From 7 to 8 September 2023, an international meeting was held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, to strengthen the electronic invoicing in Bolivia. This event was jointly promoted by CIAT, the Norwegian Development Cooperation -Norad- the Inter-American Development Bank -IDB-, and the National Tax Service of Bolivia – SIN-, on the topic: “Use of electronic invoice information to identify the tax risks”.

The event was inaugurated by the Bolivian Minister of Economy and Finance, the CIAT Director of Technical Cooperation and Information Technology, the Head of the IDB Tax Division and the President of the SIN, who thanked the international cooperation, in particular CIAT, the Norwegian Development Cooperation and the IDB, for the “impetus and support provided to the SIN in the process of digitalizing its services”.

The meeting brought together delegations from 15 CIAT member countries: Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Kenya, Morocco, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Uruguay; and 2 guest countries: Cape Verde and Malaysia. Representatives from the World Bank, the IDB, and CIAT, as well as from the Finance Secretariats of several Brazilian states such as Bahia, Goias, Rio Grande do Sul, and Sao Paulo, and from the Catholic University of Chile were also present.  Representatives from global corporations such as Microsoft Corporation, Google, Sovos, Data Tech International, Blue Light Systems and QMS International S.A. were also present.

The first part of the event focused on global views on e-invoicing and included interventions by CIAT’s Chief Technology Executive, who presented the global e-invoicing (EI) landscape; the IDB Sector Specialist who presented the IDB project for the use of EI data in Cross Border Transactions. Representatives of invited international corporations such as Google and Sovos also intervened.

In the second part of the event, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the State of Rio Grande do Sul of Brazil shared their experience in the implementation of the Electronic Invoice Anomaly Detector developed by CIAT and Microsoft. For their part, Panama, Cape Verde and the State of Sao Paulo of Brazil presented their experiences in the use of EI information for tax control. Brazil, Uruguay, Guatemala, Chile, Ecuador, Portugal and the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Bahia also shared their experiences in the use of electronic invoice information for risk management and the promotion of voluntary compliance.  For their part, Bolivia, Spain and the State of Goias shared their experiences in the use of artificial intelligence in tax administrations.

The event was the occasion for the official launch of the Digitalization Dialogue Group (DDG). This group aims to promote dialogue between Tax Administrations, companies from various economic activities, and other organizations, on the issue of electronic information exchange between taxpayers, and between taxpayers and the public administration, especially tax administrations. The DDG is chaired by Sovos Vice President for Strategy and Regulation Christiaan Van der Valk, with Alexander Kolmann of the Schwarz Group, and a member of a tax administration, whose name is still awaiting confirmation, as co-chairs.

The DDG, now hosted by CIAT as a supporting body, succeeds another long-standing group, hosted by the International Chamber of Commerce, which has produced interesting reference materials, such as the Working Principles for the Continuous Monitoring of Transactions. All are welcome to create an account through the Digitalization Dialogue at CIAT. The initiative contains several dialogue spaces, most of them open to any participant, but some will be restricted to members of tax administrations, or to participants of specific meetings, as is the case of the International Meeting for the Strengthening of Online Invoicing in Bolivia.

The event was closed with great success by the CIAT Director of Technical Cooperation and Information Technology, the IDB Sector Specialist, and the President of the SIN, who acknowledged CIAT and thanked all the panelists for their valuable contributions and the Norwegian Development Cooperation – Norad – for the support provided to make possible the meeting, which represents another step in the process of modernization and digitalization of the National Tax Service of Bolivia.

Minister of Economy and Public Finances, Marcelo Montenegro	President of the SIN, Mario Cazón
Raul Zambrano, CIAT Director of Technical Assistance and Technology	Main table: CIAT Chief Technology Executive, Vinicius de Freitas; President of the SIN, Mario Cazón; Minister of Economy and Public Finance of Bolivia, Marcelo Montenegro; CIAT Director of Technical Assistance and Technology, Raul Zambrano; and the Vice-Minister of Tax Policy, Jhonny Morales