IMF-西非经货联盟国内收入动员（英）-2025_21页_1mb

IMF Selected Issues Paper: Domestic Revenue Mobilization in WAEMU

Summary

The International Monetary Fund's Selected Issues Paper addresses critical challenges and opportunities in domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) within the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). DRM is essential for funding economic development, ensuring debt sustainability, and meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the face of rising debt costs, high security spending, and declining foreign aid.

Key findings include:

• Progress and Challenges: While DRM has improved over the past two decades, it remains below the 20% tax-to-GDP target set in the Convergence Pact, with significant cross-country disparities.
• Structural Barriers: Challenges include narrow tax bases, limited enforcement capacity, high informality, excessive exemptions, and widespread corruption.
• Regional Disparities: Countries like Senegal and Mali have made strides, while others lag. Divergence in tax performance risks undermining fiscal stability and regional convergence.
• Tax Potential: Analysis reveals large gaps between actual and potential tax revenue, with opportunities for reform, especially in reducing exemptions and improving tax compliance systems.
• Policy Recommendations: Strengthen tax harmonization, enhance regional surveillance, improve revenue administration through digitization, and undertake fiscal reforms to broaden tax bases and combat evasion.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• Regional Action: Prioritize reforms to streamline tax systems, enforce harmonized directives, expand cooperation on revenue administration, and establish a monitoring framework for fiscal sustainability.
• National Action: Simplify tax codes, rationalize exemptions, implement capacity-building initiatives, and foster transparency to enhance public trust and combat tax evasion.
• Improve Tax Governance: Embed anti-corruption measures, integrate multilateral oversight (e.g., through the WAEMU Commission's analytical tools), and support tailored reforms addressing country-specific inefficiencies.