Financial transparency is high on the agenda in Latin-America. Ecuadorian economist, Silvia Mariela Mendez Prado, sums up the current debates and the status of the work of several NGO-networks that are involved in the issue, including Latindad, Tax Justice Network and Publish What You Pay.* - These networks have promulgated four areas of action: country-by-country reporting, information exchange, information transparency and strengthening of tax administrations. These requests have been framed by the CSO networks as palliative measures, and sometimes the only solution, to gain greater control against the practices of financial opacity, distortions in transfer pricing, development of exchange operations of illicit financial flows, and the use of tax avoidance, Mariela Mendez describes. - This has been echoed by the Latin American NGOs, who, making use of their networks, have managed to engange with technicians of local tax administrations, academics and experts in the field, in forums and through developing working papers that supply facts and promote change. While praising Norway for putting financial secrecy on the agenda, she also shows concern for the ongoing process of implementing country-by-county reporting: - As for the work on country-by-country reporting and Norway's efforts, Norwegian authorities have said that they will implement country-by-country reporting by 1 January 2014. But, the large and pressing question is: In what form? Will they go beyond the European Union and actually tackle capital flight, or will they just adopt the EU directive, which is only a minimum requirement for transparency? "*Full blog post in Spanish*":http://www.marielamendezprado.com/2013/01/noruega-traves-de-publish-what-you-pay.html _Mariela Mendez participated in the_ "_TRACE programme for civil society_":trace/trace-programme-pwyp-norway-initiative-civil-society _and in the_ "_Financial secrecy-conference_":conference in Bergen, representing the organisation "Jubileo 2000":http://www.jubileo2000.ec/.
27. februar 2013