 The Excellency Honorable Sherrod Sawee Papimasmas, Prime Minister of World War II. My dear friends, Mr. Priyam Wanji, Chairman of Regulatory Agency and Chairman of GSR 2019. And Honorable Mr. Sherrod Masen, Chief Information Officer of World War II Government. My dear colleagues, Doring Bogdan, Director of ITU Telecom Development Bureau and my colleagues, Mario Manowich, ITU Radio Communication Bureau. My dear friends, good morning. The first thing that strikes us when we set foot on Vanuatu is the beauty of this South Pacific Ocean nation. What stays with us is the warmth of its people. So allow me to start by thanking the government and the people of Vanuatu for their extraordinary hospitality and for hosting the 19th Global Symposium for Regulators. By the presence of Excellency Honorable Sherrod Sawee Papimasmas, Prime Minister of Vanuatu, who was already with ITU family at our ITU Telecom 2016 in Bangkok and at our last Plenary Potential Conference here in Dubai last year. Honorable Prime Minister, you are not the only Prime Minister to have spoken at our event three times in three years and also the only Prime Minister who spoke to us three times in ITU's history of 154 years. We are very honored to have you. We at ITU are grateful for your support and we are proud of what Vanuatu has accomplished in the field of ICT in recent years. It is wonderful to be here with all the participants and delegates who in many cases have traveled a long way to Vanuatu. I know many of you may have worked very hard to convince your boss to let you to come here. Thank you very much. But equally, we all understand how difficult our Vanuatu friends come to our event, also out of their country come to join us in another continent. We appreciate very much their efforts as well. Our host this year is a symbol of residence, a country on the forefront of the right against climate change, on the fight against climate change. It is also a country with forward-looking ICT initiatives like the National Digital Governance Roadmap. There is a lot we can learn from Vanuatu and that's why we are all here today to be at each other's knowledge and experiences to develop clear and repost regulatory framework. The Pacific region is faced with unique challenges, a very large sea area, small and small land masses and populations isolated from each other and a relatively low economic development and ICT connectivity. The ocean connects but also separates people, making transportation difficult and communications critical. Unfortunately, we don't hear views from this region very often. GSR 19 presents us with a golden opportunity to hear directly from those who live and work right here in the Pacific region. The last ICT International Presidential Conference, PP18, approved, among others, a revised resolution supporting small island developing countries and landlocked developing countries. I think we should also interpret that as waterlocked developing countries. We are pleased to come to the region to discuss connectivity strategies. In today's digital economy, the line between the ICT sector and other industries is increasingly blurred. Relationships between institutions, market players and people are changing emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, the Internet of Things and 5G are putting regulatory programs to the test. Accordingly, national regulators are faced with new technologies as well as new business and investment models. From architecture and transportation to banking and health, no sector of the economy is immune to digital transformation. As a result, collaboration regulations have been steadily gathering momentum. Their delegates and colleagues, ITU has developed the key concepts of collaborative regulation and the fifth generation regulation to describe the need for ICT policy and regulatory frameworks to be inclusive, up-to-date, flexible, incentive-based, evidence-based, decision-oriented and market-driven. At stake is the regulator's ability to unlock investment to support growth, jobs, innovation and digital transformation across sectors and regions. Moving toward a more open, collaborative and cross-sector regulatory platform is critical to achieving the sustainable development goals and delivering on the promise of the digital economy, not just for the benefit of consumers and businesses, but to all those who are still unconnected around the world, which means another half of our population. So we have challenges, of course, we have opportunities. Ladies and gentlemen, over the next three days, I encourage you to strengthen our dialogue and continue to learn from each other. Let us build tomorrow's regulatory frameworks, frameworks that will overcome the hunders to investment that can often stiffer progress. Let us be open to new regulatory tools and solutions. Let's act now. I look forward to our discussions here and to this year's GSR based practice guidelines we're supposed to develop by the end of this conference. I would like to conclude by thanking our delegates for your presence and also to those sponsors for GSR 2019 and once again I would like to thank our Honorable Prime Minister for his valuable support and to the Vanuatu government and the people who invited GSR 2019. I wish you all a successful and productive GSR 2019. Thank you very much.