 Hello and welcome everyone and very good morning to you. Let me bring in our panelists first and introduce them starting with Greta Feremo, the United Nations Under Secretary General for the United Nations Office for Project Services. Jamal Udeen y Ibrahim, ymddiadau y Prifeddant a'r CEO yma, ymlaesias acciata grwp John Rice, ymddiadau ymddiadau, a G.E. i'r George Yeo, ymddiadau syngorfer, ymddiadau ymddiadau ymddiadau, ac ymddiadau ymddiadau cyllidol, ymddiadau honno. Yn ymddiadau, yn yr hyn yn ei bod yn ymddiadau, ymddiadau ymddiadau ymddiadau, ymddiadau ymddiadau, ymwynt y rhaid o y täbl. Here in Asiol, how optimistic are you about the future? ymddiadau ymwynt yw'n risg for growth and the outlook? Yn ymweld, we'n ben SDF. We've been in the region for almost 100 years. We've seen asiol develop in the last 50. We see an important trading bloc. These economies have grown on average about 5% over the last 15 years, a that's through the global financial crisis. Our business here has grown in some years at double digit rates, it's one of our largest regions, and there are important interdependencies. We've got 9,000 employees, we have activities in every country and a lot of what we do in those countries gets exported to other countries. So this idea of a trading block, we think, is very important. …olod o'r reilio a i teimlo i'r cyfnod i'r eu cyfnod. Si'n gymryd, mae'r cyfle i chi, byddai tynnu blynydd… …a'r cyfnod o gyfnod i'r cyfnod, byddai tynnu blynydd… …a Cymru o gyfnod, byddai tynnu blynydd, byddai cyfeithio… …a'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod i'r cyfnod… …a cael ei weld i'r cyfnod y telygion. Eich gweithio yn y cwliffr, i ddim yn ei dynnu. It's pretty obvious in general, and all of you know the lot of intra-Asian dependencies and economic activities. Maybe I can stress a bit more on the ICT area. That has been an area that has been growing for sure by every country You can see that there are different kinds of trends going on here. The ... of course, NCT industry itself is kind of ... there are many components. But let me focus on the three components. The ... If you look at mobile industry where I am in itself that has been growing very fast, but is plateauing and in fact some countries are negative for flat growth, whereas broadband growth has been growing double digit a rydyn ni oedd y brofyn digido economiad yn ei ddweud yn ffymau yn y trofnog. Yn y ddweud y intro, Acian yw y cyfwyr ymlaen. Ac yn rhaid i'r ffrindiau, ac yn y ffordd, mae oedd y ddweud ymlaen i'r ffymu'r mhwng, oherwydd i'n ddweud ddweud ymlaen ar y ffordd, gan gweithio ar y cyfwyr Acian yn ddweud ymlaen i'r ffymu digital. If I can bring you in, George, and talk about economic integration and where we are in the process. One of the challenges of closer harmonization and integration is that ASEAN is a very diverse family, isn't it? You have countries like Singapore and one end of the spectrum, you have Philippines and Indonesia somewhat in the middle and then you have the rising new Asian Tigers like Cambodia, Byddai'n g holding yr un morhaidach sy'n bywyd? Yn gwaith yma, fe'w cymrydio'r cymrydiau rwyf yn safbodaethu gyrdd a ffwrdd oieil. Rydw i'n meddwl traditionalau byddai cymrydiau. Cymrydiau i Adreced e'w Azerbaijan gweithio. Gweithio'r cyfeirio yn anodol ar gweithio. Mae yw'r sydd mewn gweithio'r cyfan, ac mae'n ymweld ychydig. Felly mae erbyn bod ymddynt. mae ichi Gwyrdd Gondol, rydw i ni'n gwyllgor'y ba wedi dyfodol gwyn rydyn ni wedi dwyboi, mae ichi gwyllgor'y ba wedi dwi'n gwyllgor'u gwyllgor'u gwyllgor'u gwyrdd gwasanaeth. Rydyn ni'n gyfeilio arall y Chino ar gynso, i gyhoeddwyr, darpar o gywchol, ac i gyfu ar gen i'r gymrydd, er mwnginol ar gyfer yn gyfacol. I'n dweud y cy classmates ar Ciner, ar gyfacol a dyfodol, yn hayfru i gyrdwyr. Mae'r cael ei ddweud o ddwyf yn cyfan. Felly, gallais i yw Gretaig iawn, gyda'n defnyddio sydd gennych y Unedol, byddai mor ddechrau yn dyn nhw. Felly mae'n iawn i yw'r rhan a'r rhan i eu bod pan i llwyddiadau erbyn yn ei畫 Beautiful platform Fel bod y maen nhw, mae'n rhan o'r economau yw'r holl arbyn, rydw i Panodfa yn y gwasanaeth. Rydw i ddim yn y gallwch chi oedau. Rydw i'n mynd i Lywodraeth i'r ymddiw hwn, ac mae'r hyn yn cyd-i-luniau i'r rheini sydd arers oedd y Llywodraeth ac rwyf yn dda i'r drwg gretau o'r llwyffydd, ydych chi'n mynd i'r ffordd y ffordd yn ymddangosol a'r cyfrifrwyr mwyaf yma, yng Nghymru Eurwyr Ffwyrdd yn ymwneud o'r llwyffydd ffwyrdd yn ymddangosol. Roedd yma'r llwyffydd ar y dda sy'n gydag i'r cyfrifrwyr i'r cyfrifrwyr fydd yn ymddangosol i'r cyfrifrwyr? Rwy'n mynd i'r ffrwyr i'r panellydd o'r cyfrifrwyr. Mae'r gwybod yn ddiolch yn ôl, mae'n ddweud ei hynny yn ygwybod. también, yr unrhywun hîm ddweud hwy'r cystu, a'r syniad hynny rhywun yn fawr o'r fath ar gyfer y ddechrau, ac yn ddechrau y ddefnyddio yng Nghymru, nid amser o'n ddechrau, mae'n golygu yn siwedd yn ei amser ac yn dd überzeugio'r amser gan ydymaf beth'n mynd y sefydliadau. a dyna'r wathrofyddiant yn dysgledigfawr hefyd, a yna'n ddweud gan y fathref? Felly mae'n gweld yn ddweud y ddweud dryddiant yn ddiolch i fynd arfer. Rydym ni'n go ffaraiff yn y cyd-rhyw uchydig? Ardyn ni'n go so os ffaen, rydym ni'n gwanch y unio yng Nghyrgrifennu? Rydym ni'n go i'r unio yng Nghyrgrifennu? y cyfnod sy'n gweithio ar y cyfnod o'r hyfforddiad. John, can I bring you in? Sure. Look, I want to pick up on both the point George made and Greta. I think this notion of having borders become points of connection instead of barriers is really important because if you think about sustainable economic growth and to Greta's point, having everybody's boat lifted with the rising tide, you've got to make these points of connection. Whether you have to go all the way to a European Union in a common currency, I don't know. I don't really think so, but I think that's to be determined. If you can make these borders become points of connection and do it in a way that lets everybody benefit, it's a lot easier to say than it is to do, then I think you can exist with a trading block and not necessarily the European Union model. Can I ask you to follow up on that? From a harmonisation point of view, from a businessman's perspective, what do you want to see being achieved? What do you want to see in real terms, in material terms being done, to increase the ease of business and to potentially at some point down the line improve inclusivity? I'd say two things, a level playing field in terms of free flow of capital and goods and capital means human capital in addition to financial capital and then I think countries have to concentrate on the frictional points. The things that are kind of under the surface in terms of getting permits and approvals and moving, as George would know from Kerry Logistics, moving goods from one place to a next and making that as easy as possible because those frictional costs are really insidious when it comes to the cost of trade. Would you agree with that, George? Do the supply chains well-established here but they need to be smoother, yes? And the infrastructure deficit and the infrastructure gap in this part of the world is something of a stumbling block? Well, there are problems everywhere and we face problems every day but day by day, month by month, there are improvements and China's one belt, one road is an enormous opportunity for all of civilization. There's a chance now that in the next 10, 20 years the infrastructural base of ASEAN will improve beyond recognition both within ASEAN and between ASEAN and its neighbours. There is a chance now as the blood vessels grow, as the blood flows that many countries in civilization in one generation can make it to near first world status. This is a historic opportunity and because China is here in a big way so the Japanese feel a sense of friendly rivalry the Indians too and others are competing to help us and if we are skillful enough to maintain this foreign policy then everyone will want to be our friend everyone will have a vested interest in seeing us do well internally we must make sure that we solve problems day by day they cannot be solved overnight, that we help each other the natural tensions between neighbours to get out of hand ASEAN is soft, we don't take decisions by voting if you have to vote, there's already a rupture so there's a sense that well if you cannot solve the problem today just hold back, if you can't join in now exclude yourself but come in when you're ready and without ASEAN, Myanmar could not have achieved this peaceful transition and it's an enormous achievement because even five years ago no one could have envisaged that this peaceful transition could have taken place Greta, if I can give you the final word before we move on to our next theme which will be trade and opening up market access etc inclusive growth, we hear this time and time again it's become something off a buzzword how do we get beyond the sound bite how do we make it a material I can only mention that we in Unobs has taken the initiative to working more with a private sector and making sure that we also leverage our cooperation with governments when we talk about social housing for instance green energy, there may be projects that are not as bankable as they should be so investors say no perhaps we can bring that soft component to the table have governments take a first loss risk or actually bringing more investors together and turn the no to a yes and people in fragile situations may benefit from solutions where they access green energy, where they access social housing so actually finding new ways of working together with a private sector I think is really important to achieve the agenda 2030 or 2025 as the ASEAN countries have established so it's really about redefining and refining the private public partnership can you give us a sense of where it is working is there a model where it's working in this region that can be applied or scaled up elsewhere it would not be for me to say what works and not work but I think what is really important is to develop these new tools where the investors whether they are private or public put their money together and make them work at a larger scale compared to what is done today George, let me get back to you ASEAN is where the growth is that much is sure but short to medium term how concerned are you about the rising tide of protectionism not within ASEAN itself because we are a collection of kingdoms and principalities it's never been one empire historically the Malays have a beautiful term for this in Bahasa we are the lands below the winds half the year the winds blow one way, half the year the other way and it brings in influences from China, from India and the result is very mixed cultures throughout civilization and we are connected by the waterways which was the original internet so there's no way in the world that we can be seriously protectionistic we cannot survive by being protectionistic it's not in our blood Jamal, would you agree with that and are we fairly well insulated in this region since a fair few of our economies are not cyclically open they have very strong demand drivers internally for us we would be very concerned if there's a lot more protectionism or nationalism in our industry it's a highly regulated industry in every country of their own rules and so on we cannot do as a foreign company of course we are a Malaysian-based company we operate in ten countries and five of the ASEAN countries we are operating in so it is a concern for example in some countries in one or two countries we can't even operate our tower business for example to build infrastructure we are now allowed to unless we activate some exceptions we can't basically and in terms of being able in some of the countries we operate in I won't mention one or the other there's a huge biasness of nationalistic support for the local company to the detriment of us as a foreign-based company in some of the countries we operate in and obviously it's something that we have where would you say that is most acute or most pronounced where is the biggest problem I can mention some countries like Indonesia and so on it makes it difficult for us to operate if there's a huge biasness for their own national company because we although we are a foreign-based company we contribute significantly to the economy directly and indirectly and we are advocating the concept of the digital revolution that can tremendously affect the whole ASEAN to the tune of about incremental of one trillion GDP increment by 2026 and to do that the protectionism has to be we have to be on a level playing field as John mentioned from one company to another from one country to another so that is to us one of the potentially biggest a big problem to achieve that so the country to country barriers need to come down the playing field needs to be levels to borrow John's expression do you think that you are winning that debate at this juncture in some countries yes in some countries not quite it's a long way to go but there's scope for compromise there's scope for compromise we were talking about the pivot to China earlier and John you and I were talking about this earlier as well the US seems to be disengaging from this region it's walked away from TPP and nature of halls of acum does China fill the void and is the pivot towards China something that we can work with or do we need a more diversified approach to trade look I think China has a long term strategy which demonstrates that it wants to take advantage of successful economic growth in this region and beyond and the one belt one road strategy is a perfect example of that we don't see it as a threat we see it as an opportunity we do a lot in China and we can work with our Chinese partners in just about every country along the Belt and Road so we have to adjust we have to pivot in the beginning if you go back 30 years we were in China to buy things to export and to sell into that market for domestic consumption or domestic use in today's world you do everything you're in China for China you're in China for the rest of the world you're participating with Chinese partners along the Belt and Road and it's the way it will work in the 21st century so we have to be bilateral almost everywhere we're in 180 countries we like to take advantage and participate in multilateral trade agreements because we think the level playing field works for everybody but if that's not going to be the case then we go door to door and we figure it out because that's the world we live in it may not be our choice but it's our reality if we do see increasing government to government deals then isn't that necessarily crowding up the private sector is that something that you're concerned about I'm sorry though if we do see more government to government deals being done isn't that necessarily crowding out the private sector and you guys I don't think so I mean that's one of the reasons we've built a footprint in 180 countries so that we can adjust we don't like to see tariffs and trade barriers because we think it constipates the system but if it's required for us I mean when we're in Indonesia Indonesia wants us to be a US company a global company and a local company at the same time and we're equipped to do that and we've been building that footprint for decades and so we hope to be agile enough to adjust because at the end of the day the world needs a lecture I've got back to my point before right you can't have sustainable inclusive growth if you don't have electricity right it's all bets are off so you've got to if you're working on that stuff you're going to be welcome everywhere George your thoughts and let me press you specifically on one belt, one road from your perspective what do you think it means for longer term market access and from a terms of trade and a trade flows point of view should we be welcoming this? No every country in Southeast Asia welcomes Chinese investment wants to be part of one belt, one road because it's a good an opportunity to become more connected both domestically within the region and beyond the region but China is big and China is long in historical memory of countries in ASEAN so there's a certain fear that they may become overly dependent on China that because of these links China will control you and manipulate you because of this the instincts of Southeast Asian countries is to be promiscuous yes be close to China but never be exclusively with China because of this the Americans, the Japanese, the Europeans will always be welcome if you ask Southeast Asian countries to choose between A or B find it intolerable they will want to be close to China and they cannot afford to have China as an enemy but they do not want China to be the exclusive partner and because of this I will say in many respects the Americans, the Japanese, the Europeans are free riders in Southeast Asia and this region will always remain open to them and they should avoid putting pressure on Southeast Asian countries to choose they don't like that and China too must understand this which I think it does and let me bring in Greta some have even gone as far to say that there is a great game there is a new great game going on in Asia with China and these other powerhouses vying for influence in this region be it politically, strategically or economically similarly in Africa as well and the developing world more broadly and the least developed countries are stuck in the middle is that a fair assessment? I hear the discussion about the role of multilateralism it has been a discussion for decades what will small countries benefit from what will weaker groups benefit from to me it comes back again to inclusion what rules of engagement do we have to secure equal opportunities for all I'm a Norwegian, I come from a small country we always benefited from open trade and also were very vocal on the need for a fair framework of engagement so for us again in the UN it is about how to secure also inclusion for those fragile and poor countries who would not immediately benefit from the opportunities we speak about here Let me just follow up on that because I find Norway fascinating because you have access you're blessed with oil and you've been very prudent you've developed a sovereign wealth fund that has spread the wealth and to invest in the long term a lot of these developing countries within ASEAN and Asia for that matter the broader region are blessed with resources take Myanmar for example, oil and gas, gemstones how can countries like Myanmar that are blessed with natural resources avoid the resources curse and ensure that the resources wealth so I can only refer to my Norwegian experience and if you go back you have to go back more than 100 years what institutions were needed what investments were needed what legislation was needed and how to prioritize so we were already managing water back more than 100 years ago and the way we did that making sure that the national resources remained on national hands but well developed and how we invested in education and over decades actually built strong institutions that we were able to govern ourselves I think were very important to our management of oil and gas but as some have said the oil and gas was found in Norway in a decade that actually made it possible for Norway to make its choices they are maybe not available this decade so I would be very careful in advising other nations how they should go about it but strong institutions strong investments in education making sure it was equally distributed was very solid parts of our solutions Shri, I think that's the point I mean natural resources become a curse when you don't take advantage of the blessing to diversify your economy and I think the countries that have done that are trying to do that Norway has done it and banked a lot of the benefits from natural resources to invest for future generations human capital has always been a focus in the country have been able to avoid the curse other countries have exploited the wealth for immediate use and corruption and not taken advantage of the opportunity to diversify look at what's going on in Saudi Arabia now with vision 2030 that's all about economic diversification and moving away from the basic energy industries and it's such an important strategy to the success of that kingdom it could be done in any country including Myanmar that has the advantage of some natural resources John, thank you for that and let's move on to the issue of new technology and I wanted to bring in big data which has been described as the new oil and how can businesses, policy makers and civil society for that matter harness what is increasingly being seen as a 21st century resource and what does it mean for ASEAN let's bring in our resident tech expert first Jamal, your thoughts I wouldn't say I'm a tech expert for sure big data, I guess we are using that word quite generically quite in the broad sense of the word on digital analytics and information definitely it's an area that all governments must not take a passive view on how to accelerate the growth and the development of big data there are two sides of the coin here one is to accelerate that the industry or sub-industries that promote data like telecommunications companies even finance, banking and so on and also the skills required I do not think that ASEAN is a region we have enough skills for that matter many countries in the world to have enough skills to harness the development of big data analytics many of the companies themselves we are losing dozens and dozens we brought in people, we brought in people this is a serious issue then there are other policy issues with regard to cyber security policy issues with regard to data privacy that has to be all in harmonized together with the positive development of big data Can I just ask you the regulatory framework simply is not keeping up and you can say this you can apply it to a global context it's simply not keeping up but the exponential advances that this technology is making at an astounding rate for sure, it's not keeping up with it in fact some require less regulation in areas like financial FinTech area should be less regulation be able to harness the benefits of data across the region there should be less regulation but regulation with regards to data privacy I think it's something that's important regulation with regards to cyber security it's coming really acute that has to be stepped up Okay, the role of technology is to enable a George you were talking about this earlier and I think other members of the panel were talk to me about how it works in terms of least developed countries for example like Myanmar and Cambodia using technology to leapfrog their economy into the next phase are we necessarily talking about completely bypassing the manufacturing stage of this transition or is that the necessary stage is remarkably well-developed in service Asia partly because of a young population and growing rapidly Governments which make use of the social media to improve governance will be able to maintain sustainable growth because then you are forced to respond to problems you take say Prime Minister Hun Sen he has an enormous following among young people in Cambodia in fact some say that he is governing through Facebook I checked yesterday he had slightly fewer than 7.7 billion followers when I checked this morning it's crossed 7.7 billion followers and it is required every minister in Cambodia to monitor comments on Facebook and to respond to them now to me this is quite astonishing because I'm governing by Facebook but why not it allows you to penetrate through layers of bureaucracy and problems which faster on the ground faster too long because they get surface directly to him and the ministers do not want the Prime Minister saying look have you read these comments the key is how do you use this for better governance and how do you make mobile data cheaper and cheaper in service Asia I dream of the day when roaming charges are removed in Asia in Europe in China they are removing roaming charges and it can be done but it requires a certain political will and this is one area where I hope Jamal you can persuade your friends in government to give me a big push and I think you will make a big difference to us if I may comment on that I will talk about roaming then I will talk about broadband which is something I am passionate about I agree with you eventually this roaming is artificial it is very artificial where one country to another after connectivity in the air it belongs to which country the problem perhaps is that there is a huge beneficiary and also losers in this game so we got to find a mechanism to equate that so if you are a country like Malaysia and Singapore you are the beneficiary of roaming because you know the people coming in the inbound roaming huge charges you make a lot of money out of that some countries like Cambodia is the other side of the coin there is a mechanism even within our group we are trying to find a formula and it has been extremely difficult within all the companies that we have so we are working towards that actually so your point is it is coming and it is inevitable but there must be some one of the we could be one of the architects to make this happen we are going to a catalyst to make this happen but we need an internal to subsidise it in country versus other countries that we operate in to make it such that everybody gain rather than there is losers and winners Greta Actually new technology can help us connect people in such a big and different way Unops has the experience to connect mainstream technology with for instance entrepreneurs who would develop jobs in their local environment so think of health you can develop apps that can monitor for instance certain diseases and you can also if needed use drone technology to bring medicine to people who have chronic diseases a lot of opportunities for education as well we connect Harvard University and MIT to those innovation hubs that can be placed all over the world so people have access to education that would be of course far too expensive to achieve if they had to go to those universities but now can benefit from the virtual opportunity to access education so those opportunities from technology is really important and we spoke about China we also are engaged in Unops and projects in the agricultural sector actually allowing farmers to market their goods using new technology so they have shorter access to markets compared to what they had earlier and the cost curve the beautiful thing about all this is that the cost curve is coming down exactly the costs to begin with of sensor technology and drone technology for example are minimum I would imagine so there's no shortage of public private partnerships who would want to fund this exactly that's also interesting to see because it offers opportunities not only to build jobs and growth but also to get the return from investments of course that is needed to make this sustainable we've heard a lot about the fourth industrial revolution here at ASEAN the World Economic Forum I just want to go around the panel and just ask each of you what it means for you and where we are on that road and let's start with George please we have the advantage in ASEAN of a young population once they're educated they'll take to the new technology like fish to water and we mustn't miss this opportunity we mustn't wait for them to accumulate years there's no time to lose and this must be an area of the highest priority I would not worry too much about the very high tech staff big data analysis in those areas we must expect uneven development and the big players may well be outside the region but governments should make use of the technology to help govern better and people should use the technology to help them to disintermediate rapacious middlemen in the system in this way farmers, small traders can get better access to markets can buy cheaper and sell the area John I'll take a human capital angle I started with GE in 1978 and people actually thought in the 70s and 80s that you could get a job do it for a long time plan to retire from the company that you started with and live happily ever after and not much would change and if you look at the 21st century in the fourth industrial revolution to me it says that every job is going to change what George just described will change hundreds of thousands of jobs if it really happens and it likely will everybody has to prepare for the 21st century knowing that what they do today to be successful is not necessarily what they're going to do tomorrow to be successful so how do we teach people to and train them to be adaptable and flexible whether you're an accounts payable a distributor, a doctor and it doesn't matter what you do or who you do it for your job is going to change and so for me success in the context of the fourth industrial revolution is that you have to have a workforce, people, human capital that is adaptable and flexible lifelong learning and ready to change as the nature of work and jobs change let's start with the go back to the third revolution which is the IT revolution and the fourth revolution is to go beyond digital revolution to artificial intelligence and robotics into virtual reality augmented reality and so on so forth the way we are right now we're still struggling in the third revolution to be very candid about it we're not quite there beyond the digital revolution we're still in the building infrastructure we're still in the basics of a couple of internet businesses of ideas so we are not quite there yet to be frank if I can be candid about it that's why again coming back to why I'm here and we are a big advocacy of broadband being a national agenda not a telecom agenda not this little industry called IT but the whole national agenda because it touches every human being is the basis of which fourth revolution can ever succeed we need that baseline upon which new economics new digital economics and therefore beyond digital revolution can happen so we are not quite there yet so I hope we have 700 business leaders here opinion leaders political leaders here to put that in national agenda where it requires rethinking about regulatory rethinking about things like spectrum industry structure incentive funding human capital there's a lot of things needs to be done we are still there however as mentioned by George we are in a sweet spot here we have a young population 40% millenials we have 630 million population we have in a way the demographic behaviour of the people in Asia is actually more adaptable to new technology so we have a sweet spot here now we have a sweet spot here we have great opportunity in the future but we are still in the I shall say in the third revolution and we can't leave frog I think that's the point we can't leave frog if we get this national agenda or broadband get it corrected and accelerate we need to accelerate that's why it cannot be just as important as any economy activities is the basis of the future to look at it and I'm very passionate about it Gretta if I could just frame the question in a different way and I do want to ask you about what the fourth industrial revolution means to you but there's been quite a lot of talk here about the skill shortage amongst young people and whether human capital is leaving or staying what can we do from the policy makers perspective from the business perspective to help ensure the best and the brightest minds stay where they are I think again coming back to investment in the human capital and social inclusion where is it attractive for young people bright people to stay it is where it is safe to stay where it is viewed as a good place to live so if you look at how technology has developed you find in areas where both taxes are high and where the costs may be high still a lot of growth and development and why I think that question is really important to ask why has some of the biggest tech companies invested in the part of the world where I come from northern Europe maybe it is because highly educated people built families and jobs and opportunities that actually also benefit investors long term but I would like to also bring another dimension into your question because technology allow us to build more resilient societies more resilient infrastructure in this part of the world we have floods, earthquake and other disasters and access to information allow us to actually design smarter cities allow us to build more resilient buildings allow us to build more resilient agriculture all these things that matters to people why invest in something that will actually sort of flow away with the next flood go away with the next earthquake are we ready to invest more up front I think technology introduces a completely different discussion about how we do these things right in the first place we've reached the end of our panel and if I can just ask each panelist just to give us some final words of wisdom and a summation just to bookend our discussion I think that that will be very valuable and let's start right at the end with George first of all we have a great advantage in ASEAN in our outward orientation you take this meeting here in Nampen everyone feels comfortable here you can be from Japan, China you can be from Europe from America, from India it's an open platform you will not feel this way in Beijing or in Delhi or in Tokyo or in New York but you feel it here and not just in Cambodia but throughout South Asia so it's in the South, it's in the culture and as Asia develops this will become the Caribbean for all of Eurasia because long coastlines beautiful beaches salubrious weather good food service orientation so if we get governance right and we educate our people and make sure there's law and order and good health the conditions are extremely favourable in South Asia this is a golden opportunity not to be missed there are challenges but we have to respond to these challenges and I think there's a fair chance that most of us will be able to I think it's sustainable economic growth as we've talked about has a lot of factors at the end it's about creating jobs if you want to keep people in the region you've got to have jobs and they have to be the right kind of jobs they can't be the jobs that will be disintermediated if you're a distributor today and you're collecting 3% commission and not creating any value then technology will disintermediate you at some point it may be 2017, it may be 2027 it may be 2037 but those distributors in tomorrow's world there'll be no value from them and they will go away so the key for me the underpinning of sustainable economic growth is job creation and the creation of the development of human capital and the creation of workforces that can change and adapt and grow with the requirements that will come in the 21st century if you don't do that then there's no way you can have sustainable economic growth look at Myanmar we were one of the first US companies to go into Myanmar after the sanctions were removed I went there the first time six years ago my smart phone didn't work my iPad didn't work I had terrible connectivity my most recent trip in January everything worked but there's still 35 million people in the country that don't have electricity so there's nothing inclusive about that but it shows you how much progress can be made in a relatively short period of time and also how much more work is left to do but if we don't create jobs in Myanmar it's going to be impossible for that development to take place for me being repetitive but it's a very important point the three points one is the one trillion GDP incremental GDP opportunity by 2026 for ASEAN there's a work done actually with Commission 80 continuing to do for us and that's a opportunity for broadband second broadband should be a national agenda it cannot be just specifically or naturally or gradually being led by the players it got to be more offensive public sector and private sector got to work together and the whole ecosystem it got to be a policy to make that happen it creates jobs it's important for human capital and so on so forth and it covers every society it's not just about the people who are the rich and so on it helps the financial inclusion it reaches every aspect of the society including helps hopefully the seamless roaming that everyone is thinking about in the future and third is that this is kind of related to the second one an opportunity for ASEAN to leapfrog we are in the third revolution we can leapfrog the developed countries with the next few years we get the second right that's my three key points ASEAN offers such great opportunities and I still think we need to find ways of working better together urbanisation is real in this part of the world at a level that we've not seen before also taking into consideration the years to come and the world will benefit if we do find the right solutions the first time I mean find the green energy solutions how do we fight and actually building inclusiveness into slum areas and introduce social housing how do we provide clean water all these things that matters to people so to the UN and to UNOPS it's all about how we can help support building national capacity to find ways of working together also financially to provide scale to the solutions that we know we need to find Greta, thank you very much indeed for that and that brings us to the end of our CNBC debate here at ASEAN at the World Economic Forum I'd like to thank all our panellists starting with Greta Faremol UN Under Secretary General for the United Nations Office for Project Services Jamal Udin Ibrahim Managing Director, President and CEO of Axiata John Rice, Vice-Chairman of GE and George Yo, former Singapore train foreign minister and Chairman at Kerry Logistics and thank you the audience for watching and we will see you again very soon here at ASEAN okay we now have another 15 minutes or so in which we can carry on the conversation and invite some audience participation we are done with the television part of the debate so we can still carry on the conversation and invite some questions from the floor so I'll just let a few of the folks just settle down here and then we can start the Q&A I think we have went a little bit over so we have about 10 or 15 minutes and I think we have some colleagues in the audience with roving mics as well and we'll just wait for everyone to settle down first of all right, shall we begin who would like to get the ball rolling yes sir, if you can can we have a mic for the gentleman here right at the front of the audience and so if you could be good enough to say who you are and where you're from please Rami Sharif, senior vice president of the royal group in Cambodia I want to comment on the connectivity the digital connectivity and offering faster and cheaper digital connectivity to be the solid platform to build on the fourth revolution that we are talking about I want to welcome everyone in Cambodia and I want to share one example of that connectivity that connected Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand and this is an initiative that was done by a local company in Cambodia called Royal Group connecting the first submarine fibre optic connection and this was done on 15th March with an investment of 100 million dollars so this Cambodia the developing sister among the big family of ASEAN did it and that was a great example to come to what Mr Jogio mentioned about how can we get no roaming no charges and get into that actual accessibility so this is just a comment the other comment is our role as business leaders and here we have 600, 700 and I think one major point is how proactive is the private sector in ASEAN many will think well you know governments are not doing a good job well we should take the lead and we should come to the governments with what we believe as ambitious what we believe as feasible what we believe as the coming steps to build this solid strong body called ASEAN which should be operational so once we come to that point of being proactive governments will surely react and we know that in countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand the governments couldn't stand still when we had this proactive private sector they came with better regulation they came with certain processes they needed to invest in basic infrastructure in education, human capital so all these pillars to build that ideal model should come from us as proactive private sector your thoughts please so look I think you're right and I can tell you from our perspective we are a regular, we have as I mentioned before 9000 people in the ASEAN region a regular senior level contact with every government in the ASEAN region to talk about things that we can do and they can do to facilitate the development of infrastructure projects so I think to me that's what comes with a bilateral world we can't wait for TPP we have to go door to door and what allows us to be successful is engaging with these governments what their agenda is and how we can marry that with our agenda and that's the nature of the 21st century in a bilateral world for a company like GE and we can't we will not stop that even if TPP was reconstituted tomorrow we will still build a strategy around a bilateral approach because what Indonesia needs is a little bit different than what Cambodia needs is a little bit different than what the Philippines needs is a little bit different than what the Philippines needs I guess I look at it the three components everything we do there's one component that's beyond your control there's nothing much you can do you don't spend time on that there's another component of things that you don't have much control especially with regard to TPP or the government actions or policies but we can have influence so we spend our efforts advocating and come out with a proposal but in reality you alerted to a big chunk of the things that we can do something ourselves, the private sector should take the initiative so for us for example we need help from spectrum we need help on many other regulations with regards to broadband and so on we decided to say okay we're going to spend like this year we're going to spend to the tune of 6.5 billion or what is that close to 2 billion, 1.7 billion US dollar to roll out primary broadband to help the digital entrepreneurs we need help but we decided that okay while we can't solve the whole world's problem or ASEAN problem we decided to invest in Malaysia to the tune of about we build a fund together with our partners about 20, 25 million US dollar fund to fund the digital entrepreneurs in Malaysia and recently about few weeks ago a small fund in the scheme of things is very small but it's a good start we put in 5 million dollar US to help small little companies in Cambodia to jump start all these digital entrepreneurs and I can go on and on but you're right absolutely we can't wait for the whole world to help us we got to do it ourselves George Although most tariffs have been zero in ASEAN non-tariff measures remain a big problem and some tell me that it's getting worse crossing borders is not always easy in Southeast Asia but with highways with better connectivity and with more and more multinationals coming to ASEAN they have a lot of influence in ensuring that the procedures for crossing border are properly codified and regularised local players will always find it typical agricultural products but multinationals here can play a big role and they have access to ministers whichever country they visit in Southeast Asia John I'm just really curious because you used the example and it's a great example of Myanmar five or six years ago zero G connectivity now you have 4G if I'm not mistaken so what drove that impetus did it come from government saying let's just do it let's make some progress here with conviction or was it business pushing it who was the leading agency here I think it's both I mean it doesn't happen unless the government makes it a priority I think it's a good example of pretty far-sighted effort on behalf of the new at the time government in Myanmar and then companies that lined up to support it so I think it's exactly illustrates the point that I mentioned before and you need that because there has to be private investment to make it work it's not going to be funded completely by the government but the investors need to know that the government is behind this strategy and it's an important priority for the government Thank you sir for that question let's take one more at the back here Yes sir I'm Ian Grandey from the ADECO group I had a question for John John you talked about technology and the fourth industrial revolution and how that will change jobs and all jobs are going to change at some point in the future obviously I think all of us agree with that in an organisation the size of GE one of the world's largest employers how do you do that talent planning how do you look at the different parts of the business think about what's going to be needed for the next 15 years We probably spend a billion dollars a year on training but we've also realized over the last 10 years that we have to train our own people differently I grew up in a world where vertical skills were more important than horizontal skills I was in finance and I was taught to stay in my swim lane and swim fast and touch the wall first and I would be rewarded with a promotion and more salary vertical siloed world because it was slower and that worked in today's world you can't have leaders that operate like that because your horizontal skills and ability to cut across an organisation matter as much as your vertical or your domain competence and I'd argue for governments because governments including the United States and what's your notoriously siloed suboptimal in performance I think is a result of that this idea that you have to train for a different type of leadership in the 21st century is permeating GE and we're still figuring out how to do that but re-skilling and re-training and teaching people to adapt to what I that's a point I made before is the focus of our training efforts not imparting a specific skill right which is what we tried to do 10 or 15 or 20 years ago do we have any more questions I feel a little bit like a deer in the headlight because I can't quite see people over here but yes there's a gentleman who has a question here yes sir please right to the front please Good morning my name is I'm a secretary upset from ministry of calling finance I believe most of you have business in Cambodia but before you leave this session I would like to seek your advice on Cambodia's future directions what you would say the most urgent thing to do for Cambodia in the next three years to be successful first of all did everyone hear the question correctly no what was the question right if I'm not mistaken sir what's the most urgent priority for this country, for Cambodia in the next three years yes that's the question Greta do you want to take that one first and we'll have to make that the last one I'm afraid because we'll be crashing into the other session so my approach would of course be how do we develop sustainable solutions regarding the core areas ranging from energy needs to education and build from there actually how do you secure building the national capacity but the overall political priorities would of course have to be set nationally and as a UN official I would not dare to go into that space Jamal but I share the sensitivity Jamal please for me it sounds like broken record sounds like I'm a hammer everything looks like nails to me but back to broadband I think Cambodia can benefit tremendously and can live frog as a country the mobile industry in fact is growing faster in most of the neighboring countries in ASEAN broadband of course is very low penetration when I say broadband fix and fix wireless broadband that can be accelerated and the digital economy that goes along with it that sits on top that can be accelerated so I think that should be the priority and that should be the competitive angle that Cambodia as a country can differentiate within ASEAN and of course outside ASEAN you know that infrastructure challenges that remain in Cambodia require foreign capital to be solved the best way to attract foreign capital is to give investors visibility and that visibility has to be over a number of years and China taught us all with the development of five year plans that actually mean something and allow you to line up under a set of priorities and if you work hard you can be successful so I'd suggest have a plan publicize the plan and stick with the plan so that you can attract the capital to build out the broadband infrastructure to develop power generation where it needs to be developed without healthcare where it needs to be built out you need a combination of public and private efforts and a long term more visible plan will help you get those external investors Minister, two days ago I visited See Hanukville it was my first visit there I saw the port which was built with assistance from Japan I saw the Chinese special economic zone 10km 200-300 factories already operating and the plan for the future are exciting you have now in the next 2-3 years an opportunity to avail yourself of enormous assistance from China, Japan and other countries to help develop your infrastructure don't miss this tide it will not flow forever in the coming years when it is flowing ride it as much as you can internally your country reborn and you have so many young people and we met many of them yesterday at the open forum education is a key and if you must scream on everything else invest in education because that is your future ladies and gentlemen on that note we will end the session there and it is as useful and informative as I have I have learnt a lot certainly from all our panellists let's give them round of applause one last time Fyda Fyremol Fyremoliw Binibri'kin John Rice of GE and Georgio and thank you for your participation thank you very much