 I'm just waiting for the signal so as soon as I get it. Good afternoon. I'm Lisa Gibbs, and welcome to the AP Davos debate, our topic today, South Asia and its future. On a day when the people of Pakistan are mourning the loss of life, it's only appropriate to give first word to the Prime Minister of Pakistan. You've said you want to eliminate terrorism from your country. Is this possible? How will you achieve that? Well, Pakistan has taken a very decisive action against terrorism. When I took office in 2013, the terrorists were creating havoc all over the country. And then we, all of us sat down, I invited all the heads of the political parties. We jointly decided to conduct an operation against these elements, especially in the tribal areas of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. And it was a very carefully calculated decision. So we deployed 180,000 troops in those areas and started this operation. This operation yielded very good results. And so far we've been able to, you see, destroy the infrastructure, dismantle the networks, hideouts and sanctuaries. And this has broken their back. We knew that the blowback could be severe. It was severe, but then, of course, it started reducing. And now the terrorists are on the run. They are picking up soft targets, you see, yesterday's attack on a university was a soft target that they had picked up. But overall, the ability now to strike back has been considerably destroyed. So Pakistan has paid a very heavy price in terms of lives, which of course are running to tens of thousands, of course, more than $100 billion of economic losses that we've suffered. But I think our resolve to fight against these elements is getting stronger every day. How important are solving these problems to your country's economic future? Pardon me? How important are solving these problems to your economic future? It's very important because the challenges that we inherited immediately after taking office were three basic challenges. One is the challenge of economic revival and addressed the issue of power shortage. And third was the scourge of terrorism that we wanted to eliminate. So I think we've been successful in all these three fronts. And with the terrorism coming down in Pakistan, militancy reducing, the economy is picking up. We inherited a GDP growth rate of about 3%, which is now over 4.2%, and we're expecting to have 5% growth rate within this financial year. The inflation is down to 2%, and unemployment is also decreasing very sharply. And at the same time, the revenues are increasing. I think the increase of this, it is about 33% in the revenues. So I think it's a very good turnaround which is taking place in Pakistan. And investment, you see, is taking place in the country, both foreign investment. And we also have the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is a $46 billion investment that is taking place in Pakistan in three different sectors, infrastructure and power sector and railways. So this is not only going to benefit Pakistan or China. This is going to benefit the entire region. I think Pakistan is on the right track. Mr. Nakal, one more question about security, and then we'll move on to other issues. The Asian Development Bank has said that security and political stability are one of the challenges for the region in transforming. How concerned are you about this? Of course, this is really, I'm so saddened by this instance, because of security, and political stability, all these conditions are very important for economic development. And what I want to stress now in the beginning is that South Asia has grown, has had a lot of progress in terms of macroeconomic stability and growth rate and so on, because they pay more attention to market-based growth instead of control. And there is a progress in governance. And of course, challenges remain for infrastructure, skills gaps and so on. But of course, security is the main important issue for continued development. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are still challenges, but in other countries, more or less, it is more stable. So I hope the Afghanistan and Pakistan will regain stability and security soon. We know that prosperity for the region does depend on being at peace, not at war, but certainly there are other major issues and challenges. Let's talk about job creation and poverty in the region. South Asia has the world's largest population of young people. Where are their jobs going to come from? In Sri Lanka, what are some of the things you're doing to help develop the skills of your young people and create jobs for them? Firstly, we are restructuring an economy which was dependent on foreign employment earnings, apparels, commodities for exports. We want to make Sri Lanka a hub for the global value chain and a platform for competitive value addition. So we will open this out. We are going out into having agreements. We already got FTA with Pakistan. We want to further it. FTA with India will become economic and technology agreement going back into the GSP plus. Now, there are two FTAs with Singapore and China, and that opens out the market. As the skills are concerned, we are looking at a public-private partnership of having people being trained for jobs. That would really be around the private sector because they've all been complaining that one of the biggest constraints to us, growth, is going to be skills. So, okay, come and take over the whole issue of training for employment or training for the job market. That would be a public-private partnership. We might be even looking at whether we should have social inclusion bonds for the private sector to come in. But they benefit directly as long as once you start supplying the required skills. But it's going up to the next level. We cannot be a low-wage economy anymore, even in the whole region and in the Bay of Bengal. So now we've got to look ourselves as how we go up and look at the salary scale, wage scale, more in line with Thailand or Malaysia. Young people have aspirations. And you have to meet the aspirations. Otherwise, you have under-employment. We have been creating employment, but people are not satisfied. Then there's a question of education of their children, education of the healthcare, housing. So one major project we have called the Million Jobs Program, which we mobilized the private capital. Go ahead. Ms. Kochar, I'm wondering, in India, 350 million Indians are expected to enter the workforce in the next 10 years. What is happening in your country to develop skills to make sure they can find those jobs? Yes, so I think both about job creation and skill development. As you rightly said, very young country, you know, almost 40% of our population is less than 20 years. And we add almost about 10 million people every year to the working age group. So first, we have to create jobs for them. And secondly, we have to skillfully kind of employ them. So far, India has been growing at the back of services sector growth. But you know, if you see what we are now doing is promoting manufacturing as another big area of growth. So the entire make in India concept, that manufacturing sector itself is expected to give rise to about 90 million jobs over the next one decade. The third area of growth and in that sense, employability creation is the entire innovation sector. We're saying stand up India, innovate India, creating small entrepreneurs at the back of use of technology and innovation. So I think in terms of creating job, we are shifting from being only services focused to getting manufacturing and innovation and technology focused. In terms of skill, again, we have a huge gap to meet because, you know, while we add so many people to the working age group, it's believed that a very small percentage of people who join the workforce are actually formally trained. So again, you know, the entire India is working towards what we call the skill India in which the government has launched. Of course, the initiative by the government, but looking at huge amount of public-private partnership, as we said, the target is to kind of skillfully train about 400 million people by 2022. And this cannot be done by private sector alone, by government alone. So as I said, a huge amount of public-private partnership to just give you examples, you know, many of the corporate sitting in this room are in their own way contributing to how to skill people in different skills. These are not necessarily just computers or web designing, but for instance, even at ICS, though we are a bank, we run about 22 skill training centers all over the country in 13 different skills like air conditioning repair, electrical repair, you know, sales skills and so on, and train about 50,000 youth, young people per annum. So I think that's what every corporate is trying to do. And along with government, that's the skill India program. And what about in Pakistan, Mr. Prime Minister, the issues around the skills and what are some of the things that you're doing to help increase job growth? We also have a population of over 180 million people, and 70% of this population is below the average, you see, is below the age of 30. And well, of course, there are a lot of institutions which are now providing different skills to all these people. And at the same time, the government has also launched various schemes, including the SMEs, and the government is now pumping more money into these organizations so that they can provide easy loans to the applicants. And of course, I think this is now gaining momentum in Pakistan. And among these people who are being considered for giving loan on very, you see, easy terms, 50% are females. And the government, it was during our government, we decided to have 50% women in the scheme and the women are also benefiting greatly from the scheme and other than the ones that I've just mentioned. The government is focusing its energies on this particular because we want our young people and SMEs to form part of the major, you see, industry that will produce goods for export as well as for Pakistani markets. Professor Yunus, I wonder, having listened to the discussion of skills training and efforts being made to help young people find jobs, is it enough? What else should be done? Well, I've been taking a kind of opposite view of it. I'm not too much on job creation part of it. I think that's the wrong direction, job creation part of it. I think our education system and our government policies are responsible for it. I think human beings, particularly young generation that's coming up today, is a completely different setup with the creativeness inside of them because of the technology of it. Human beings are not born to work for somebody else. Human beings are basically entrepreneurs. But somehow we have given them a wrong orientation that you have to find a job to make it a life for yourself. So I was trying to encourage the young people in Bangladesh to believe by saying that we are not job seekers, we are job creators so that you think like a job creator so you can be entrepreneurship from yourself. Why do we say that? What gives me the kind of push to make such a statement? I'm very impressed by the way Grameen Bank and the borrowers of Grameen Bank how they behave, how they function, the microcredit globally, how they could do it. Basically, Grameen Bank and similar other programs all over the region, they address the women, mostly rural women, mostly illiterate women. They take small money and start a business. So I'm raising this with the children of those families who have been with microcredit. If your illiterate mother can start a business, what good is your education if you're not as good as your illiterate mother? Why can't you start a business yourself? What's wrong with you? The wrong is the orientation around them because they are trained by education system to produce their school diplomas and to find a job instead of using their own creative power. So what we are doing now, create what we call social business funds and encourage young people to come up with business ideas. As soon as they come up with business ideas, we invest in their businesses, tiny, tiny businesses, and we become partners with them so that they become successful business person and pay us back the money that we invested and become the full owner of those things. So that's the direction I see possibilities because a job doesn't really take your creative power. It uses only a small part of your power. You still have enormous power inside of you. Unleashing that creative power is the most important part of it. So I would rather go in that direction, not that I'm shutting down all the job-seeking thing because you can't do it right away, but having the millions of women in the whole region through microcredit becoming entrepreneurs gives us a hope that the same creative power exists and multiplied by their education to become entrepreneurs. It's a question of the ecosystem that we built around it, financial system because no banking system will give them a loan to start a business at the level. So it's a fault of the system, financial system, denying that. So they block that out. That's not possible for me. All I can do is take a job. Even in taking a job, you spend a lot of money finding a job and bribing people to get the job. You spend money. So to say that you don't have money is not also possible. You already spend money to find a job, bribe the job, job givers. So you have some facilities and ability to start a business yourself, but you need a financial system to back it up. So I'd rather focus on entrepreneurship and this region that we are talking about is a tradition of entrepreneurship. It's built into it at all levels, from rural level to the urban level. Why don't we exploit that? I think you bring up two important issues. I'm guessing that the prime ministers and Ms. Kochar would say that their countries want to very much encourage entrepreneurship. What are some of the things your country is doing to help the formation of business in addition to getting jobs? Are there some interesting efforts underway there? So one is, as I said, there's a huge focus on creating entrepreneurs through the small innovation that we want to promote in the country. So we call it stand-up India, innovate India and so on, where the government has said that they are going to make the ability to do business, to start up businesses for them to have funding available, etc., much easier and more accessible so that they can actually become entrepreneurs. But talking on a much bigger concept about the financial system working with the people to create livelihoods. And I would use the word livelihood, be it employment, be it entrepreneurship. But how does the financial system help people gain more livelihood? I think India has done a tremendous job over here, because in the last one and a half years or so, we've actually expanded our financial inclusion efforts substantially. And it's not just about getting the number of people included into banking. So in about 18 months, the banks opened about 200 million accounts of people who were unbanked so far, so brought them into the banking system. The second is, it's not just about opening a bank account for them, it's about how do we then get them into participating in economic growth. So through opening an account, how does all the inflow of money or their incomes come through the banking system? And through that, how do banks become more capable and able to lend to those people on a microcredit basis? So after having opened the bank accounts, the government actually now, the subsidies, the direct benefits, etc., that are transferred, that are given to these people are actually transferred directly through these bank accounts. Also, as these inflows happen through the organized system, the banks can actually use that data to see how much money is flowing through their bank accounts and actually are able to lend to these people on a microcredit basis, which was not possible earlier. So I think it's really the expansion of the financial system to the unbanked so far for them not just to open a bank account, but to actually then enable them to get to their next livelihood. We couple that also with special schemes that, again, the banks do, we call them mudra loans, which is nothing but very small loans which are given to people on the basis of very proxy kind of basis in which to assess how do people get credit. So it's not always possible to look at the proper organized income journey capability, generating capability of people. But through these proxies, how much utility bills do they pay? What is the kind of money that they spend on education? And through those proxies, we generate microcredit and utility. And are you where you think the country should be on financial inclusion? Is it been slower than you would like or what are the obstacles? So I would think that to start with, we were much slower than what it ought to have been. You know, even two, three years ago, there was a large population that was actually unbanked. But now, one, of course, with the focus that we put as a country behind it, but also with the availability of technology that enables us to reach out to these people. I think we've made a huge progress in the last two or three years. There's still a lot more to be done, because as I said, it's not just about opening accounts. It's about making those accounts operative. It's about having people live their financial lives through those bank accounts and not by cash outside the system. So I think we still have a lot more to do. But with the penetration of mobiles, with the penetration of technology in the country, I mean, we have a billion mobile users in the country. We have 400 million internet users in the country, and 60% of them use internet on mobile. So, you know, that gives us the accessibility to these people, and that enables us to make much more progress from here on. And Sri Lanka, how do you view there's job creation and then there's entrepreneurship? How do you view those two things and what are you doing to help entrepreneurs in your country? You need all types of jobs, the formal ones and the informal ones. But you know, we in South Asia, or this so-called Indian subcontinent, we've lost our bearings. Where do you want to go in the next 20, 30, 40 years? By 2050, we'll be the most populous region. India will have over 2 billion. Pakistan, Bangladesh, take even Bay of Bengal. I mean, we'll have about 3 billion people. And why aren't we looking at that? Why aren't we looking at where we want to go in another two, three, four decades? I mean, we are getting bogged down. We want to be in the same level that you have in the rural areas. You want to be in your heart, or you want to be in your talk, your patriotism. Look, the young people today want a good life, and they're connected to the world. Are we capable of giving it or not? That's the issue. How are we going to do it? Now, as far as the Japanese are concerned, they're wiped out after the war. Where are they today? They planned out and they came on. The Koreans, what were they after the war? Deng Xiaoping had the guts to change China. We are all, I mean, we are still what Amita Sen called in a different way, the argument of India. Just make up your mind and go to variety. That's what certainly the young people in Sri Lanka want, and I think a lot of the young people there. Give them the good life, and give them the economic development, that then take that. There will be people who will be self-employed, there will be people who want jobs, but that's the way the world economy works. We are just, we are not going, we are not tackling the core problem of our region. So as far as Sri Lanka is concerned, whether we are doing it jointly or not, we will even go on our own. We're the first country in Asia to be modernized. Kamadu Peri had not gone to Japan at that time. We are the first to open out in South Asia. I've been talking with Prime Minister Sharif also. It's about the time you put all this behind and go ahead. That's all we have to do. Otherwise, young people return on us. Minister, I wonder what you think about, how about Pakistan and this issue of entrepreneurship and the right way to go? I just answered your question earlier, but I said Pakistan, of course, has the 70% of the population of Pakistan is below the age of 30 years. And not only that, we are encouraging private sector, the private banks to provide loans on easy terms to all the applicants. At the same time, government has doubled its federal government's developmental outlay. You see, it has been doubled in the last two and a half years and it's going to grow much more. But the government cannot offer jobs to everybody. This is primarily the job of the private sector. And the government has to act as a catalyst, make policies which encourage the private sector to grow and also provide jobs to the jobless. So we are working on that. We also, as I mentioned, we have come out with various schemes to provide employment to the youth. And the government is also, you see, government is not only asking these institutions to bear the expenditure, government is also pumping its own money. And also, government is trying to share the interest cost of the banks so that the interest charged to the applicants is much lower than what the market rate is. Yes, Mr. Nikal. Oh, yes. Creating a good quality job is one of a very important objective for South Asian countries because the population is growing and young. And although people pay attention to slowing down over China, South Asia has grown even further than before in these couple of years. And also, it is now even coming closer to middle income countries or upper middle income countries. So how we can use this growing young population, innovative population is so important key to the future of the region. And there are many things. There is no single solution to this good quality job creation. We need infrastructure investment. It's not just about the investment in the education, but we need the energy to do business. And in that regard, the energy is in shortage in most of South Asian countries. And this lower commodity prices is one opportunity for South Asian countries. But in the longer term, the energy deficit should be solved. And also, investment in education, including technical and vocational education training. And as already mentioned, we need to combine the need of a private sector with the supply of such education. And in India, in other Asian countries, we are providing such a, I mean, Tibet, what we call technical and vocational education training, especially using public policy, public-private partnership to meet the need of the public sector and the private sector. And of course, we need the good policies to open up the economy, deregulate the industry. And one of the most single important, I mean, reason that the South Asia picked up the growth is, once again, they pursue better, prudent, macroeconomic policies, more stable inflation rate, and so on, less fiscal deficit. And Pakistan is on track of IMF program. So that is the basic things to produce jobs and industry. And also, it's important, again, to connect the industry's economy with the rest of the world. In that regard, Bangladesh textile and government industry is so much growing. And also, they are paying more attention to safety of a workplace in Bangladesh. We are supporting the such idea to make factories safer and clean and so on. So that is also important. So to me, there is no single solution. And microfinance, finance is important. And inclusive growth is important. If there is a huge gap between the people, poor peoples don't have an incentive to invest in education, invest in health and to the future. So all these things are important. I think most of, I mean, many, all South Asian countries are making progress in many fronts of what I said. Well, let's move more closely to the question of where the investment will come from and the climate for that. In Sri Lanka, China has been a key investor in many of your infrastructure projects. We've heard a lot here at Davos about concerns about the slowing growth in China. Are you concerned about this? What is the nature of the future relationships between your country and China? Chinese assistance has been through the XIM Bank for main infrastructure projects. But we've been expecting a rebalance in the Chinese economy at some stage. From about 2009, the Asian countries are really taken on the response for growth, but China couldn't continue that all the time. It's looking at a rebalance from our view. Maybe it came at a time when the global economy hasn't performed that well. I find it is China will come through. There may be a bit of turbulence for us as they adjust to the global economy and what's happening. But we are seeing the whole character is now becoming private investment. They've already, we've agreed to have a dockyard in Hambantota, followed by we are discussing a large-scale industrial zone on Chinese style. And we've decided we'll go ahead with the port city, which will become a separate financial and business district where the UK company laws will apply and there will be a separate mechanism for resolution of legal disputes. So it looks as if certainly the Chinese seem to be having the money to go in and go ahead. It looks as if from infrastructure, they are trying to move into investments, they're moving their factories and all out into other parts of the world. So the Colombo is one area we are working with them, but it's not only Chinese, it's open. We are trying to get the Indian businesses also to come into the port city project. We are working with the Japanese on, again, on the new developments plus planning out the candy city. Singaporeans are planning out the Trinkamali. So with Prime Minister was there in Sri Lanka just three weeks ago and we are coming back into have a deeper free trade agreement. So I mean, the sea is rough, but we've got to ride it. Yeah, no, I don't know the option. In Pakistan, you mentioned the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. How do you see, is there actually opportunity to take advantage of what's going on with China to further those ties? Yes, it is a $46 billion investment package and three different sectors I mentioned, energy, infrastructure and of course railways. The work is going on. Work on some of the projects already started and some will be completed by 2018 and the rest up to 2020. And it's mainly on power sector. Pakistan is building dams which will produce about three different dams that will produce about 17,000 megawatts and it also include coal power projects in different parts of the country, including solar power plants as well as windmills. So I think Pakistan is going to produce about maybe 10,000 megawatts of electricity, additional electricity by the end of 2018 and 2017 perhaps we'll be able to have at least 8,000 megawatts of electricity. So this is a huge program and at the same time I must tell you that Pakistan has a very strong private sector. Private sector is very vibrant, very dynamic. In fact, the biggest setback that we received was in 1971 when nationalization took place in Pakistan, it nationalized almost everything, including small rice husking plants. So that was a very big setback to Pakistan. We recovered from that in 1990s. When I took office in 1991, I initiated a privatizing policy, denationalization policy and we very successfully denationalized banks, insurance companies, industries and other enterprises which originally belonged to the private sector. And all those, you see, private sector banks which were making huge profits before nationalization went into heavy losses. And then after denationalization, now today I'm told that they are not only making huge profits once again, they are paying taxes worth billions of rupees every year, each one of them to the government of Pakistan. So our policy is to encourage private sector because if you want to solve the problem of this, you see, job, what you call employment, I think this is where you will get the real results. And then we have a presence of foreign companies in Pakistan for many decades, you see, and they are doing very well in Pakistan. They are investing more, money, they are pumping more, money into their existing industries and also setting up and building more industries in Pakistan. So Pakistani investors are also investing, you see money in different sectors today and one of the most profitable sectors is the power sector where the rates of return are almost about 27%. So I think not only Pakistani investment is taking place, foreign direct investment is also coming into Pakistan. And we hope that the CPEC will be a game changer, CPEC. And it'll not only, as I mentioned, benefit Pakistan, China, it'll also benefit the other countries in the region. And as mentioned by the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, that, you see, out of the six billion people living in this world, three billion are living in this region, which include India, China, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and other Sark countries and Central Asian countries. So I think the future of the world lies here. So much of this foreign investment and these partnerships depend on investor confidence. Professor Yunus, I know you've come out from a different perspective than obviously the Prime Ministers. But I'm wondering what thoughts you have on investor confidence in the region and what everybody here can do to encourage that? Well, investor confidence relates to the overall governance situation and the economic prospect. And there I would say the issues that I'm raising is also very important. What do the young people see for them in the future? So that is to tell you with the atmosphere of the environment, of investment and so on. With the technology coming in, given the same amount of investment, you'll be employing less and less people because it will not be the same way it is. So the capacity of the investment, foreign investment, domestic investment together, will not generate enough employment opportunity for the number of young people who will be looking for jobs. And given the employment oriented policies, job creation policies that we're talking about, the young people will be attracted to the cities coming out of the rural areas because that's where the investments are taking place, pockets of investments are taking place. That creates a mismatch between the rural society versus urban society with the expansion of technology which is reaching out to every single family today, like in Bangladesh. The recent years saw that 87% of the families of Bangladesh have mobile phones. So that includes poor people and everybody that have the mobile phones. Meaning that the access to information to them is universal that's coming up. So they will see that development and activities are concentrated in areas, they will be coming to them and creating urbanization problem itself. So while I'm promoting at the same time the idea of entrepreneurship, that the reason that I'm doing that, entrepreneurship can be anywhere, it doesn't need an urban situation. Entrepreneurship could be right in the rural areas. So instead of having a smaller number of entrepreneurs investing and job creating, if you have a larger number of entrepreneurs creating job opportunities spread over the whole country, every single region of the country, so you have a better chance to have a better uniform development possibilities and so on. And also at the same time you have to look for the speed at which the wealth concentration is taking place in the region in every single country. We have been hearing this in Davos 62 people owning half the wealth of the world. So we should be asking ourselves how many people in Bangladesh own half the wealth of Bangladesh? How many people in Sri Lanka owns half the wealth of Sri Lanka? The reason that's important information because next year should there be a lesser number of people owning half the wealth? Which will be a larger wealth hopefully, but lesser number owning it. And then it's a bad news because again that not only disparity in wealth which translates into disparity in income and dissatisfaction in a political circumstances. So we have to address that. We cannot just walk away seeing that okay our progress is done, we are, our growth rate is high, but where is the growth taking place? For whom? For whose interest? So those issues have to be done so that even the person who's in the remotest areas and kind of rejected from the economic situation has a chance. So that chance has to be created by creating the financial system which we are just discussing that toward unbanked people are coming. And there my point is very clear and saying that even the existing banking system, no matter how you try to persuade them, they are not going to serve the people who are left out. Do you make policies? Few token thing will be done, but these banks are universally, not just for the region, banks are created for the rich. They are used to serving the rich. Their whole mechanism is designed for serving the rich. If you ask them to serve the poor, they may under pressure to do a little bit but not the real job. In order to do the real job, you have to create bank for the poor. Unless you do that, it's completely different system. It's not the same system you're applying for the poor people. The whole structure is different. So then they could probably expansion of that financial system because unless you expand the financial system, today almost half the population in the whole region are unbanked people, at least half the people. So it's a huge number of people who are not connected with the bank. So how to do that? Examples are there. Examples are created in the region. It's not something coming from outside. So how to do that? I'm very happy. India is doing a very smart thing. I've been saying that why don't we create banks for the poor people separately? What they have done in good steps, given licenses to the NGOs who are doing the microcredit to become microcredit banks. So have a legitimate identity as a bank and can become self-sufficient, take deposits from the people around and invest in the people around them. So this is a good system to do that. So this is the entire financial system has to be revisited. Otherwise, all these investments and things will not save us. I wanna move to the some topics of regional integration and infrastructure that have been alluded to earlier. Certainly improving regional prosperity is also about improving trade with each other. Mr. Nikhao, how there have been challenges to this. What should the region be doing? If we compare the past experiences of East Asia, including China and South Asia the difference is the East Asia is more integrated in terms of trade and the investment. They invest each other and they trade and it's kind of a value change between factorizing the regions and it is more integrated. So in case of South Asia, because of nationalizing policies and more I mean state control it didn't happen as much as in East Asia. So one of the important questions to produce good quality jobs and also growth body reduction is how we can connect the countries in the regions over arriving some difficulties between countries and have deregulation for trade system and also connectivity in some infrastructure like road and the energy is important. So one of the things ADB is supporting is connecting energy resource rich central Asian countries like natural gas and also the hydropower with the energy deficit South Asia countries. So it's not just within South Asian countries but also connecting between South Asia and Central Asia and also in terms of trade how to connect to the East Asia is so important. The World Bank says the region needs to spend as much as 2.5 trillion with a T on infrastructure by 2020 to have enough power, water and roads to serve its population. What's got to happen to fill that gap? So I'd like to mention the stress the importance of revenue raising efforts by countries themselves. So to raise tax revenues by the tax reform like in India, they are now trying too hard to integrate the indirect taxis, commodity taxis. That kind of effort is important and how to make the private sector financial system more serving to the industries and this kind of infrastructure development is important. Public private partnership is another way to mobilize resources. So of course, development banks like ADB and a new partner like AIIB, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, we should partner together to have a good investment in the region. So there are many resources we should fully mobilize. I wonder if in Pakistan or do you feel like you're moving fast enough to be able to fill the gap in your own country? Well, we have, when you talk about connectivity we have embarked upon some major mega projects in our region that will harness the markets and resources of our adjoining regions. And we took out a few, of course, TAPI, which is Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. It's a gas pipeline which is now being laid from Turkmenistan right up to India. It will pass Afghanistan and Pakistan and that will also meet some of our major requirements of gas. And at the same time, there is Central Asia, South Asia project which will provide, which will supply about 1000 megawatts of electricity to Pakistan alone. So, and that will be clean and cheap energy. So we are also in the process of building Gawadar, which is the southernmost part of Pakistan. It will be a state-of-the-art boat and will facilitate our Central Asian countries to route their goods through Gawadar and to get to the hot waters of the Arabian Sea. So it is a gigantic project and we're also like other regions, not only Central Asia, but also South Asian region to benefit from this. We're trying to establish both Pakistan and Afghanistan, trying to establish long-lasting peace in Afghanistan. So if we achieve peace in Afghanistan, of course, there are a number of other projects that we can do together. And both Pakistan and India, once we're able to normalize our relationship and resume the composite dialogue, the comprehensive dialogue, I think both countries have tremendous potential to cooperate with each other and to have good economic cooperation. As the CEO of one of India's largest banks, how do you feel about progress toward filling that infrastructure gap? So first of all, as you spoke about the inter-regional cooperation, as we talk about the South Asia as a region, we say a quarter of the world's population and a quarter of the middle class and all that. But at the same time, when we look at our trade of this entire region, 95% of that is externally focused. That means less than 5% actually gets done within the region. So I think there's huge scope for improving and increasing this inter-regional cooperation and trade and all the TAPI, the CASA are all initiatives in that direction and we should make those happen more and more. The second thing about the overall infrastructure requirement and where would this come from? Again, when we talk of this region, I think the biggest advantage that this region has as far as infrastructure requirement is concerned is that as these infrastructure projects will get put up in this region, they will all be inherently viable in the sense that we are creating infrastructure when demand already exists. So it's unlike the saturated developed economies where you build bridges hoping somebody uses it. In this region, we all need the infrastructure. So I think once the projects are implemented, actually there's inherent demand. So in that sense, they are viable projects to implement. But I think every source of finance needs to work here because just one or two would not be sufficient to meet the requirement. So we need to have foreign investment coming in. We need to have the private sector to be vibrant, we need to have the public sector or the government spends to come in. We also need in all our countries, capital markets to become more vibrant. We need the financial markets to become deeper. So I think each one of these things needs to be done to meet the entire requirement of infrastructure that we have. You're a region that benefits from low oil. How does the region take advantage of that even more now given what's happened? Mr. Nakal, I know you mentioned oil and energy prices. Yes, once again, the lower commodity prices challenges for exporters and it is also related to the volatility of a financial market because many oil producers have difficulties of the budget and so on. But at the same time, overall South Asian countries are energy importers. It might cause some troubles to revenues of budget because sometimes the tax is at volume or according to the value of oil prices. So if it goes down, it would mean that there will be less revenue. But if we can adjust that to the lower prices, of course it is a benefit. So how we can use this benefit in South Asian countries and once again, using growing and innovative population, young population, it's advantage to China because China is now having constraint to the labor force. So how we can use these opportunities, that is one important policy issue for South Asia. How about in your countries, Pakistan or Sri Lanka, what does the low price of oil mean to you? Some of you have talked about renewable energy commitments and those kinds of things. It has helped us and also perhaps negative in many ways. You see, it helped us because the oil prices have come down and people also have a sigh of relief where at the same time government has also started losing a lot of money and revenue that it earned from the import of oil. And the government revenues in this particular sector have gone down whereas I think overall the country has really benefited from learning of oil prices. The electricity tariff has come down enormously and the industries now find this tariff more competitive as compared to many other countries. So we've passed on the reduction on oil prices to the people of the country. Government didn't retain much of what the reduction was. So people are generally very happy because previously the oil prices, you see, were very high and the industry was not very competitive. So I think in many ways it has helped us and in some ways it is little, you see, negative as well. How about in Sri Lanka? Is there a downside? I would say the lowering of oil prices generally has been helpful, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we need alternate sources of energy. That may be the downside, all of us are new, forget about it. That is a really important point to emphasize that we made a commitment to the climate change issues and the lower oil prices, if it means that we waste energy, we don't prepare for the future and we don't tackle the climate issues, it's bad. So we need to pay attention, invest in the renewable energies and other alternative sources. And even if it is using the carbon energy, we should use those energies more efficiently. So we need more attention to that. Yes, so to talk about India, I mean India is a huge importer of oil. So a $1 reduction per barrel in the cost of oil, in fact, changes are in port requirement by about a billion dollars in that sense per annum. So I think what India has done currently is to use that benefit in two ways, partly to reduce the costs for the end consumers themselves, partly to create the saving as a kitty to start investing in either roads or creating some amount of infrastructure. So I think at this point in time, the momentary benefit that we all have, we should use this period to use those savings in some productive manner. But in the long term, I think we have to focus on the alternate sources of energy as well. So simultaneously as we are taking advantage of the reduced oil prices, in India we are talking of a target at least of 175 gigawatts of energy capacity arising out of renewable energy to be set up. So it's absolutely right. We have to use the benefit as it comes today, but for a sustainable growth, we have to keep our focus on the other sources of energy. We're nearing the end of our time and I want to spend it talking a little bit about what things look like 12 months from now. Hopefully we'll be back here and talking about the progress that's been made. Mr. Prime Minister, what does success look like to you 12 months from now? You will come to know when we cross the bridges. A smart man perhaps does not make predictions. How about you and Sri Lanka, Mr. Prime Minister? As I said, as the Prime Minister said, Harold Wilson said, a week is a long time in politics, so you're not talking of 52 weeks. No, it's a question of how we in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, how we make use of this opportunity to get our country ahead. We've got a glorious opportunity. The whole, the global value chain is changing the economics of the and you all discussed about the fourth industrial revolution, digitalization, manufacturing. Those opportunities, I mean, which means you can go ahead. And I hope you have better news and results when we come on next, when the policy sale next time. But at the same time, I say that we in Sri Lanka also sympathizers and supports Pakistan at the moment when it's engaged in a battle with terror. Mr. Nikal, very briefly, I wonder if you could sum that question up from the regional perspective, what does success look like to you in 12 months? Yeah, it's very difficult to tell the future, but I hope that this region, I mean, South Asia would provide impetus and optimism to the global economy in one year, two years and so on. So because we are now prepared by the very strong pessimistic views about the future of a global economy, but as far as South Asia, it has had progress and also the poverty reductions made progress. So I hope that in 12 years, at 12 months, South Asia would provide even more optimistic view about the future of a global economy. Our time is done. That's it for the AP debate. And others, I want to thank all of you for a very lively discussion. And we'll all be back in 12 months to see how they did.