Nortal, a multinational strategic change and technology company, and the Ministry of Finance of Estonia signed a cooperation agreement to introduce and implement Estonian tax collection and public finance management best practices in the GCC region.

According to Peeter Smitt, Nortal’s managing director in the Middle East region, Nortal has been a partner and vendor for some of the most efficient tax organizations in the world.

It has built roughly a third of Estonia’s e-government solutions and has extensive experience in carrying out mission-critical and high-impact projects across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“We started operations in the GCC region more than six years ago and as of today have launched a number of successfully projects. The list includes the award winning e-government portal Hukoomi in Qatar; the investor-friendly business registration system Invest Easy in Oman; a tax management system in Oman, and others. We are looking forward to further exporting our knowledge and expertise to the GCC region and introducing Estonian tax collection and public finance best practices, in association with the Ministry of Finance of Estonia,” added Smitt.

In 2015 the GCC states decided to implement value-added tax (VAT) among member states. Nortal will provide the necessary solutions and establish infrastructure for the implementation of effective tax collection in the region.

For the third year in a row, Estonia has had the most competitive tax system in the OECD, according to a Tax Foundation report. Estonia was one of the four countries in 2014 that managed to substantially decrease the VAT tax gap, according to the Report on the VAT Gap in the EU-28 Member States, compiled by the Centre for Social and Economic Research, Warsaw.

The report shows that in 2014, Estonia registered one of the most substantial reductions in the VAT Gap (by approximately 5 percentage points) among the EU Member States, jumping from 14th place in 2013 - to 7th place in 2014in the EU-wide rankings.

According to Europe's Digital Progress Report 2016, Estonia has the highest score for Digital Public Services. The Digital Public Services dimension consists of four indicators: the eGovernment users indicator; the level of sophistication of a country’s eGovernment services; the level of completeness of a country’s range of eGovernment services; and the government’s commitment to open data.

The agreement signed between Nortal and the Ministry of Finance of Estonia provides an opportunity for the employees of the Ministry and the authorities in its jurisdiction to participate in international collaboration between State Departments. Estonia and various authorities of the GCC states have ongoing official cooperation in the field of ICT through memoranda of cooperation. – TradeArabia News Service