OREANDA-NEWS. On May 9–13, AFRITACs South and East jointly held a regional seminar at the Africa Training Institute (ATI) in Mauritius on how to measure and manage performance in tax administrations using the International Survey on Revenue Administration (ISORA), hosted on the IMF’s Revenue Administration Fiscal Information Tool (RAFIT) data collection platform.

The event brought together senior officials from Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Consistent with the global Financing for Development agenda and the importance of mobilizing domestic resources, the event focused on a recently IMF-developed tool for measuring and managing tax performance. Such a measure enables tax authorities to be effective and efficient as it provides feedback to management on whether the strategies yield the expected results. Using ISORA helps the organization measure its performance from all relevant perspectives and key performance areas.

Seminar participants shared their country experiences in implementing instruments and tools to manage tax performance. They agreed that tax performance management is contingent on a clear leadership commitment and a deliberate change management effort to support implementation of the system as the foundation of good people practices in an organization. Additionally, tax managers need to be supported and held accountable for implementing the new system that should be aligned to the strategic objectives of the organization, measuring performance from all broad perspectives of the business and not solely on performance against revenue targets.