Marrakesh (Morocco) is hosting the 52nd session of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (#2019COM), which takes place between March 20th and March 26. Under the theme “Fiscal Policy, Trade and the Private Sector in the Digital Age: A Strategy for Africa,” the event discusses the difficulties and opportunities to leverage African economies in the coming years.
“With a growing working-age population, plentiful farmland and many other resources, the continent has all the prerequisites for a rapid economic transformation in the next decade,” says Vera Songwe, UNECA’s executive secretary, during the opening ceremony.
With the themes being discussed, African countries are expected to organize and implement the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the AU’s Agenda 2063, a 50-year plan to create an “integrated continent, politically united, based on the ideals of Pan Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance.”
For Zouhir Chorfi, Secretary General at the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Morocco, it was an honor that the country was chosen to host the meeting. “I am confident that this work will necessarily lead to recommendations that will enable us to move forward together, hand in hand, and take on the challenges we face,” he said.
“To achieve these two agendas Africa needs to increase its domestic investment rate to 30-35% of annual GDP and triple its 3.2% growth rate to about 20% per annum,” said Adam Elhiraika, Director of the ECA’s Macroeconomic and Governance Division
According to the director, there are six key areas for African countries to be able to increase government revenues: fiscal policy options, tax policy options, non-tax revenue options, tax administration options, policy options for the natural resource sector and debt policy options.
Adam Elhiraika, Macroeconomics Policy Division Director @ ECA_OFFICIAL at # 2019COM #Morocco pic.twitter.com/voHyQd9L9H
— ECA (@ECA_OFFICIAL) March 20, 2019
“Digital technologies would help establish more transparent, reliable and concrete methods to engender good fiscal practices that respond to Africa’s development challenges. It is about encouraging complementarity among our member States and promoting South-South cooperation,” explains Lilia Hachem Naas, who heads the ECA’s Subregional Office for North Africa.
Digital technologies would help establish more transparent, reliable and concrete methods to engender good fiscal practices that respond to Africa’s development challenges.
About 20 side events are also being be held at the Conference, addressing issues such as tax reform, digital commerce, the role of the private sector in financing African economies, climate resilient economies, and others.