“Tax justice opens concrete opportunities for claiming urgently needed resources in tax protection” is APMDD’s main message at the Workshop on Expanding on Social Protection Towards Addressing Inequality and Increasing Vulnerabilities under ASEAN Integration.
“Tax justice opens concrete opportunities for claiming urgently needed resources in tax protection.” This was the main message of APMDD’s contribution at the “Workshop on Expanding on Social Protection Towards Addressing Inequality and Increasing Vulnerabilities under ASEAN Integration” held in Vietnam last 13-14 October 2016.
Organized by the Vietnamese Peace and Development Foundation in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung-Vietnam, ActionAid Vietnam and the Network for Transformative Social Protection, the workshop examined the implications for and possible threats to vulnerable groups and peoples under regional integration of the Southeast Asian region; and how these threats can be effectively met. These include cooptation of the social protection agenda – i.e., government relying more and more on private sector money – and declining resources allocated for essential social services.
Among the points highlighted at the close of the conference was the issue of financing social protection, specifically that social protection as social justice should be consolidated in the ASEAN agenda and that finance should remain mostly public. This can be addressed by claiming tax revenues for public spending on an inclusive, equitable, rights based and transformative social protection.
The workshop brought together about 60 participants, mostly from Vietnamese CSOs and government agencies.