This Selected Issues paper revisits Rwanda’s options to create fiscal space to meet long-term development challenges. It examines strategies and options for a credible and comprehensive domestic revenue mobilization. The paper analyzes the driving factors of past reform successes and use an original dataset to highlight the benefits of implementing comprehensive tax reforms over selective reforms. The paper concludes that selective measures tend to yield protracted loss of revenue while measures implemented comprehensively lead to increases in revenue in the medium term. This stresses the need for an integrated approach to fiscal policy reform coordination to maximize long-term revenue benefits. For Rwanda, a comprehensive strategy for increasing tax revenues by adjusting rates, broadening the domestic tax base, improving tax compliance, and curbing tax evasion is the way forward. The strategy should shift higher tax burden from low-income households to higher income wealth cohorts with the view to advancing distributional fairness against growing inequality.
International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.
This paper discusses achievement and failure of science in increasing world animal production. The paper highlights that the application of modern animal production technology is virtually confined to Western Europe, to the North American continent, to Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. The new technologies are not yet used in other parts of the world. Hardly more than a handful of their farmers have any knowledge or understanding of production methods commonplace in highly developed countries.