The Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which was adopted at the third International Conference on Financing for Development, reiterated countries’ commitment to enhancing tax revenues through more efficient and effective tax systems and tax administrations, as well as to strengthening international cooperation in tax matters. The Action Agenda also called for increased capacity-building to support countries’ efforts in this area.

To this end, the Financing for Development Office (FfDO) of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) and CIAT are cooperating and coordinating their efforts, with a view to providing their member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean with tailored support to strengthen the capacity of these countries to deal with and address international tax issues.

In this context, SRI of Ecuador has expressed to both organisations its interest in receiving technical cooperation support in the area of transfer pricing. In response to this demand, FfDO and CIAT worked with SRI to define an action plan, consisting of several activities to be carried out at country level, including the delivery of both training and technical assistance activities.

A first joint UN-CIAT mission to Ecuador took place between May 2nd and May 6th in Quito. This week long mission featured a 3-day Basic UN Course on Transfer Pricing, as well as a 2-day Advanced UN Workshop on Transfer Pricing. Over 50 officials from various divisions of SRI involved in transfer pricing attended these trainings. In addition, a series of technical meetings were held with SRI’s officials to discuss key work areas to be addressed throughout the project, as well as define expected tangible outcomes.

UN-DESA FfDO and CIAT were represented at the meetings, respectively, by Ms. Irving Ojeda and Mr. Gonzalo Arias. The training programmes were facilitated by renowned experts in the area of transfer pricing, namely: Mr. Carlos Pérez from SAT of Mexico, Mr. Giammarco Cottani from Italy and Mr. José Madariaga from Chile. In addition, several transfer pricing experts from SRI contributed to these events by presenting the domestic perspective and introducing and discussing practical cases.

Photo: Participants to the advanced UN course on Transfer Pricing		Photo: Participants to the basic UN course on Transfer Pricing