Highlights

Mr. Mohamed BENCHAABOUN chairs the closing ceremony of the twinning project on support for the Directorate-General for Taxation

26/02/2019
Mr. Mohamed BENCHAABOUN chairs the closing ceremony of the twinning project on support for the Directorate-General for Taxation

Mr. Mohamed BENCHAABOUN, Minister of Economy and Finance, chaired, Tuesday February 26th 2019 in Skhirat, the closing seminar on support for the Directorate-General for Taxation (DGI) in order to improve its performance and its relations with taxpayers within the framework of the partnership between Morocco and the European Union (UE).

This ceremony was held in the presence of several Moroccan and European officials, including Mr. Omar Faraj, Director-General for Taxes, Mrs. Claudia Wiedey, European Union ambassadors in Morocco, and ministers advisor Mr. Martin de Lagarde, representative of France Ambassador, and Mr. Juan Ignacio Sell Sanz, representative of Spain Ambassador in Morocco.

The institutional twinning, for a period of twenty-four months (March 2017-February 2019), was implemented within the framework of the "HAKAMA" (public governance) funded by the EU for 13 million dirhams (1,2 million d’euros) and managed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The support for the DGI included a cooperation between the French Public Finances Directorate General and the Spanish Tax Agency for the support of the DGI within the framework of its key guidelines.

This project aims at establishing a high quality tax administration serving users’ needs, promoting a better mastery of the enforced recovery service and strengthening the activities of the administration as regards tax audits.

The general purpose of the Hakama project is to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and the quality of the action and public services through a more effective and a balanced mobilization of public funding and in particular the implementation of a more transparent and efficient public budget management.

The overall purpose is achieved through three specific aims, each related to a feature of the programme and falling under the three areas of reform. This includes firstly the budget reform on increasing budget performance and transparency, through the support of budget reform based primarily on the implementation of the new Organic law on Finance Act (Axis I).

It also concerns the reform of the administration on the improvement of the quality of the public services and the promotion of the citizen participation and control through the support for reform initiatives of the public management outside the financial sector, that would have a short-term impact on the quality of public services shared by citizens (Axis II).

On the other hand, tax reform focuses on increasing the transparency, fairness and efficiency of the tax system, through support for policy and administrative reform. (III).

The program has a budget of 93.5 million Euros and includes different cooperation instruments, such as budget support, project approach and institutional twinning, contributing harmoniously to sustain reforms.

The supporting budget assists the implementation of the major steps of these reforms by payments to the treasury account as achieved, on the basis of the progress of the implementation of steps, as the adoption of a new organic law on finance laws or the publication of detailed information on the budget implementation.