THE international fight for transparency and exchange of information in tax matters continues at great speed in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the three-day 2021 Global Forum plenary meeting - opened by OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann, followed by Indonesia’s Finance Minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati - ministers, high-level authorities and delegates from about 130 member jurisdictions will take stock of the progress made on multilateral co-operation in transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes and discuss the future direction of the Global Forum.

Celebrating 10 years of Global Forum capacity-building activities, members will also reflect on ensuring transparency and exchange of information benefit developing jurisdictions and help them in their fight against tax evasion and other illicit financial flows, allowing them to enhance domestic resource mobilisation. Over 70 jurisdictions benefited from assistance in 2021 and 21000 tax officials have been trained since 2011.

Building on the success of its regional initiatives for Africa, Latin America and the Pacific Islands, the Global Forum announced a new initiative for Asia, to be launched in 2022, with the support of Indonesia’s Finance Minister and Asian Development Bank’s President, Mr Masatsugu Asakawa.

In addition to seeking the gender balance in its activities, the Global Forum will launch the Women leaders in tax transparency programme, which aims at reinforcing gender equality in tax administrations.

"This 10-year anniversary provides us with an opportunity to reflect on how inclusive the Global Forum is, how our work has evolved as a result and launch new initiatives," said Maria José Garde, Chair of the Global Forum. "The fact that over half of our members are developing jurisdictions means that our support and assistance work is critical to ensure they mobilise much-needed revenues."

The Global Forum keeps ensuring there is nowhere left to hide and promotes a level playing field through its peer review and monitoring activities. The second edition of the Peer Review of the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information shows the continuous progress made through the Global Forum peer review and monitoring activities. Results from the second stage of the monitoring process, assessing the effectiveness of automatic exchange, are due to be published in 2022.