The II Annual Meeting of the EUROsociAL Program was held in the city of La Antigua, Guatemala on July 7-10 of this year and the topic discussed was “Better quality of expenditure, greater impact of the policies”. Present in the event were the main representatives of the program who had the opportunity to discuss different subject matters in plenary and sectorial sessions. The sectorial discussion dealt with the main macro areas of EUROsociAL (Social Policies, Public Finances, Democratic Governance and Justice and Security).

The CIAT Executive Secretary, Mr. Márcio F. Verdi, participated in the “Public Finances and mobilization of domestic resources for development” Workshop, with direct intervention in session 1, which considered the “Quantity and quality of Public Revenues”. The topics discussed in the workshop were the consequences and characteristics of the tax structures existing in the region, the different mechanisms for improving the quality of public expenditure, the redistributive effect of tax policy, the fragmentation, coverage and financial viability of the health, education, pensions and unemployment protection systems. Other aspects discussed were the difficulties for advancing in the reforms required by the region; in particular, the political economy of factors that have allowed the approval and/or failure of some reforms in recent years, the importance of transparency in public finances and the participation of political and social agents as basis for advancing extensive agreements that may promote a new fiscal framework in the region.

The Head of the Italian Mission at CIAT, Lieutenant Colonel Stefano Gesuelli and Mr. David Vargas, official of the CIAT International Cooperation and Taxation Directorate participated in the Struggle Against Corruption Seminar. The latter’s purpose was to disseminate among the participants in the workshop, representatives of networks and Latin American institutions involved in such activity, the experiences of inter-institutional coordination for fighting against economic-financial offenses at the international level and in the Latin American context, endeavoring to identify possible actions to be promoted in this sphere. Also shown were the results of the analytical work on inter-institutional coordination experiences involving the investigation, persecution and sanctioning of economic financial offenses linked to corruption, as well as the experiences of some of the main international organizations working on this subject matter. Also, advantage was taken of this opportunity for identifying and discussing inter-institutional coordination experiences that may be transferred at the national level and within the Latin American context.

Official photo of the Seminar on Struggle Against Corruption