My internship experience at UNESCAP Bangkok

With my passion for exploring the area of economic policy development from international organization perspective, I decided to work as an economic affair intern at the Macroeconomic Policy and Financing for Development (MPFD) department in United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Bangkok, Thailand. During my internship between May and August 2019, my main assignment is to conduct a policy brief of selected Asia countries’ digital taxation system. After the introduction and kick-off discussion with my supervisor, Zheng Jian, we mutually agreed on this main assignment which is in line with his expertise and my interest. My primary responsibility includes conducting secondary research of the current digital taxation regime from various sources and countries, highlighting the impactful digital tax policy reform, and summarizing key takeaways through a policy brief.

The importance of this issue is that the advent of technologies allows companies to do cross-border business without a physical presence or company registration, such as an e-commerce platform; however, current tax laws are unable to follow the digitized business. Several governments imposed a new unilateral tax and technology policy to capture this change. To understand this issue, I have conducted digital tax policy-related research to understand the countries’ context, policy formulation and implementation, and public administration relevant to digital tax policy.

Since digital taxation issue is quite a recent issue, there is a limitation to find academic research to develop policy recommendation. Fortunately, there are several experienced economists and policy experts in my division, they are helpful and guide me to figure out on the research approach and how to develop a recommendation on behalf of UNESCAP stance. The internship experience at UNESCAP enlightens my understanding of the most recent digital and fiscal policy through the lens of an international organization who aim at maximizing the holistic outcome. I also learned how an international organization thinks and tackle the challenges. It illustrates the difference between the development through international organization and the development through national government clearly.

Additionally, I have developed life-long friendships and enriching experience with young interns and consultants across the world. The great mix of diversity from Europe, America, and Asia allows me to understand how the people in the different regions think, work, and enact with other people. Besides the regional diversity, They are also diverse in term of background and area of interest. Since they are selected from the quality of UN recruitment, they are talented, passionate, and ambitious toward policy development. This network would encourage intellectual discussions even after I have left UNESCAP and will help me connect with the people around the globe. Interaction is not limited to the workplace, but UN people also hang out together after the office hour which allows me to have both friends and colleagues at the same time.

Besides the friendship, working at UNESCAP allow you to work surrounded by experts across the world, sharing and learning with UN staffs broaden my perspective regarding international development and public policy. This is the outstanding opportunity to explore deeper in your academic field of interest because you are surrounded by the expert in that field and be able to ask them for a coffee and intellectual discussion.