Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, changes that might ordinarily take a few years are now occurring in the span of just a few months. The uptake of e-commerce and the adoption of video-conferencing, for example, have increased rapidly. This distinctive feature of crises—that they can accelerate otherwise slow-moving trends—can be harnessed by those seeking to create…
Recurrent episodes of marginal communities being evicted from the waterfronts of Lagos have made global media headlines over the last four years. Up until 2016, the city had earned a hard-won status as a model of good urban governance for Africa. Along with better transport systems, waste management and security, the Lagos state government had re-established control over planning and…
This piece is co-published with the International Budget Partnership. Since its onset, governments the world over have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by ramping up spending and providing tax relief to ailing families and businesses, even in the face of dwindling revenues. This has inevitably led to widened fiscal deficits and ballooning public debts. For…
There is growing international attention on tax collection in low-income countries. This attention is only amplifying in light of the increased revenue pressures faced by governments around the world as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. While governments will be seeking new revenue sources in the coming years, increased revenue is only desirable in so…
Globally, tax collections are declining. Governments have cancelled or postponed some tax dues in the effort to bolster economies and keep enterprises solvent. With employment, trade and profits nevertheless shrinking, opportunities to collect income and profit taxes, VAT, and excise and import duties are also dwindling. For the next two years at least, many governments…
So far, policy discussions about tax responses to Covid-19 have focused overwhelmingly on how to offer immediate tax relief. There is a clear sequence in these discussions: tax relief today, expanded revenue collection in the future to compensate. This blog explores a less conventional argument: that African governments may want to think much more immediately…
ICTD Informality and Taxation blog series The ICTD’s Informality and Tax programme seeks to conduct, connect, and support novel research around the relationship between tax and informality. To introduce some of the central areas of research in this area and highlight relevant questions for policymakers and academics alike, we will accompany our work with a…
As the world grapples with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable workers in the informal sector in the global south have been hit hard. Their health is disproportionately at risk. As, for example, vendors working in close quarters and heavily reliant on face-to-face interactions or as frontline care-workers in households, the nature of their…
There is no scarcity of criticism of the methods that OECD governments have used – and not used – to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 virus. By contrast, the steps they have taken to deal with the economic consequences of the pandemic are more widely appreciated. The OECD now reports regularly on the wide…
With over 16,000 deaths globally and the number of cases growing each day, the calamitous impacts of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) are already being felt. As the virus continues to spread, the human impact in the Global South has the potential to be catastrophic as it strains weak and underfunded health systems. The economic impacts…
Cigarette sales in most African countries are going up all the time. But smoking rates are much lower than in high-income countries. Because of these comparatively lower smoking prevalence rates – combined with the urgent need to address infectious diseases – tobacco control policies have largely not been prioritised. Nigeria is a case in point. Preventing smoking rates…
Tobacco companies are zeroing in on one of the last global markets still ripe for exploitation: the African continent. Much of the tobacco leaf and some of the manufactured cigarettes produced on the continent are exported. These exports earn the foreign currency that’s attractive to the finance ministries of tobacco producing countries. But increasing amounts…
