 Welcome to ITU Telecom World 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. We are very pleased to be joined in the studio today, Mr Damian Mancheski, who is the Minister of Information Society and Administration for North Macedonia. Minister, welcome to the studio. Thank you for the invitation. Now, I'd like to start off by talking about the theme of this year's event. It's innovating together connectivity that matters. What makes connectivity meaningful in your opinion and why is it so important? Oh, I'm biased for my opinion. I'm an electronics and telecommunications engineer, so it's the most important issue. But generally, exchange of information is essential today, and expedite exchange of information is even more important. Raising the awareness about certain issues, it also helps us, but also makes the entire work much more efficient. So the connectivity is the infrastructure, the basis for the development of any industry. So this is something that we're working on. Let's talk about innovations by themselves. What single innovation in technology policy or strategy do you think has got the most potential to drive digital transformation? Well, of course, the 5G is now the hottest thing, but also the new technologies, the high-band frequencies-based technologies are something that is going to move the world much more significantly, I think, even than the introduction of electricity in some things. Internet of things, the things themselves are becoming intelligent. So this is the new improvement in new technologies going to drive the world forward. We are also trying to catch up with the latest technologies in North Macedonia. We're investing into 5G infrastructure, but also generally broadband infrastructure for the population. We've mapped out the wide zones. We're trying to provide them with services. So follow this again in order to provide them with better services and with higher quality. You talked about some of the elements that are important to you. Can you perhaps just highlight a few of the key initiatives and measures that North Macedonia is taking in the digital economy? We have adopted the National Operational Broadband Plan. It sounds like a document, but the basis of it is the National Optic Transport Network. So now with the support of the World Bank, we are investing heavily into state infrastructure in order to provide broadband fast and ultra-fast internet in all the areas of the country. We do not have the ambition to become an operator, but to allow the operators to use this infrastructure. So we are kind of making it faster, pushing them to provide services to the farthest corners of the country. That's one thing. The second is of course cyber security. We are very much investing into this. We have the cyber security strategy, but also we're trying to promote the new cyber security training center for western Mongolia and SIS countries in Skopje. So this is another thing. We have just implemented the National Electronic Population Register together with the new National Portal for East Services. We are aligned with GDPR, with EIDAS, introducing the identity of the citizens, many things that are happening for massive digitalization of the Macedonian institutions. That's brilliant. Well obviously you're not standing still. I wanted to ask you, as part of the ITU European Member States, how is North Macedonia working with ITU to advance its objectives? Well first of all we have very concrete and I would say frequent cooperation in the area of cyber security. We've organized several workshops for ITU in Skopje, but also one of the aims why we're also here as a delegation is to try to identify a potential investor for the mobile communications market in North Macedonia. This is the presentation that we have. The current situation is that we have two network operators. We usually have three, but with the merger of the two of them, we have identified the necessity for a third one in order to be able to match the expectations of the citizens for the level of the prices for the services, but also for the quality of the services. So ITU is helping us tremendously in these two areas. And finally, what's the value for you of events such as ITU, Telecom World? Well going back to one of the actual aims where we're here is first of all it's networking of course, but then being in touch with the latest developments in technologies also trying to identify joint projects with other governments, vendors as well, but also with ITU. These initiatives that already happened in Skopje came out of these events. And again trying to identify potential investors in any country for any kind of business opportunity. Concretely in North Macedonia we have the necessity to try to attract third network operator. Well thank you so much for joining us in the studio today, David Mancheski, and we look forward to catching up with you again in the near future. Again thank you for the invitation, it was a pleasure. Thank you.