practices among Providers of Development Cooperation, and a meeting of Task Force on Tax and Development. Both events will take place in Paris on December 11 and 12.

Giraldo, the Chief of Party on the El Salvador Fiscal Policy and Expenditure Management Program (FPEMP) funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, will present at the Symposium lessons learned from the program’s experience facilitating the implementation of a Trilateral Cooperation Agreement between the governments of Brazil, the United States, and El Salvador—an innovative partnership for peer learning, best practice, and lesson sharing.

Giraldo will also share El Salvador’s redesigned Fiscal Transparency Portal, which provides timely, relevant, user-friendly information on the country’s public finances, including interactive graphics, a citizen’s guide to the budget, and a one-stop to most relevant information on budget planning, execution, and monitoring and evaluation.

At the Task Force meeting, Giraldo will showcase evidence on sustained assistance to build El Salvador’s tax system. He will also take stock of DAI’s assistance to the government in the past decade with helping raise tax revenue from less than 12 percent of GDP in 2004 to nearly 16 percent of GDP in 2014 through the 2005–2010 USAID-funded Tax Policy and Administration Reform program and the 2011–2015 FPEMP program.

DAI’s assistance through these programs has consisted of holistically supporting the national tax administration to implement technologically enhanced services, fewer but better tax audits, reduced fraud and corruption, improved taxpayer services, cutting-edge tax analysis, anti-transfer pricing techniques, up-to-date taxpayer registry and current account, tackling tax arrears, performance-driven culture, and a country-wide tax awareness program for youth. Domestic resource mobilization has allowed the government of El Salvador to meet its expenditure commitments through increased social spending, mainly in education and health programs.

Through FPEMP, DAI works to advance the Government of El Salvador’s fiscal reform agenda by building capacity and improving systems for enhanced public expenditure management, improved tax revenue mobilization, and strengthened private sector engagement.