 Welcome to WTDC 17 here in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Mr. Karma Penjo, who is the Secretary for the Ministry of Information and Communications for Bhutan. Thank you very much for being with us in the studio today. Good evening. Thank you for having me here today. Now I'd like to start off by talking about the overall impact of ICTs. How has it affected your country's socio-economic development? Well, since the introduction of ICT has had a tremendous positive impact on the socio-economic development of Bhutan. For example, it has really helped a kingdom like Bhutan, which is very mountainous, rugged, terrain, very harsh geographic conditions. It has helped the people communicate with each other because we don't really have a very wide road network. It's very difficult in the mountains, but through telecommunications it has been able to bridge the communication gap between the government and the citizens and as well as between the citizens. And it has also helped connect a very small landlocked country like Bhutan with the outside world. And what would you say are the major challenges or obstacles that Bhutan faces in the use of ICTs and the attainment of sustainable development? One challenge that the government continues to face despite having invested so much with the help of our development partners in building up the basic infrastructure is the issue of having access to affordable connectivity. So I think this will continue to remain a challenge and Bhutan being an LDC and that too, a landlocked LDC. So the issue of getting good, reliable, adequate bandwidth is very expensive. So I think this will continue to be a challenge in order to take advantage and harness the full impact of all the mobile apps and the databases and the e-government services that the government has and is implementing. You're a long way from home here. You've obviously taken the time to be here. I just wanted to find out what are the advantages of the cooperation with ITU? Bhutan became a member of ITU on 15 September 1988. And a year later we received the first technical assistance where the ITU along with the UNDP assisted the Royal Government of Bhutan in drafting its National Telecommunications Development Master Plan which was subsequently funded and implemented through a Japanese project. Since then I think we have had numerous assistance from ITU. They have helped us all the way from having established piloting community centres and then digital broadcasting. They have helped us fine tune our National Broadband Master Plan and very recently they are also giving us technical advisory in developing a consumer framework for e-commerce and also currently ITU and APNIC is helping the Royal Government in IPv6 migration efforts also. Then the Digital Migration Plan for Broadcasting which is ITU-manded I think by 2020. There too the ITU has assisted us in coming up earlier a few years ago with the roadmap which has recently been approved and we have a roadmap to move towards for digital broadcasting. Looking towards the end of this conference what do you hope will be achieved from everybody getting together here for this WTDC? Well I hope that the special attention is given to least developed landlocked countries because I think countries like Bhutan and then other landlocked countries who are members of the ITU. This is a very big challenge in terms of having affordable and reliable international gateways because even if you have the domestic infrastructure but without the international bandwidth that is so essential to utilize the ICT advantages that it offers. I think it will constrain all the efforts of both the development partners and the respective country governments. So I hope that there would be member countries and development organizations will look into this issue with renewed emphasis because as we move towards achieving the SDGs I think ICT has a tremendous role to play directly with some of the 17 indicators and I would say in my own opinion that it impinges on all the 17 indicators in one way or the other and ICTs will definitely have a very defining role in how national governments and how soon and what's the depth of the coverage of the achievement of the SDGs. So therefore I hope that especially for resource constrained landlocked countries that we continue to receive ITU support especially for participation in fora as this and more importantly in the technical advisory sessions where the younger professionals from national governments are up to date with the changes that are taking place with changes within ITU so that we are able to harness the full opportunities that ITU and the ICT offers national governments. Let me thank you once again for being with us in the studio and wish you the very best of luck in the future. Thank you so much. Thank you.