Among the challenges facing Ecuador in the area of public finance is the need to increase the tax burden in order to maintain current public spending levels and continue with its social programme.

For its part, the Chilean tax reform approved in 2014 will make it possible to increase tax collection very significantly in order to tackle the improvement in education and health policy.

From this point of view, interest in the activity was focused on learning in depth about the tax reform carried out in Chile in 2014, with specific attention to the special taxes and tax incentives implemented in Chile to encourage investment and production, among other issues.

The Deputy Secretary of Planning and Sectoral and Intersectoral Policy of the Ecuadoran Ministry of Coordination of Economic Policy, the National Director of Revenue of the Ecuadoran Ministry of Finance, and analysts from both ministries participated in the activity, in addition to the Deputy Director of Studies of the Spanish Institute for Tax Studies. On the Chilean side, the participants included the Coordinator for Tax Policy of the country's Ministry of Finance and main adviser to the Ministry of Finance; the Deputy Director of Tax Studies and Management of International Relations; the Legal Coordinator; and the Deputy Directors of Taxation and Informatics of the Chilean Ministry of Finance.

This activity is part of the budget-plan link action of the Public Finance area of the EUROsociAL cooperation programme of the European Commission , in which the Spanish Institute for Tax Studies (IEF) is acting as the operational partner.