Project Summary

Project General Description

The present intervention concerns the Guinea Project for Digitisation of Government Payments in the Mano River Union (DIGIGOV_MRU) countries. This project is implemented in three countries, namely: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It aims is to create within the targeted countries a digital payments ecosystem that will ensure public resource management transparency, security and optimisation. The planned actions aim to improve the quantity and quality of social public investments and access by the populations to basic financial services and also to improve their living conditions and reduce poverty. This is also a pilot project set up to build the capacities of States in transition to implement their domestic resource mobilisation and financial inclusion strategy. The main expected outcomes are to: (i) develop public tax compliance; (ii) establish a digital payments ecosystem; (iii) increase the contribution of taxes and duties to GDP from 13.4%, 10.6% and 12.9% to 17%, 11.2% and 14.5% respectively in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia while lowering the tax burden in favour of a broader tax base; (iv) increase the financial inclusion rate by over 6% on average; (v) ensure secure public resources management with some degree of transparency and (vi) create an enabling environment for the mass digitisation of all types of payments (G2P, P2G etc.). The main expected impacts for the direct beneficiaries concern their financial and social inclusion as well as improvement of their living conditions. The project comprises three main components namely: (1) Creation of an enabling environment for the digitisation of mass payments; (2) Protection of target populations and establishment of a secure payments solution; (3) Coordination, management, and monitoring and evaluation.

Project Objectives

The project’s overall objective is to increase the digitisation of transactions pertaining to the public administrations and populations of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Its specific objectives are to: (i) establish a digital payments ecosystem, capable of supporting all types of mass payments to ensure the transparency, security and optimisation of public resource management; (ii) allow tax and customs administrations and other government bodies, through digitisation and automation, to improve public resource management effectiveness and efficiency as well as transparency; (iii) encourage the financial inclusion of vulnerable segments of the population by promoting G2P and P2G payments and providing meaningful financial education; and (iii) develop the population’s tax compliance through digital channels and contribute to the formalisation of Very Small Enterprises (VSE) primarily operating in the informal sector.

Beneficiaries

The project will directly benefit SMEs, taxpayer users, civil servants and public employees, students as well as welfare recipients (mostly women and people at the bottom of the population pyramid). The total estimated number of direct beneficiaries is over two million individuals, 51% of whom are women, and two thousand SMEs. Indirectly, the project will benefit the populations of these three countries of intervention, estimated at over 30 million. The personnel of the different ministries impacted will also be sensitised.

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