On 13 October 2026, at the IMF annual meetings, a panel discussion was held on the theme From Tax to Treasury: Building Digitally Connected Public Finance. The panellists were S. Almanza, the Treasurer in the Bureau of the Treasury, Philippines; M. Hyseni, the Director General of the Tax Administration of Kosovo; A. Mwenda, the Director General for Budget, Fiscal and Economic Affairs, Kenya; and S. Meesang, Director of the Tax Policy and Planning Division of the Revenue Department of Thailand. The moderator was J. Toro, Deputy Director of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department.
The discussion looked at how digital interoperability across revenue and spending agencies is an important part of digital transformation. The digital transformation can bring benefits within government agencies, but also more broadly between agencies. The panellists introduced their own experience with the development of digital systems in the finance and tax administration of their countries.
The Treasurer explained the use of AI in the Philippines Treasury to improve financial forecasting and improve the analysis of revenue and expenditure. Digital systems enabled integration of revenue expenditure with forecasting, using historical data to generate the forecasts. Reliable forecasts rely on having complete data, and this needs data governance.
Better fiscal decisions can be made when AI works with data, if the data is managed properly. Digital systems help to improve debt management; reduce borrowing and financing costs; and avoid unnecessarily large cash buffers. These systems need quality, complete data to be input. Even the use of sophisticated AI cannot produce good decisions with outdated or incomplete data. Strong data governance and institutional coordination are therefore needed to back up digital systems and AI.
In Kenya, a treasury single account has been developed, to interface with central bank of Kenya. Payroll management has been integrated with general finance management. There is also a link to the pension system, reducing the time taken for ministries to transfer data to the pension system. The system helps to increase the visibility of transactions to the tax administration, allowing better budgeting in relation to pension obligations and the elimination of ghost workers. As a result, better data management and reduced leakage have led to more efficient expenditure.
The lesson learnt is that the ability to interface and exchange with central government financial management produces better results for digital reforms. Organisational and digital obstacles can slow down the opportunity to obtain results from digital systems. The development of data interoperability improves the information flow within governments.
The Thailand revenue department has developed digital systems over a number of decades. The e-revenue phase involving e-filing, e-payment and e-receipts developed from 2001 to 2015. The digital revenue department phase, from 2015 to 2025, introduced data driven tax administration and compliance, with a national e-payment system, e-withholding tax and digital taxpayer ID. Thailand also introduced VAT for electronic services, and more recently launched AI-enabled services.
Digital systems have enabled the development of a strategy bridge between tax and public finance. This has been used to improve tax services and public finance management. Tax collection information is integrated into the government information system (GFMIS Thai) to enable a government-wide review of revenue, spending and cash flow. Better taxpayer services have been developed by introducing pre-filing of tax information, eliminating error and leading to fast filing and prompt payment of refunds.
Another outcome is more efficient tax enforcement. Government procurement contract data and government payment and tax withholding data are subject to data matching analysis. The data is matched with data from tax returns and other tax information, to identify inconsistencies and highlight high-risk cases. This supports more effective tax administration through risk analysis, compliance monitoring and better revenue collection.
