The WCO attended the International Centre for Tax Development’s annual meeting in Lomé, Togo from 10-12 December. Director General of Togolese Customs, Mr. Kodjo Adedze, delivered the keynote speech and warmly welcomed participants from a broad range of organizations dealing with tax and development issues including NORAD, the OECD, UNDP and representatives of Customs administrations from Rwanda, Cameroon and Tanzania amongst others.

The ICTD is jointly financed by the UK’s development agency, DFID, and the Norwegian development agency NORAD and is headquartered at the University of Sussex. It is a global policy research network and it regularly conducts research into the political economy of taxation with a particular focus on how taxation policies can benefit developing countries.

Experts from academia and government discussed Customs reform and modernization using tangible figures and statistics. The WCO presented its research on ‘Measurement applied to Customs management’, a burgeoning area which complements previous research papers produced by the WCO on fiscal management and informal trade practices in Africa. Furthermore, presentations focused on the potential benefits a renewed focus on figures and statistics could bring by altering the focus from a subjective analysis of a ‘successful administration’ to an objective, empirically-grounded analysis.

To access the presentations and find out more about the conference please visit: http://www.ictd.ac/en/events/acm2013-presentations