 I'm going to do a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little Can I ask the speakers, please, of panel four, Mr. and Representative of Santa Lucia and the Caribbean Post-Lunion. Thank you to come down here because we start in five minutes. This is to advance, right? I don't think I need a microphone here because I'll have to speak here. Oh no, if I'm there, I need one. Yes, because there is no mic. So I will be either here or there. So I think I need a microphone. Yeah, but I don't have a mic yet. So who starts it? Who starts it? Not Mr. Cone. I present myself because there will be no introduction for me and there we go. One has to improvise. Thank you. Okay, yes, I'm the moderator. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take your place and we will pass the floor to the President of the Conference, Mr. Le Minis Bruno Cone. Thank you. Pascal. Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. Honorable delegate. I would like to start by thanking you for your presence here at this conference. I hope that you have been able to rest and that everyone is ready to attack this second day with the same train as yesterday. We have not been able to do it yesterday. I would like to thank our panelists, our panelists yesterday as well as the moderator for the quality, the relevance of their interventions. This first panel, this yesterday, allowed us to clearly highlight the many challenges that our sector has faced, which are the survival, the problem of profitability, of a certain number of positions, the globalization, the necessary confidence that it is convenient to give to our customers, the need to practice judges-aborded rates by customers. I have adopted a few problems, such as those linked to the last kilometer, so the most expensive in principle, the address of the streets, the specificities of online trade in Africa, etc. The answers are numerous. The main ones were mentioned as the pre-visibility for, in particular, to reassure the customers, the implication of the states for a regulation and a more effective normalization, the reinforcement of the proximity that can give more confidence to our customers, the dimension, especially in terms of the financial dimension of our job, and the integration of the TIC, I think it was said and hammered several times, the integration of the technologies, the training of communication. Here too, our states must be involved in the level of connectivity, in terms of accessibility, and in terms of regulatory standards to put into action that must give confidence to the consumers. To the consumers, it is extremely important. The subjects such as innovation and permanent adaptation have also been mentioned. Our states have resisted until now because they have succeeded, in the face of the number of girls who have been there until today, to innovate and adapt. Today, we are going to start this first session on the theme of action-efficacy framework. This session will have to identify regulatory responses necessary to integrate more efficiently the digital financial dimensions of the postal sector. The experts who are with us will also examine regulatory responses that are necessary to promote inclusive postal solutions, while guaranteeing the performance of a universal, effective and sustainable postal service. I would like to say a word about the animator of this day, the moderator of this day, who will be Mark Furrer here on my right. Mr Furrer is the chairman of the Federal Commission on Swiss Communication, the Comcom. Before becoming the president of this commission, Mr Furrer has taken care of post-2008 and 2012 of the head of the Swiss Authority of Postal Regulation, and of the head of the Swiss Delegation of the Universal Postal Congress in 2012, in law, as Secretary of State. I have been very short to allow you to have the maximum of time. Mr Furrer, I leave you the seat. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr Le ministre, Mr Director General, Mr Deputy General, Ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, it's a pleasure to see you this morning, all fresh, with the more commitment, as we say, in Bern, and it will be great to discuss with you and I thank you that you're all here, already though it's a beautiful day today in Geneva, but I think we'll have an interesting morning. Yesterday we heard a lot about innovation, a lot about e-commerce, and all these things, of course, are important. It was, I must say, the first time I didn't hear the moaning that post-mail does decline. You know, before I always said, oh well, what can we do to stop declining the volume of the mail? I think it's just a fact, and it speaks for this postal sector that they accept this fact that people send less letters, at least in most of the countries, send less letters and go to other ways of communications like email or like, as we heard, e-commerce. And the point is to find alternatives for the designated posts, but also for all the others who work in this sector to find alternatives to compensate, obviously, the commercial losses you have by the declining of the traditional postal mail. So we will discuss these kinds of alternatives this morning as well, the role of regulators and so on, and we also discussed yesterday who makes the profit of e-commerce. Is it the integrators mainly, and the platforms like eBay, like Amazon, or can the designated posts or generally the post firms, can they also have their bit? Where is the beef for the posts? Is the question or was the question yesterday? Or is the designated post just the network of the leftovers as the Canadian colleague said it? So basically you have the service universel and all these things and the cherries get picked by the others. That is very much obviously up to the postal firms themselves, how they are entrepreneur, how they tackle these challenges. So the other question is of course what to do so we have a level playing field, we have the same discussion in telecommunication, some are making the infrastructure and the other use it to make the profit out of it and of course that is in our field the discussion of net neutrality and here it's a discussion of level playing field. What can the governments with their laws but also the regulators do that we have a level playing field and what the integrators can profit of the investment of for example the designated posts who do the infrastructure for it. So what's the role of the regulators we have to discuss? Is it more regulation or is it more free marketing? What is the role of the UPU as well? I think UPU is in front of bigger challenges, they tackle these challenges, we all know that this discussion is part of tackling these challenges by UPU, we will have this strategy in Istanbul and our discussion is preparing this strategy, we have substantial projects like eCompro and so on we discussed also that yesterday. But the key question is of course who will do the innovations and you know innovations you can't rule, the innovations come from the spirit and from the brain of the people and that's difficult to regulate, that's difficult to direct. That is a question of creativity and of entrepreneurship and the big question for the future will be do the designated posts and the others do they have enough entrepreneurial kick and entrepreneurial engagement to take this challenge which is brought by Amazon, by eBay and so on, can they do that? Do they have also the structures to do that? I think that's the big thing which we will have to discuss. I was yesterday quite surprised because Peter did, at the end I think he did a question to the panellists and asks the very crucial question, who will be the winners of eCommerce? Will it be the integrators like eBay or will it be the designated posts or the private postals? I was surprised that half of the panellists said now it will be the integrators, the newcomers, the new entrants in the sense who will bring new models I think that should be to the larmas and say what to do that the others can, as I say, like infencing, like take the attack in the commercial sense and also bring alternatives, new products and new services so they can survive well in this competition. So I'm coming to the discussion of today. Today clients will be in the center even more than yesterday in the center of our discussion and it's the small and medium enterprises because in all economy we all know that if the small and medium enterprises are not living well, don't have enough possibility to do their business, an economy like that has big problems. So it is important and it's crucial for our economies to see how the small and the medium enterprises can profit of this new world of eCommerce. And this is how they can take the opportunities, how they see the opportunities and take the opportunities and utilize the opportunities of eCommerce. But for all that we need an eCommerce without obstacles. We heard yesterday again from the Canadian colleague who said crossover eCommerce is still very, very difficult and if we don't bring down these obstacles, we will have big problems with eCommerce and we will have a detortion of competition. So especially in the first panel we will discuss how can we bring down these obstacles. There are still a lot of red tape with customs and so on, this bureaucracy and so on. The next panels will discuss the role of the regulators in these things. Regulators of course shouldn't make the obstacles higher, it's the opposite, regulators should be facilitators. At least me as an old regulator I've always seen my job like that, whether it's a postal regulation, the financial regulation, or the telecom regulation. We should be facilitators and not like the Moroccan colleague said yesterday, I never heard it so blatantly, but it's having been many, many years in Morocco, I understand this picture, we're having worked with horses. But of course the question is how can we be facilitator and we have many regulators on the podium to discuss that. And of course the role again of the UPU, what is the role? I mean President Valle of France Post said it very clearly, the UPU should be the socket of the eCommerce system. So that should be the rule, should be done by the UPU for all of us. That would be the ideal thing and that was very encouraging for us all, but of course especially also for the UPU. And then also in the last panel we talked about the service public, service universel, we probably didn't talk that much yesterday about that. This is important, a national service universel, because we all know politically it doesn't go without that. If in Switzerland you don't sense the letters properly to the least, you have a tremendous political problem. My colleagues from the regulatory authority of Switzerland know that. Closing a post office there is very, very difficult and that is the case everywhere. But there's also a service universel globally internationally, I've just been at the honour to be two weeks ago in Ivory Coast and I've seen the challenges I've discussed there with all East and West African colleagues of the governments and of the regulators and the challenges you have there. So I think sometimes we discuss eCommerce just from industrialised countries but of course they have completely different situations, a different framework and also that we would like to discuss this morning because it was yesterday interesting, the lady from the Unktat showed us a figure which showed very clearly the growth of eCommerce is in Asia, West Europe and North America, but not in South America, not in Africa and not in Eastern Europe. So what happens there? So if we talk about eCommerce we should also see this problem. Anyway, so that's my introduction to the day. Now I would like to go immediately to the first panel and the first panel is trade facilitation and the development of micro-small and medium enterprises through the postal networks or with other words to bring down all the obstacles we have. And I welcome the panellists here and I would like to just start with the first one. It's Mr. Yi Zhijun, Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization WTO. I already apologise for my Chinese pronunciation which is undoubtedly wrong, but I'll go next week to China to practice. Anyway, Mr. Yi was China's ambassador to the WTO. He represented China as a key negotiator in China's WTO accession process, a very crucial process as we know. He is basically a big specialist in trade negotiations. He was also China's Vice Minister of Commerce and he negotiated numerous free trade agreements including the China-Azien agreement. And he was also after becoming China's ambassador to the WTO. Mr. Yi was elected as the chair of the Working Party of the Accession of Laos, PDR and showed effective leadership in process leading to WTO membership for Laos. So Mr. Yi also knows obviously the problems of China but also of the neighbouring countries of China but now as Deputy Director General of WTO he knows the global problem of the world trade. Mr. Yi, you have the floor. Thank you very much Mark for giving me the floor and good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure for me to be here at the UPU World Strategy Conference and in particular my thanks also for inviting me to this panel discussion. I would like to focus my remarks on e-commerce and as you all know that e-commerce is one of the most important developments in the past decade and then I would like to talk a little bit about the role played by postal sector. We all see that the rapid ICT advances have a direct and profound effect on the way people communicate and do business. In this context the e-commerce has expanded significantly in the past decade and will continue to grow. According to the latest information economy report of ENDTAT in 2013 the value of global B2B e-commerce exceeded 15 trillion US dollars and B2C 1.2 trillion dollars. Here postal services played a very important and key role in e-commerce as they handle the physical delivery of online ordered goods. At the same time the postal sector is also reaping the benefits of e-commerce boom. In the past decade the handling of parcels has become increasingly important for the postal sector in terms of both volume and value while the number of letters has declined significantly. Puzzle traffic has searched by more than 30% since 2000. It is largely due to e-commerce in some regions over one third of the total revenues of posts are generated by parcel delivery. The potential benefits presented by e-commerce include enhanced participation in international value chains, greater market access, improved market efficiency as well as lower transaction costs. While so far it is mostly large multinational companies that have benefited most from e-commerce. It is believed that SMEs, especially those in developing countries have the greatest potential to benefit from the e-commerce. As we all know in both developed and developing countries SMEs make up a majority of business and employed majority of workers in both manufacturing and services sectors. E-commerce may play an instrumental role in helping SMEs find new business opportunities, reduce production and transaction costs and thus increase their competitiveness. A number of studies show that more and more SMEs in developing countries have engaged in e-commerce marketing their goods and services online. There is one convergence in WTO that WTO rules do not preclude trade by electronic means. This means that e-commerce actually benefits from certainty and predictability provided by the world trading system. The WTO's new trade facilitation agreement is very important one which is reached December 2013 in Bali, Indonesia. The agreement is expected to improve merchandise trade flows resulting from e-commerce as it eases the customs, procedures and processing for trade in goods that are increasingly purchased online today. It allows the option of electronic payments for duties, taxes, fees and charges collected by customs. In the area of services trade, the general agreement on trade in WTO also applies to postal services and other services relevant for e-commerce. So the gas has established rules for greater transparency, non-discrimination and competition. Cross-border postal services have existed for centuries. Despite challenges from electronic means of communications, the postal sector remains an important component of today's global economy which generating about US$350 billion at revenue in 2013 globally. We notice that liberalization and competition in the postal sector provide incentives for postal operators to embrace new technologies and explore new business opportunities. The active engagement of posts in e-commerce is a good example in this regard. For instance, the designated postal operators in several countries has partnered with Amazon and other e-commerce companies to deliver their packages. Further, the postal sector has a great potential to help SMEs overcome important obstacles to e-commerce. For instance, the postal network is the largest physical network in the world connecting 640,000 postal outlets, which makes it a cost-effective method for connecting people and the business, especially SMEs to the global e-commerce. In addition to delivery services, SMEs can also benefit from other services provided by posts such as Internet access, financial and logistic services, which are all crucial to e-commerce. Finally, let me conclude by saying that we highly appreciate the contribution made by the postal sector to the world trade and its role in trade facilitation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Lee. That was very interesting as an important introduction from the WTO because basically that's what we talk about. Now I give the floor to Mrs. Arancia Gonzalez, Executive Director of the International Trade Center. Unfortunately, Mrs. Gonzalez has to leave us at 10 o'clock, changing the presentator's number, and it's a pleasure to present you Mrs. Gonzalez. She is an expert in international trade issues. She has 20 years of experience, and she serves as Executive Director of the ITC since September 2013. Before joining the ITC, Mrs. Gonzalez served as a Chief of Staff to the World Trade Organization. And with Mr. Lamy working very closely with Mr. Lamy at the time, she was before, she held several positions at the European Commission also in these World of Trade Agreements. She is a lawyer, and she's originally from, as I understand, from Madrid. Please, you have the floor, Mrs. Gonzalez. Thank you very much, Lupiu, for this invitation to share a little with you. From the perspective of an agency both belonging to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, the goal is to help the small and medium-sized companies to internationalize themselves. So somewhere the themes you have chosen this time are music for us. Thank you also to the Ivory Coast for bringing us a little bit of color from West Africa. West Africa is always welcome in Geneva. I will have three messages for you. Message number one, logistical efficiency, improvements in the facilitation of trade is an essential ingredient for the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises. So we talk a lot about building productive capacity and we think in the International Trade Center that maybe we are not paying enough attention to logistical elements, logistical efficiency and trade facilitation as part of this logistical efficiency, which is again essential to support micro, small and medium enterprises being part of value chains, which is what international trade is today. So reducing the cost of trading is not just something that is good, it's something that for SMEs is essential. Is the difference between being confined to a domestic market or being allowed to go in search of broader markets starting with the region? This is why we are extremely happy that WTO members reached an agreement on trade facilitation which we think when implemented, and I say when and not if, when implemented would reduce tremendously the cost of trading for economic operators. So we think effective facilitation is a global positive and this is why we think it's very important that organizations like UPU take this and put this at the heart of its agenda because to solve logistical efficiency, to address their trade facilitation, we are going to need a very strong public-private partnership. Private operators with a big multinational, so small, medium and micro. Public entities within the government, from ministries of trade to ministries of finance, to responsibles of customs, to, and the list goes on, to a concerted effort at the side of the agencies internationally that can support this global effort at streamlining operations of customs. This is why in the International Trade Center we are focusing at the moment on supporting countries implement the trade facilitation agreement, understand where countries have already met the WTO standard, understand where gaps remain and derive from their bankable projects to improve the areas where a bit of work remains to be done. Number two, message number two, trade facilitation is more than borders. Trade facilitation and logistical efficiency is also about the design of regional integration. It's also about non-tariff measures beyond behind the borders. It's also about procedures and procedural complexities. It is also about quality. It's also about cross-border trade and cross-border trade facilitation. So we have to think in our view of trade facilitation in a wider context so that we don't only tackle parts of it, but we tackle the entire chain. Third message, what's the role of the post and what's the role of the UPU in this debate? I think the UPU has a big role to play in this discussion. First, obviously in the postal delivery of goods, of which there is still an untapped potential, in particular for SMEs. So in the area of customizing delivery services to buyers is an area where we think from what we see on the ground it would merit a bit of an action on the side of all of you. Two, obviously in reforming postal services for greater efficiency, again as a contribution to reducing costs. Three, in the new opportunities that you have for addressing what we would call transactional part of B2B. There it's, for example, areas like linking e-payment solutions with single windows. Such as, for example, interagency coordination between border agencies to allow for postal operators to enjoy pre-arrival treatment and clearance. So there is a big, again, a big role that we see for the postal services in these discussions on trade facilitation. Let me end by mentioning that I see in this discussion two dimensions. One dimension of the UPU as a regulator and one dimension of the UPU as an actor in the simplification, in helping small and medium-sized companies to trade more. Our moderator told us that developing countries have problems with electronic trade solutions that may be a bit more delayed. What I see is a different reality on the ground. I see that there are a lot of developing countries that use technology today because they have access to technology but they need regulatory systems of operators in the field that will facilitate the use of that technology. An example of all this, a project that we are now developing in the north of Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, to create with the help and funding of the World Bank and the European Union a virtual market for small and medium-sized companies. There is a huge task. There is a space for everyone and, of course, a space for mail operators. Thank you for your attention. Yes, Senora Gonzalez. Just a question. As you have to leave, I ask you a question. If you would have a wish, what two or three things would you wish to be improved in bringing down the obstacles in the trade, in the e-commerce? You mentioned several things, but if you would say these and these and these are the main problems which have to go down. Well, the first one, it would be first beta leverage technology. I'm still amazed that one goes through customs having to do papers and stamps and papers and stamps. And again, this is not just an issue for developing countries. There are many developed countries where this is still the case. So use electronic solutions because these are the solutions that are better for small and medium enterprises again who are technologically savvy but need to make their operations more agile. To have in mind that trade today is not an issue of nations trading with nations. There is a huge regional dimension in trade. So thinking about when you regulate, especially those of you that are party to regional groupings, to regional integration processes, make sure that you regulate with the regional dimension in mind so that it is not just simply the national lens that you use when regulating, when selecting the manner in which you are going to design your operations. So simplify by using leveraging technology and think original. And my third wish would be think micro, small and medium enterprises. Think of simpler, of course, respecting security safety, which is essential when we talk trade and when we talk cross-border. But think also that the 98% of the economic issues of your countries, and this is true also north to south, east to west, are micro, small and medium enterprises. So think of solutions that are going to be adaptable for them. Thank you very much. I think you were very clear. Thank you very much and have a good day. And you were very clear in your messages, which is very useful for our further discussion. Now I can give the floor to Mr. Geo Zhang Zhu, director of the World Customs Organization. Mr. Zhu, you've heard. The wishes of Senora Gonzalez. Now you can deliver the wishes. Just to introduce you quickly, you are the director of World Customs Organization. In 2000, you became the director of compliance and facilitation there. And you had before jobs at the permanent mission of China to the European Union in Brussels. You have a degree of Master's of Public Administration of the King Wai University in China. But you as a specialist of customs, we will be very interested to listen to your presentation. You have the floor. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank UPU for inviting the WCO to be here to this very important World Strategy Conference. So I'm very happy and honored to be here to bring for the conference on the work that WCO has been done in the past years and in the cooperation with the UPU and and I will also brief you on the, how to say, our joint efforts to fight against the challenges, difficulties and problems facing us in the future. So to be straight, according to the UNCTED in 1999, approximately 300 million people had internet access globally and nearly 25 percent of them made online purchase that year and total e-commerce sales were about 110 billion US dollars. But by the end of 2014, last year, there were around 3 billion people online and 40 percent of them participated in the e-commerce and taking the global business to consumer scale to surpass 1.5 billion, including domestic and international transactions. So 15 years, 15 times increase. So this offers huge opportunity for growth in e-commerce and online shopping, leading to exponential increase in small parcels that postal services around the world are uniquely positioned to handle and deliver at low cost. And of course, a large chunk of these shipments emanate from SMEs. So with their universal service model, wider outreach and years of original experiences and reasonable cost, postal services in many countries have a competitive advantage over private carriers when it comes to moving smaller parcels. So here I would just inform you the WSEAL's initiatives and also I just mentioned the cooperation collaboration with UPU. So for many years, the WSEAL has been at the forefront in the development of international standards for customers and also in the promotion of electronic data exchange. And e-commerce in customs environment. So recognizing the significance of e-commerce, the WSEAL adopted the Baku Declaration on e-commerce in the year 2011, or 2001. So and developed its e-commerce strategy for customs. The WSEAL's immediate release guidelines, the latest version adopted last year in 2014, further support e-commerce and assist both customs and trade with expediting the clearance of large number of small or negligible value goods across borders on provision of minimum data in advance, of course. So the RKC, the revised Kyoto Convention, the information communication technology guidelines, which is updated in 2014, also provide a detailed outline on how customs can use these technologies to enhance program delivery and plan improvements in their services to clients and trading partners. So the WSEAL's recommendation on dematerialization of supporting documents adopted in 2012 and the lately updated compendium on how to build single-window environment, further support e-commerce by encouraging our members to identify supporting documents that are normally required to accompany the cargo and goods declarations and examine the need thereof with a view to eliminating them. So of course, the specific NXJ chapter 2 of the revised Kyoto Convention, which deals with the customs provisions specifically applicable to postal traffic, providing a simplified declaration, so that is CN22 and 23 form, and also clearance and duty payment process. So here, I'm glad to inform you, as of March 2014, or 15, 98 WSEAL members had acceded to RKC, and the 22 of them have in addition accepted specific NXJ2. So another important provision to facilitate speedy clearance of low-value consignments, the transitional standards 4.13 of the general annex of the RKC requires contracting parties to specify in their national legislation a minimum value and or minimum amount of duties and taxes, below which no duties and taxes will be collected. So dear delegates, customs and posts have very good cooperation and have been working together over 50 years and established a contact committee in 1965, so which has since provided an excellent platform for posts and customs to talk openly with each other in a spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding and has delivered tremendous results. So last year, the WSEAL, the UPU jointly published two documents to enhance cooperation between customs and posts at national level. One is the joint WSEAL UPU postal customs guide. Two, the joint WSEAL UPU guidelines for developing an MOU between customs and the UPU and posts. Of course, changes have also been made to EMS version. So over the CN23 customs declaration with a view to facilitation, facilitating the customs clearance of EMS items. So in addition to that, another important area to facilitate e-commerce is to improve electronic interface with posts and customs and how to expedite advanced electronic exchange of data. So which enables customs to carry out necessary risk management and take a timely decision to either allow quick release of a postal shipment or carry on its inspection. So additionally, electronic data exchange between posts and customs is expected to facilitate track and trace of postal shipments and enhance service delivery, especially in dealing with the growing number of postal shipments. So to that end, a joint working group is currently engaged in developing a set of recommendations, guidelines, good practice on advanced electronic exchange of information. And another joint working group is looking into various issues related to the e-commerce with a view to develop a collaborative solutions to support this growing sector, of course, while securing compliance with security and other regulatory requirements. The WCO and the UPU have also collaborated to jointly develop the electronic messages compliant with the WCO data model to limit pre-advice and possible pre-clearance of postal items. The UPU Postal Technology Centre has developed an electronic customs decalibration system, so CDS, on the basis of the joint WCO-UPU customs post-message. So some pilots are currently under progress and more countries such as Canada and the U.S. And more countries are likely to join soon. For example, Australia and the U.K. So because I have too many to inform you, although I shortened it, but I think you want to listen to what we have been doing. If you... Okay, I will try to shorten it. So besides EDI, customs administrations are taking several initiatives, not only at the policy level, but at the operational level as well. For example, 24-7 clearance, E-payment of duties and taxes, and E-duty calculator, and mobile-enabled services. So another thing I would like to mention is that the WTO Trade and Facilitation Agreement was agreed just as Misty mentioned, embodied in December last year, in 2013, and the protocol adopted on 27 November last year. So among others, it provides for several measures for expeditious release and clearance of shipments, in particular, airshipments including postal items, such as a pre-arrival processing, separation of release from final determination of duties and taxes, and electronic payment, and expedited release of minimum documentation. So WTO has all the tools and instruments and also has a big pool of expertise, experts. So we also developed a Mercado program. We will, how to say, effectively and efficiently to implement the FTA. So we entered into force, of course. So dear delegates, we have, together with the UPU, have done much in the past, and we will have more to do together in the future. So I'm confident our collective efforts would go a long way in simplifying and improving postal customs processes to support MSMEs, to leverage the growing e-commerce for catalyzing electronic, economical growth and prosperity. So thank you for your attention and your time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Zhu. What I liked in this presentation is it's not nations to nations, it's firms to firms, it's clients to clients, work in regions, and we have to simplify declaration and speed up the whole procedure. I think that is very interesting, and it's also interesting how WCO and UPU work closely together, and of course have to work closely together. Now, thank you very much, and I give the floor now to Mr. Friberg, who is the director channel of Perus Serpost. The interesting thing is, now we heard it on the multinational level, but of course the big question is how do you do it on the national level, on the authorities, either or on the operational basis. And in South America, as we know, they try to implement this, what you said from the WCO, they try to implement this easier clearing, this easier declaration working regionally together, and it will be interesting to hear from Mr. Friberg, who is from Grageda, to hear how they do it in Peru. Mr. Grageda is currently the general manager of the postal services of Serpost in Peru, that's the Peruvian post. He has been always a specialist in making easy export, import easy, and to really make the way clear for e-commerce to bring down the obstacles. So here's the ideal speaker to see it from the practical side. Mr. Grageda is a lawyer by profession and has over 12 years of experience in the postal sector. You have the floor. Thank you very much for the invitation. I would prefer to talk to you in my native language, I mean in Spanish. The materials are important to develop what the expositors have been talking about since yesterday and today. For example, to avoid papels that were already there, and also the technology development are important as instruments that we are going to share in the future. As I told you, the easy export in Peru was born in 2007. It's an important program and it has been developed in some other countries in the region of South America. I understand with great success. In some cases we have contributed in that sense and we are proud to know that there is in our region a lot of development of the official mail to try to send them in orders or exports to other countries through this instrument. Certainly e-commerce is growing and we understand that as a country and as a consequence as a state we needed to generate an instrument that allows or facilitates that the orders and exports can be carried out as they correspond. As a consequence I would like to share with you also the signal that the easy export in Peru is an integral program. Although it is true it is a tool that is used through the postal service through the mail but in its development, in its promotion and in its strengthening there are also other institutions of the state. Not only is the mail as the logistics operator but we also have for example the Peruvian Agency of Cooperation that is in charge of the promotion of this product at an internal level and consequently at an external level. Here you can see three institutions that work strongly in the development and promotion of this instrument. However there are two actors that I strongly highlight and it is basically the postal service, the mail and the customs. In this role we played an important role. Consequently when we made the easy export what we wanted was to develop technology and that is a little a differentiator element in the Peruvian case because when the exporters want to do the exportations they don't need to fill out papers no more formats. They do it through the web page of the Peruvian customs and that information is interconnected with the mail in such a way that we capture that information and the process of development and sales of goods is immediate. Of course it is also true that we need to innovate a little because it is not only the possibility to export the products abroad through this instrument but we also understand that the market requires many times opportunities to bring from the outside purchases or goods to develop the figure of the importa fácil which is also an instrument that allows us to facilitate the importations of products abroad and in this moment we are working strongly with Brazil because what we want is that our Peruvian importa fácil is admitted in Brazil through an importa fácil system and we do a little the match that corresponds. The importa fácil simply in summary terms allows you to export products of up to a average weight of 30 kilos and with a value of up to $5,000 when we started the project it was $2,000 but due to the growth it has had and the acceptance of this product it is developing strongly to the point that we are already talking in Peru to see the opportunity to raise this value of $5,000 to maybe $10,000 but it is also true the importa fácil is an instrument that has been generated for small and medium-sized companies as Arancia said and there we share a lot of information in Peru 98.3% of the companies are the small and medium-sized and the micro and small companies the rest are the medium and large it does not mean that this product cannot be used by the large they can also be used they can appreciate there everything is online through the website the process is done of course the exportation and the registration and the filling of the declarations online, okay? What are the benefits that we find for this export system and consequently also face the country? First, that the exporters save money it is quite simple it can be done by a natural person it can be done by a legal person as I wish the important thing is that through the world of exports and through the facilitation that exists it is not necessary to have an owner agent that is perhaps the most relevant because in our countries that type of traffic is a bit onerous the other advantage is that we we have a lot of coverage and presence at national level so that all our offices can receive the exportations because remember that all of this is done online so we even have points where we can receive the exports every day of the year even 24 hours one of the issues that is important is that the small exporters who want to access this export mechanism are considered exporters as such and consequently they are benefitted by the redundancy by the tributary benefits that the owner generates for the exporters in consequence the easy export provides for the micro and small companies new business opportunities from the promotion and the back of a country so that they can have opportunities and windows abroad even the ease so that they are considered as inclusive agents because even before this system in Peru, above all if one wanted to export he had to go to the capital so that the market would go abroad under this system is not decentralized from any point in the country it can be exported what are the achievements that we have to date more than 18 million dollars exported under this system is in dollars if we consider it to be our national currency it is tripled we have more than 43,000 transactions carried out through state declarations more than 5,600 companies that have used this system certainly there is a mortality index too but the effect is quite important we understand that there is a 40% market that goes to the United States and 21% of the exports go to Europe and the important thing about this system is that it also allows complement other postal services such as the Temelogiros and other benefits that we are already working on to try to strengthen this system I have a small video that I would like to share with you in just three minutes so that you can dimension the importance of this tool thank you that was very interesting thank you and I think we saw it from the practical point and from South America which is very active we heard it yesterday sometimes merging countries are leapfrogging in the technology in the adaptation of these rules and can be a good example for let's say Western European or North American countries now I would like to give the floor to representative of the Caribbean it's Mr. Sandra Davoren please take the floor she is the Secretary General of the Caribbean Postal Union she has this position since 2014 she is also a Postmaster General of St. Kitts and Nevis Mrs. Davoren is from St. Kitts and Nevis traveled a long way here and she is in her role she was assisting the post with new products and improving the quality of service of St. Kitts and Nevis but of the whole region as a profession she was before teacher she comes from education and I think that's not a bad thing to start to start the career by educating the posts and the regulators how to do the things so we'll be interested of your presentation Mrs. Davoren you have the floor good morning ladies and gentlemen I deem it an honour and certainly a privilege to be able to represent the Caribbean Postal Union at this conference and I want to thank the UPU for their invitation for me to do this as we look at the topic trade facilitation and the development of MSMEs and media enterprises through the postal network I will share with you our ideas and experiences as a Caribbean men and women the world over have had to rely on MSMEs for their livelihood studies have shown that they contribute significantly to the gross domestic profit of countries they are often considered the lifeblood of many countries and they are very resilient in their nature despite the many setbacks they often experience the genesis of an MSME is usually an individual with a brilliant idea for creating employment and wealth and this usually require funding that the individual or individuals can ill afford depending on the type of business the overhead expenses can be highly high especially if it's a manufacturing business for example the making of bread and pastries or just making clothing some of these business owners however are not technologically savvy and in other instances they don't have access to the internet and that of course would give them an enormous experience of trading globally if they did have that also there are some lengthy custom procedures which usually create setbacks for them and in many instances they cannot afford to pay a broker to do these tasks an electronic payment facility set up in post offices could greatly assist these businesses as some of them would like to or make payment to other businesses or suppliers in different locations within the countries or even within the region for example an MSME would like probably to transfer funds from Barbados to another supplier in St. Kate's or even in the BVI the British Virgin Islands also post offices are strategically located in villages so that access to post offices is quite easy they are dotted across the countries so that you don't for example sometimes you might not have to leave the rural area to go to find one in the capital for example and so a business owner or a small business owner might want to transfer funds from a rural post office and transfer those funds to another post office another business in the capital and if those experiences are provided for them the facility is provided for them then that would be great especially through the post we have already established here that the post is a trusted organization the world over and in countries like St. Kate's Barbados and the British Virgin Islands where they provide funding programs for MSMEs it would be really best if these programs are done through the post thereby giving the post an opportunity to partner with these businesses in St. Kate's for example there is a program called SEEDC the acronym it affords citizens the opportunity to start their own businesses by providing them with training and interest free loans ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 and each entrepreneur is assigned a business manager and an accountant for at least one year contracted at no cost to the business to help ensure the profitability and success of this venture that is why we think that these businesses can come through the post office where we can greater assist them in another location for example like Guyana MSMEs who have a difficulty finding a place to operate their businesses the post affords them the opportunity to rent premises located in close proximity to the post office so they could ply their trade post also can provide access to technology through services hosted at post offices entrepreneurs who don't have the technology can come into the post offices serve the internet and find markets for their goods and purchase raw materials and goods to assist them in their business the world at their fingertips at the click of a button the provision of a US mailbox service is another way that posts in the Caribbean help to facilitate e-commerce they are post offices in St. Kate's in Anguilla in St. Vincent the British Virgin Island St. Lucia just to name a few that provide a mailbox facility in the US the customers send the goods they purchase online to these facilities and then they are delivered to the different countries also when customers purchase goods online they want to know that their goods are delivered to them in a timely and efficient manner hence the development of websites through the use probably of dot post or other methods which would allow MSMEs the opportunity to track and trace and return merchandise post office again can consist them by providing a reliable and efficient delivery service and sometimes this is done by providing the goods or sending or taking the goods to their doorsteps post can create also opportunities to collaborate with governments and encourage governments to review or create the requisite legislation that would assist MSMEs in their business trade in the Caribbean for example there are many cottage industries that are run by women in many cases there are home owners and the providers for their families we as a region aim to provide them with access to global markets and at the same time target the increase in women in industry both on a national and global level again I would like to make reference to a program that is called wise women in small enterprise development and the government there is doing quite a lot to assist the women in business trade in the Caribbean finally we all recognize that the advent of technology and the internet will continue to change the way people do business this phenomena have caused posts to change their most modest operandi and make the requisite paradigm shift so that we can meet the needs and expectations of our customers customers are demanding more this will cause MSMEs to grow and continue in the future to be the engine for innovative and new services in our region we have acted effectively within our region and there is still more that we can do however we think that there is a lot of benefit from inter regional cooperation for example we have heard yesterday about innovation and new initiatives new products and services being offered around the world but the challenge is how can we as a region utilize the UPU network to dip into and learn from other regional and international innovations and get best practices for the benefit of our customers we are not homogeneous and are at different stages of development in the Caribbean but with hard work and dedication to the task it is definitely possible the post is here to stay but post must define the USO and take advantage of the IPDP programs that the UPU has offered and this would assist greatly with reform thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you very much Sandra Davorn it was very interesting in the shows the importance also of the post offices yesterday we discussed a lot about where to deliver it we even had this example of somebody taking a picture of the entrance of the house lack of postal address and then send it to the one who has to deliver it now here we heard about the necessity of the post offices and of the infrastructure and of the teaching of the people there in the post office so you can send off the documents which you produce somewhere in a rural area this was very interesting both examples Peru, South America and also from the Caribbean now we don't have much time unfortunately but I just have one question to the panel it's a very easy question and I expect a very short and quick answer what is for you still the main obstacle in e-commerce which has to be tackled just one, if you ask the main obstacle what would it be how do you see it? for most developing countries I think they need to have the poor people need to have infrastructure and they need to have a free regulation to allow the e-commerce to proceed so infrastructure and free regulation Mr. Krajeta we also consider that one of the obstacles that is presented strongly in our region to develop the e-commerce we see it from two perspectives first, the capacity the hard work that has to be done with these potential exporters the micro and the small and on the other hand more ease in the regulatory issues of the correspondence and thirdly the role that plays the universal postal union in this issue and all the countries where we send our correspondence we want it to be recognized as an easy export so I take you gave three, I take one awareness, it's very important what they understand, is that right? Mr. Guarjon, how do you see it? What is the main obstacle? I'm sure you will not say the customs for us the main obstacles is to say one is how to keep the best balance between facilitation and compliance so it's not easy to keep the balance and of course we will strengthen the cooperation with stakeholders including UPS and also the customs self modernization Mr. Guarjon, what is the main obstacle? as always the woman has the last word so how do you see it? one point not five I would say one of the main obstacles we have to get by is the changing of the legislation that would give us more opportunities to create situations for them to access the technology that they need to do business access to technology a quick opening to the floor then we have to go to the next panel who would like to take the floor but here I give one rule and I'm pretty brutal we discuss here so it's not no long statements no long questions just a one minute question or statement whatever questions who would like the floor to this topic oh yes I can see is that Nigeria please you have the floor the question I want to ask Peru and the Caribbean what is the profitability or the the quantum of business regarding this initiative please Peru and then Mrs Taburn yes Mrs Taburn the greatest profitability for us nationally it helps to reduce unemployment when these MSMEs they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not when these MSMEs get the opportunity to start business Thank you very much thank you the panelists Mr Jajun Yi Mr Frieberg Wiesbegracheda Mrs Arrancha Gonzalez Mr Gougeon Ju and Mrs Sandra Davuan for participating for your very interesting and competent presentation and I declare this panel clear this panel as finished and we go on as we are working very hard with no breaks. To the next panel, that's the panel five and I ask the panelists to come to the floor. It's Mr. Saidi Abdul Karim, Mrs. Lina Rainiene, Mr. Mutuna Mutusi and Mrs. Victoria Tsukulik and Professor John Nkoma. Please take the seat and thanks the panelists for their contribution. We go on immediately. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sorry that we had to be a bit short. But the interesting thing is that we have so many speakers in so many aspects. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. It was very good. Sorry I had to be there. I know the times of history. I'll give you my short. No, no, no. But it was interesting. I'll give you my short. I'll give you my short. I'll give you my short. Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you please to take a seat again? Please take a seat. We continue. Thank you very much and thanks for stopping your conversations. Though I'm very much for communication, I think we would like to start with the next panel. So, ladies and gentlemen, the next panel we have in the title, how regulation can leverage the postal sector in all its dimension? Already the title says that regulation could have an important role and of course the question is, and I have to ask these as a regulator, is that really the case? Can regulation leverage the postal sector in all dimension? Is the regulator the Superman in this thing or is he not? So, what role does regulation have in innovation? You know, innovation is usually something which comes from enterprises, from the human being, not from the government or from the regulation, but can regulation probably do and governments, of course, ministerial policies, can they do a framework for it, for innovation, for investments? Is it necessary to intervene for the regulator? Where is it necessary and where it's not necessary? What to do that regulators don't become castrated, regulator, deviant, that we don't want? So, what is to do there? So, what is the role of the regulator? We have very different intervenions from regulatory offices, but also from ministries in the next panel who can see, put the light in different ways. The danger is, of course, of overregulating. We all know that. Overregulating stops, investment stops, innovative thinking and the important thing is that the regulator becomes a facilitator, but how can he, as a facilitator, improve the value chain, the new value chain, the new processes which we have in, for example, e-commerce? And where is intervention necessary for regulators and where not? And then there is the other thing. We have a convergence of financial services. We heard yesterday from the director general from UPU, the importance of payment, postal banks and so on. We have more and more streams of migration. The financial aspect of the postal services is very, very important. There it needs, of course, a financial regulator. It needs, there's a convergence with telecommunication. We just mentioned SMS. Many things go together with the mobile or, of course, e-commerce goes very much with online. So there is also a convergence with the telecom sector, with the financial sector, what that does mean from the regulatory side. We also know many post offices are also internet bistros where people have the access online. So we should have a common view of regulation, not just concentrate on the postal regulation. By the way, that will be also go already into the next, the panel six. There we'll also have this issue discussing. So that is a bit, the introduction to our next panel. And we have the panelists are the followed. Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim, he's director of postal affairs and digital signature from Malaysia. We have Mrs. Lina Rainien, deputy director, channel of communication regulatory authority of Lithuania. We have Mr. Mutuma Mutusi, he's the director public affairs in the Kenya Ministry of Information Communications and Technology. We have Mrs. Victoria Sekulik, she is a well-known colleague from the postal sector of communications of Argentina. And we have Professor John Asenkuma, director, channel of the Tanzanian Communication Regulatory Authority. I start this list with the presentation of Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim, director of the postal affairs. And Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim is director of postal affairs and digital signature in Malaysia at the communication regulator. He's that since 2000. He had a key role in Malaysia building up the modern postal infrastructure. He gave the legal base for the postal services. He formulated also the national postal strategy and policy. And many things went under the title in Malaysia, regulate for growth. So the policy says you need a regulation for growth in the postal sector. That's very interesting. And we will listen to you with much interest, Mr. Abdul Karim. Please. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Mr. Chairman, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of poster administration of Malaysia, I would like to congratulate and express my highest appreciation to the UPU, the Swiss government and the government of the Codiva for organising this important strategy conference as we look ahead to a new world poster sector roadmap and the 2016 UPU Congress in Istanbul. It is a privilege and an honour to stand in front of all of you here, the esteemed global poster leaders, policy makers and fellow regulators, and be given this opportunity to share some of our thoughts and our experience in Malaysia on regulatory development in the changing poster sector. Indeed, we are now entering into an exciting phase of development in poster sector. I would say that 175 years ago, we know that we're going to celebrate this year for the 175 years of the Penny Black of the first step. I think today, we are also entering into something similar. If Penny Black has changed the letter mail now, e-commerce is going to change the way we're going to regulate poster sector in this century, of course, in the next decades to come. I'm going to say that in the next few decades is a golden decade for poster sector and the future of poster sector is in our hands. The regulator cannot decide who's going to win the battle in this sector, but the role of the regulator is to facilitate development and ensure level playing field. It is up to the imaginations of the poster players how they can modernize and innovate in this competitive and interesting era of e-commerce. The post must modernize quickly or declines, including in the field of poster regulations. The post sector must rejuvenate. The regulator also must change and UPU also, we must rejuvenate. It is up to all of us to decide our future and I think UPU as the global regulator and facilitator of e-commerce in future must play a more important role and a leading in e-commerce. We all know that letter post is declining and poster post is increasing as shown by our panelist yesterday. E-commerce is now recognized as the most vital growth engine for the poster sector in many parts of the world, including in Malaysia and developing economies. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is obvious that the economics of universal service obligation in particular the central of poster regulation in most countries in its current form are no longer sustainable if male volume continues to decline year on year at a rapid speed. To safeguard the universal service on one hand and to rejuvenate the poster sector on the other, we need a fundamental change in the way we regulate and act. Indeed, this call for a delicate balancing act. The regulator must transform and act as a facilitator for delivering innovative, integrated and inclusive poster sector development agenda yet have to enforce the requirement of the law. The regulator plays an important role in rejuvenating the poster sector. In this respect, Malaysian poster regulatory regime has been transformed in the last few years to facilitate growth, achieve national policy objective of the poster sector and meet the national development policy such as to make Malaysia as a developed nation by 2020. To this end, our national poster development roadmap 2010 to 2014 has given greater emphasis on transforming the regulatory regime as well as continuing the institutional reform which has started since 1992. Malaysia passed its new poster legislation in 2012 among the key features of the legislation as follows. The acts require the commission to safeguard the provision of universal service as well as to respond to technical, economics and social environments and need of consumer. In this regard, the commission has taken a friendlier and lighter approach in defining universal service obligation in Malaysia, especially in rural areas whereby the designated poster operator is given a task to develop its own rural service master plan which must be reasonably acceptable by the rural communities and the commission. The law also incorporates three key dimensional of poster services, physical, financial and electronics. Thus Malaysia is ready at least from the legislative perspective to have a converged physical and electronic universal posters, poster regime in future. The act is not regulating the poster operator but the poster service industry ecosystem including Korea operators, direct mail, poster facility service provider. Two licensing scheme have been established namely universal service license and non-universal service license. The poster service fund will also be established and maintained by the commission to rejuvenate poster sector including modernizing the rural poster service. In this connection, Malaysia is still studying a suitable model for the fund for poster sector which may likely commence in 2017. We believe our new regulatory model could provide solution for the regulator to deal with current postal issue like declining mail volume, sustainability of USO as well as emerging postal issue related to security, digital post and e-commerce. As a developing country, Malaysia will continue to modernize its postal infrastructure and build capacity to ensure our readiness to support the explosive e-commerce growth in the next decade to come. Not only in Malaysia, we did Malaysia which has 30 million population but also within the ASEAN region which has close to 600 million population. The poster sector regulator and policy maker must ensure a healthy and vibrant environment within the poster sector itself in order to attract investment needed. In this regard, Malaysia has done fairly well in the global ranking. For instance, we are at number 20 in the global competitiveness index, number 21 in the DHL global connectedness index and number 25 in the logistics performance index. In closing, I would like to reaffirm that the future of e-commerce and the post are interwean and the potential of e-commerce as the main revenue spinner for postal operator worldwide is indeed a reality. Poster regulator must play a central role to rejuvenate the poster sector and take immediate steps to transform, modernize and overhaul their postal regulatory regime towards a growth facilitating framework. Ladies and gentlemen, we must regulate for growth and not grow our regulation. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Mr. Maulzai, the up belt Karim. Thank you very much for this interesting insight and I would like to go to the next speaker. It's the colleague from Lithuania, Lina Rainier, she's Deputy Director General of the Communication Regulatory Authority of Lithuania. Lithuania has this year the chair of the ERGP, that is the group of postal regulators of Europe and every year the chairmanship changes and this year the chair is with Lithuania. She is also chairing for that the CN, the contact network in the ERGP. Lina is a lawyer and she's since 2002 in this National Regulatory Authority which also deals with the telecom regulation and she is as a lawyer of course deals mainly with legal aspects and we also know each other quite well from the BEREC that is the bond of the ERGP for the telecom sector. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here and to share short insights into the progress of the postal sector evolution. So as you record already I am from the not very big country in the middle of the Europe and we facing the situation that we opened our market since more than two years already but today I will not speaking about the opening of the market I will emphasize the issue that it is actually even not important whether the market is closed with some exclusified whether the market is in the reserved area position when some Glythe path for the incumbent is in place or whether there are no no exclusified at all at the moment. So in any case in any case we have the situation on every of us and in every single country we are facing the situation that alongside the incumbent we have other players as other operators which are there already active as the bulk mailers which are also present in the market and provide provide the services which not always clear whether they are recognized postal whether or not we also have the consolidators which which also are in the market which which play in the market and for the bulk mailers segment yesterday we already saw that they already evaluated from the simple letter bulk mailers to some maybe big integrated companies which in any moment can enter the market. So this is I think major challenge for the for the regulator because when we look at those all market players starting from the historical operator and ending to some potential integrated operators which are not present in the postal to a postal sector today. Actually they all are working towards the fostering the businesses with the large volumes which are growing and as we heard yesterday and today that okay the letter segment it's declining but other segments are growing and luckily those segments as a parcel segment is growing much more quicker than the other segments are declining. So here we have this evolution of growth in volume with some changes from the behavior of the businesses with some expectations from the consumers and all these issues are in front of the regulation and in front of the regulator it doesn't matter what the what the regulator is from country to country whether it is the independent authority whether it is the ministry or the in any case someone is performing the regulatory functions. So first of all as it was mentioned today the legal environment is important the competition of for the postal sector we may call them very narrow rules for the competition as we understand or we may call in the broad sense the predictable rules how the sector is working and as yesterday Mr. Director General stated that all of us should should step out of our comfort zone so I think we already done that and from the perspective of the operators who are competing with each other and thinking about the progress of the businesses and especially for from the regulatory side the regulators already stepped away from the comfort zones because we should look around and we should think what is the situation in our countries what are the rules because we see the market we are closest bodies to the market we can see the pulse and we can see some obstacles from the regulation which is in present written in the country so first of all I think this is the challenge because the worst thing that could be when the legal rules are as an obstacle for the market evolution so it's better sometimes to have more flexible rules which are in favor of evoluting of the of the market players starting from the incumbent as well so the second issue is just extend extend the oversight from the pure postal market as we understand today because as it was talked a lot yesterday and this morning session there are so many things around going and for the regulator it's important to understand and to be able to be able evaluate and identify the services and the players earlier we had very easy situation the were postal player means providing postal services what we are having today today we have that postal operator is provided is providing a bundle of services which sometimes fall under other regimes under financial regime under logistical regime so that means that not only operators and the market players are growing and improving the skills but the regulator should improve the skills as well the governments should improve the skills to understand and to to monitor what is happening in in the market and to reflect it in the legislation of the of the country so when we are talking about the changing business models and post I think that the major major challenge for the regulation is first the fall to facilitate and to to allow market to evolve at the very initial initial stage and at the end of course everything is for the sake of the of the small medium big businesses and at the end of the day we always come back to the end user and when we ask why we need regulation or whether we need regulation regulation also always can be very hard one or very soft one but for the end user for the consumer sometimes it's even very difficult to understand what kind of service they are purchasing whether they are purchasing the postal service or whether they are purchasing the logistical service to whom to apply to whom to apply to solve the problem the same issue may arise for the postal operators while providing the businesses for the incumbent as well because the market players sometimes of course are eagering to to use some facilities to use the network or to to compete within particular areas we know the cherry picking issues so therefore we should be trying to put our hand on the pulse and just to try to to facilitate to facilitate the growth and and the regulation not to keep as an obstacle for for the for the evolution so I would like to thank you for your attention and I think that the major way forward also is that from the in collection to e-delivery it is always some kind of physical element in the in the postal market so the postal market still will remain as a platform having some physical element in it thank you for our for your attention leaders and gentlemen thank you Lena linear I mean a deputy director of the Lithuanian regulatory authority in Europe as you have seen the question of opening the market liberalization is one of the key questions which is not the case in many other countries so I think we would like to come back and the discussion with the panel to that but Lena has shown the strategy which is of the European Union and of the ERGP in opening these markets which is concerning of course mainly the male markets now the next speaker is Mr. Mutua Mutusi he's the director consumer and public affairs of the communications authority of Kenya he is responsible for the consumer public affairs and the international relations of course here in UPU very well known he does that for the last 16 years he was right from the beginning of the regulatory body in 99 if I understand right in in different roles in the communications authority of Kenya and he will be sharing with us the Kenyan perspective on how regulation can leverage the postal sector Mr. Mutusi you have the floor thank you very much Mr. Moderator and I would also like to thank the chairman of the conference for recording us this opportunity to be able to speak to this great audience let me start by conveying apology of my minister was expected to sit on the panel this morning but due to other pressing engagements in Kenya was unable to make it we'll try our best to represent him the Kenya ICT landscape is divided into the policymaker who is the ministry the ministry of ICT then we have the independent regulator the communications authority of Kenya who regulates the entire ICT spectrum from telecommunication broadcasting postal services and e-commerce within that lineup we have the postal corporation of Kenya as the designated postal operator we also have other licensed courier operators private postal operators 214 of them and then we have over 1400 postal courier outlets internet penetration in the country is stands at 64% now and we have 26 million mobile money subscribers in a population of about 40 million at the penetration of mobile services in the country is at 82.6% the last three statistics are giving you because innovation is actually taking place in the platforms that are being powered by modern technology including digital communication the landscape of the legal regulatory framework we now have sector legislation which is specifically addressing issues of e-commerce and matters of cybersecurity these are very important elements of innovation in the postal services because as have said the most of the innovations are coming from the digital platform and of course within those digital platforms we need them to be secure so that players and customers can have peace of mind when they are transacting we keep on progressively reviewing our sector policy so as to take care of emerging issues to ensure that the trend in the industry keeps up to the best standards and the last one for tonight was reviewed a while ago 2006 the sector guidelines are the ones that really guide the market operations and these ones we recently reviewed them and they are basically targeting emerging markets and emerging markets are the ones where we are finding a lot of innovation coming in services that are very new to the postal traditional postal business of course within the regulatory framework we have the license terms and conditions within which all people are licensed to operate in the postal sphere ought to follow we also take advantage of forums like here to get global perspectives and best practices that we can infuse into our regulatory market as mr. moderator you say the regulators are basically enablers and facilitators of business and we do also subscribe to that in Kenya we the regulator sees itself as the facilitator of all these services that are being undertaken within the ICT sector and in fact our vision is to see all Kenyans have a communication services by the year 2018 so we provided an enabling environment where players or players can compete and find use find business reason for existing in the country and also for the customers to also take advantage of the open market and be able to get value for their money we get involved also in infrastructure development and services where we assist the playing ground to so that the players in the market play within an atmosphere that has very good and well developed infrastructure we develop also markets so how do we regulate and foster innovation because we are only facilitated as we are not the ones in innovating as such so we we get into lots of research studies and development so that we can be at the cutting edge of what is expected in the market and this is to enable us to come up with the regulatory interventions that will be able to enable all players to find very conducive environment where they can innovate come up with the new services compete in a manner that provides value to themselves and to the customers capacity building we do also as a regulator we need to be at the cutting edge of what is happening in the market so we carry out a lot of capacity building so that regulator is also at a level where they can fully understand what the operator is doing and in fact we like being ahead of them sometimes but of course since they are the players in the market interacting with customers sometimes they are far much ahead these also capacity building also we conduct some capacity building for the players in the market the licensees to just get them to some of them understand the the new trends in the market because we have big and small players and some of them we really need to assist them to get to to the level of the cutting edge of business the Kenya post which is the designated postal operator also has a unique obligation of doing the universal service obligation and but this is an obligation that can also be given to another person but currently these are the people who are doing it and the we have seen a lot of innovation coming from the Kenya post recently and I think one of the most is celebrated he's the offering of the government services within our post offices we call it Houduma centers and this is a very innovative aspect of postal business where we have seen government services getting closer to the citizens through the elaborate network of postal business we also have seen them get into financial inclusion where banks are partnering with them also using their large networks to to reach their customers a few challenges there national addressing system of course the issues of you so which are across I think everywhere there is no enough money to do this all the time and everybody is complaining they are contributing much more than they would wish to do we are doing a few things to try to overcome the challenges and for the national addressing system we have evolved a national policy that is looking at national addressing system as an infrastructure that needs to be addressed from a national policy level so that it can be driven by the government and the regulator and legislation legislations on usf we have ensured that they make it mandatory for all players in the market to contribute to these kitty so that it can be expanded to reach our people and of course regulation of e-commerce we have strengthened it by addressing issues of the cybersecurity and within the monitoring system we have recently acquired the FID from the UPU and we are rolling it out in the country to be able to monitor our quality of service thank you very much so moderator and I sorry I think I have exceeded my time thank you thank you very much mr. mutu amutusi for this interesting insight of the work and the policy of the communications authority of Kenya of the Kenyan regulator and I come now immediately to the next speaker that's mrs. Maria Victoria Soukenic she's well-known in the UPU she's an advisor of the international affairs and communications secretariat of Argentina she is representative in the UPU since 2006 and she Argentina's vice chair of the CA and her education is master of international affairs and economics and I give you the floor Victoria and probably to you and to your colleague from Tanzania as short as possible then we have time for questions and remarks thanks okay buenos días a todos primero quisiera transmitirle el salud del secretario comunicaciones y su deseo de éxito en esta conferencia nosotros trajimos una breve presentación donde lo que quisimos destacar fueron algunos conceptos básicos en materia de regulación y sobre todo desafíos que hemos identificado a futuro en esta materia pero creo que el principal desafío luego de las presentaciones que tuvimos estos días es tratar de hacer que el regulador no se ha visto como el villano de la película no quisieron usar la misma palabra que venían usando a lo largo de las otras presentaciones sino simplemente hacer menciona esto y con algunos conceptos intentaremos tratar de reflejar lo contrario algunos ideas básicas como ser en el en el rol del estado para sintetizar son como todos sabemos el garantizar la inviolabilidad de la correspondencia el asegurar también el derecho a la comunicación el procurar el desarrollo del sector y sus condiciones laborales el propiciar condiciones para una competencia legítima y sobre todo procurar el desarrollo con inclusión social para el crecimiento del país por eso vemos que la intervención del estado a través de la regulación postal pero cura el cumplimiento de estos objetivos y la satisfacción de las necesidades sociales muchos de estos conceptos fueron manifestados a lo largo de los paneles anteriores lo cual lo vemos con mucho agrado y esperamos poder contribuir desde nuestro nuestro humilde lugar no entendemos que la regulación es una herramienta para conciliar todos los intereses de los distintos actores que intervienen el sector postal y se trata de un proceso continuo que afronta desafíos constantes precisamente hemos estado hablando durante estos días de innovación y de las distintas necesidades que se van viendo día a día a través de los cambios tecnológicos y de los cambios en la sociedad en general por eso entendemos que se trata de un desafío de constante de estar actualizados y también como hemos visto a través de distintas opiniones la importancia de que la regulación sea pragmática y flexible por eso como decía antes que no somos el el villano en esta película además de regular controlar y fiscalizar lo que trata de hacer el estado a través de su regulación es ordenar a los actores y al mercado como se mencionó también en el día de ayer lo que se busca es establecer reglas claras para todos y que se pueda trabajar de esta forma con condiciones de competencia legítima también se debe procurar defender los derechos de usuarios y de trabajadores un punto que consideramos nosotros muy relevante y también se mencionó ayer al pasar no como que y algo que debemos destacar que nosotros trabajamos en un sector que cuenta con la red física más más grande a nivel mundial y que esta red sobre todo se compone de recursos humanos por eso nosotros siempre destacamos la importancia de defender también los derechos de los trabajadores como uno de los factores fundamentales dentro de nuestro sector bueno dentro de los roles del regulador algunos ya los mencionamos destacamos también como se vino mencionando durante estos días el tratar de ser el un facilitador no para que todos los actores puedan trabajar y desarrollarse dentro de las mismas reglas de juego pero a su vez dentro de las funciones específicas está la de verificar las condiciones que en que son prestados los servicios y sobre todo el cumplimiento de los estándares en la calidad también debemos velar porque por los derechos de los ciudadanos de contar con servicios públicos de calidad y eficientes para a su vez como mencionamos antes asegurar el cumplimiento de los objetivos y de las políticas públicas y sobre todo garantizar el derecho humano a las comunicaciones ahora sí un caso particular de argentina que queríamos mencionar que lo ponemos como nuestro nuevo desafío en diciembre del año pasado en argentina se sancionó la ley 27.078 que conocemos como argentina digital esta ley lo que hace es incorporar también dentro de las materias de regulación control fiscalización y verificación a las tecnologías de la información y de las comunicaciones nosotros hasta ahora nos ocupamos de regular lo que es telecomunicaciones servicios postales servicios satelitales y a partir de ahora también nos vamos a ocupar de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones esta ley también crea una autoridad federal de tecnología de la información y las comunicaciones como un ente autárquico que va a depender directamente del poder ejecutivo nacional por eso lo vemos como nuestro nuevo desafío actualmente esta ley está en proceso de reglamentación y será nuestro desafío precisamente el poder armonizar los intereses de los distintos actores y el poder reflejar sobre todo las necesidades de los habitantes también en materias de nuevas tecnologías y de innovación otros desafíos yendo brevemente a la presentación otros desafíos que identificamos que seguramente compartimos con con muchos de los países aquí presentes es el tema de adaptar las tareas de control y regular y regulación que también como mencionamos antes es una tarea constante que tiene que estar en base a las necesidades que se van viendo de los distintos actores y sobre todo de los usuarios la implementación de mecanismos de participación ciudadana tenemos que responder a las demandas crecientes de los de los usuarios nosotros creemos que hoy por hoy las demandas son más de tipo cualitativo que cuantitativo y ayer precisamente se habló mucho de la importancia de la previsibilidad creemos que hoy los usuarios sobre todo buscan que se cumpla con lo que se promete por lo tanto a veces no se trata tanto de tiempo sino de de poder cumplir con con el servicio que se que se quiere o que se ofrece prestar luego el desarrollo económico con inclusión social y en esto queremos destacar algunas funciones que realiza nuestro operador designado que no sólo son los servicios tradicionales sino algunas otras distribuciones como las tarjetas de transporte público tarjetas para préstamos de seguridad social también hacen para sintetizar muchas oficinas de correos encuentran centros de vinculación ciudadana donde se pueden realizar distintos trámites de gobierno y ahora lo que no quiero dejar de mencionar porque creo que es lo más lo más importante ya que estamos en una conferencia estratégica de la unión postal universal es en el ámbito internacional que nosotros queremos ver a la upu también como aliado en materia de regulación nosotros entendemos que fundamental la cooperación en materia de desarrollo de reforma el trabajo coordinado con las uniones restringidas y en este caso en nuestra región en particular podemos dar fe de que se trabaja coordinadamente entre la upu y la upae por eso es que entendemos que hay mucho para para informar y mucho para compartir por eso la importancia de la difusión e intercambio de mejores prácticas la organización de foros seminarios y debates y por eso destacamos este este espacio sobre todo y todos los futuros espacios que se nos pueda dar para hablar de este tema entre otros y obviamente vinculados todos en el ámbito en un en el contexto de la unión postal universal y sobre todo para el desarrollo del sector esto en síntesis y tratando de ser lo más breve posible dado que hay poco tiempo era lo que queríamos manifestar y obviamente que estamos a disposición para seguir colaborando con la upu y con todos sus estados miembros en sobre todo en materia de regulación pero en todos los temas que entendemos que ayudan al desarrollo del sector en su conjunto gracias gracias Maria Victoria so that would like to go straight to the next speaker who is a colleague from Tanzania it's professor John as in coma professor John as coma is currently the director general of the Tanzanian communication regulatory authority he's that since 2004 he is in the family of the regulators a well-known personality I may say he's also regulating telecommunications broadcasting postal services managing the radio frequency spectrum I would say how it should be and all together and the professor in coma has over 25 years experience also in university teaching he was the head of department from nineteen ninety seven to eighty one in the university of that is a lot and then what joined the University of Botswana where he served as the dean of faculty of science and he's a professor of physics and so but always lawyer also physics could be important in the regulation John you have the floor thanks very much begin with I'd like to thank the UPU for organizing the world strategy conference and also average cost for a quarter for chairing this particular meeting my presentation would be in two parts the first part would be talking about Africa in general and wearing my height is a chair of the administrative council of the Pan-African post union and then later I'll shift to regulation within the TTI so to start with the Pan-African post union is a specialized agency of the African Union there are 44 member countries and the vision of of of the Pan-African post union is actually to be one postal network for Africa but not just isolated as Africa but also as a part of the global postal network it has quite a number of noble objectives in each strategic plan the first one is a establishment of adequate and efficient postal outlets and the intra-african mayor transmission networks the second objective is creation of the new ICT products and services and development of the postal financial services I think in the last two days we've seen how important the financial services are we've also seen how important the ICT products are the third objective is to improve efficiency and capacity building at the power secretary and I'm glad that the Secretary-General of the Papu is actually here objective number four is creation of a single postal territory in Africa and then objective number five is the promotion of reforms of sustainable development of the post in the continent and finally objective number six is to promote responsible and positive contribution to the community and the environment now Papu has got quite a number of those noble objectives and actually last week in ban we had a very good meeting where we reviewed the performance of the African countries since the doha postal strategy and also preparing midway towards the next strategy in the Istanbul let me now shift my head to the regulation of in Tanzania first of all I should say that TSA is a convergent regulator so it regulates telecommunications broadcasting and poster there are a lot of discussions as to whether you should have one regulator or more regulators but I would like to say that within the experience of the Tanzania situation I think there are a lot of synergies for example you you have a directorate of postal regulation and director of telecom regulation and director of broadcast immigration but then you share the other services like the legal you share all the legal issues licensing issues you also share the issue of consumer protection and and market study tariff analysis it doesn't matter whether you're analyzing the tariffs for telecoms or for broadcasting for the poster so I think those synergies are important the regulation improves the postal sector governance by primarily ensuring proper operation of the designated postal operator which in Tanzania is a Tanzania post-cooperation the regulation landscape actually goes a long way since 1993 and then 94 there are separate regulators for telecoms for posts and for broadcasting but in 2003 these were mage into a single regulatory body the importance of policy is also important that there is the national postal policy of 2003 which outlined very clearly the drop the importance of competition the importance of evolving the private sector and then the importance of developing developing a national address system which in this case is the postcard the legal the laws we have the Tanzania communication regulatory authority act which is substance regulator in 2003 and then we have the electronic and postal communications act of 2010 from these laws you have regulations like you have the consumer protection regulation of 2011 and this includes all the issues of telecoms broadcasting quality of service and so on the institution arrangements between the government and the regulator and the operators are clearly defined my ministers here who actually heads the minister of communication science and technology and let me say that the regulated services include the Uniform Universal Services electronic services and then courier services there's quite a lot of competition in the courier courier area where you have been the international licenses like DHL TNT you have the national licensees and then you have the East Africa licenses from between Kenya Uganda and Tanzania Ronde Miranda and let me conclude by saying that there are also quite a number of challenges and these challenges include the management of the new financial services in the in the in the post arena financial services be has been very successful for example money transfer by the mobile companies and within Tanzania there's quite a lot of interoperability between one net one mobile apparatus and another there's also a cross-border money transfer for example between Tanzania and Kenya you have the safari come in Kenya and water come in Tanzania you can pay across the border you can also have cross payments between Tanzania and Randa for what is known as Tico Pesa now all these of course have been have been facilitated by regulation to conclude I think the posts in the early years looked at RCTs as a threat when the data sort analysis that were the threat but now it is clearly an opportunity so I think the post sector has to integrate the the RCTs in its plants so that we see applications like e-commerce e-government and all the current applications thank you thank you thank you very much for this statement professor John as in coma I just have a short question and then we go to the to the to our dear friend delegates where do you see be a bit self-critical where do you see a point where we could bring down regulation we have you all find or some these are the the operational side finds too much regulation too much red tape too many obstacles where in you feel in being self-critical you think we could bring down regulation we could deregulate I start with you where could we deregulate in Malaysia just just one one thing you know just a brief answer we can regulate the value added service that's happening already and you as all we have to relax a bit okay Lithuania or probably for whole European Union for once you can speak for the whole European Union as for the Europe actually the regime is very light so the entering is already deregulated the provision of the services is very could you speak up a bit the provision of the services is very liberal already in the Europe so as for the Lithuania I think we what we've done yesterday I mean like in the very short period for us since since some time it's we lightened the universal service up to the natural universal service less yes forward to the natural persons on small enterprises thanks Kenya I think what I've seen is that the more the more you we innovate the less we regulate because most of the innovations ride on on services that are already regulated and if now the innovations are many you don't kind of regulate every other innovation so most of the innovations operate in an atmosphere which is not very much regulated so the more we innovate the less you start getting into regulation and we've seen it even so when you fly back to Nairobi where will you deregulate you go back and say I've been Geneva you want to deregate one point where where do you see a possibility we need to encourage more more innovation because as as as people innovate more they they get into the realm that does not need a lot of restriction and that is really when you start allowing them to do what they ought to do as long as it is not inhibiting other people to play okay Argentina where would you deregulate deregulate be self-critical so you would say better regulation but not less regulation John well you don't know regulate if the market is working for example a good example is the interconnection rates I mean you you allow the market to regulate itself but if there's a market market failure then of course you intervene in the financial services for example we've seen interoperability is not something which the regulator first but I think the market itself people realize that if you have your subscriber locked to one mobile operator it's not good so you don't regret if the market is working okay so that's clearly if it's not really necessary to regulate it is recess necessary not to regulate as I understand I have I would like to open it now to the to the floor to the to you dear delegates I have an intervention already from Cuba Cuba you have the floor please please what I said before be brief after one minute I'll intervene sí gracias por ser en la palabra en cuba estamos trabajando en la actualización del del marco regulator y la política regulator ya bueno con teniendo en cuenta los temas de la flexibilización fundamentalmente en la reforma post al insistiendo sobre todo en la diversificación de los servicios de infraestructura a pesar bueno de lo que ustedes conocen del bloqueo a que se encuentra sometido el país pero bueno nosotros estamos insistiendo en estos temas tratando de combinar las nuevas tendencias de los servicios postales el servicio postal universal el comercio electrónico pero siempre teniendo en cuenta una regulación flexible ahora a mí me gustaría que el señor a dur karim de malasia se refiriere y profundizar en un tema que había abordado de las comunidades rurales como se tiene en cuenta en la regulación propia de malasia el tema de las comunidades rurales si tomamos en consideración que hay poca infraestructura de los servicios en esa y nosotros es un tema que nos viene preocupando también acá en cuba por favor thank you kuba most side up to Karim could you answer regulating the university service especially in rural areas is is a challenging methods not only in Malaysia I think in Cuba as well as worldwide but as let the post is declining which let the post used to be the main finance of the university service system in the last decade for example so the overall model is is changing so what we have done in malasia is how to make sure that our university service is not burdensome so one way of doing it in malasia in particular that what we trying to do is to ask the designated operator themselves to define what is rural service and the service standard that you going to offer rather than the regulator who impose on you but of course there will be some safeguarding measures to protect the consumer I have a question isn't mobile communication you know mobile handsets and so on SMS is replacing a lot of communication which was meant to be before in mail postal mail and that almost replaces a bit universal service very interesting questions I think this is many countries are looking into how you can have a converged universal service for example in telecoms and post but I haven't seen any one in the world has done that even in Malaysia we still have a separate universal service for telecoms and for the post and I think in the next few years maybe in the next decade you never know there will be a converged us yeah we will discuss this in the next panel of course may join on Korea name intervention de la France est-ce que vous donnez la parole mais une intervention après s'il vous plaît merci so much merci beaucoup j'en peux forceville géant en charge de la régulation pour le groupe la poste en France j'ai entendu les les interventions je voudrais simplement dire qu'à mon sens le régulateur aujourd'hui doit être très attentif au service universel à la façon dont il est rendu son financement on sait bien que les fonds de compensation ne fonctionne pas que les budgets nationaux ne sont pas riches et donc peut-être faut-il réfléchir aussi à la demande effective et à la façon de se payer quel est le niveau aujourd'hui de service universel que l'on peut tolérer avoir et donc d'une certaine manière veiller à ce que ce service universel face à la baisse rapide des volumes soit protégé pour ce qui est de l'extension de la de la régulation à d'autres secteurs moi je crois que ça commence par le colis mais aussi les services financiers on en reparlera ou les nouvelles technologies il y a des régulateurs de ces marchés sur les services financiers par exemple ou de toute façon il y a l'autorité de concurrence les autorités de concurrence qui un jour deviendront peut-être les les seuls régulateurs aussi sur le sur le marché postale et puis enfin je voudrais attirer l'attention sur le fait que peut-être aussi faut-il songeé à à protéger les opérateurs postaux d'autres opérateurs qui ne respectent pas les mêmes règles en termes fiscales et sociales merci beaucoup merci beaucoup la france pour cette intervention évidemment la dernière remarque c'est une remarque très important qu'on peut malheureusement pas discuter c'est clair si les les règles sont égales pour les postes les postes dessinés et pour les les new players comme on dit les nouveaux joueurs comme Alibaba comme comme Amazon et là il y a une grande question peut-être on va discuter ou peut discuter ça l'après midi mais à manque de temps nous avons pas la possibilité et la question du financement du service universel on va discuter dans le panel prochain c'est pour ça que je dois pour le temps je dois malheureusement terminer ce panel je vous remercie beaucoup mais monsieur maud saydi abtulkarim de malaysia madame lina rainiene de lituania monsieur madame maria victoria soukenic d'argentin monsieur mutu amutusi de kenya et professeur john s encomme de danzania je vous remercie pour votre vos interventions vos discussions vos contributions et je pris les orateurs du prochain panel le panel 6 de venir immédiatement chez moi ici au panel c'est monsieur torstein olsen monsieur chacramont monsieur younus gibrin et l'honorable dr. depression gabrie michael merci beaucoup et on continue dans deux trois minutes merci thanks very much so thank you very much thanks thank you very much so thank you very much so thank you very much so thank you very much i have such a good memory of it thank you dan and give my greetings to your colleagues thank you very much thank you very much john thanks thanks so i'm fighting a bit with the time nothing should be all right i mean i go a little about four to one one that's bonjour monsieur salutak torstein hello how are you this morning so dear friends dear colleagues we go on to the panel number six the last panel this morning thanks for your enthusiasm to stick to the end of this morning lunch is not waiting yet so we we're looking forward to the next panel the next panel we discuss we also have regulators on the panel but not only regulates representatives of of of the postal pan african union and of course also of of government so it is quite a versatile panel of course this morning it's more about governments more about regulators less with the postal firms that we had very much yesterday and we'll have it again this afternoon the discussion this morning this panel is about universal service serving member countries businesses and citizens through the universal service universal service was already mentioned obviously this morning we can't regulate we can't have a policy a government policy without respecting the universal service because i think everybody agrees liberalization is great opening markets is great doing business is great but it can't be only grabby for the people in the in the privileged areas in the towns in the privileged parts of the towns universal service has to deal has to serve also those in rural areas the poorer people and so on universal service is a demand of humanity i would say be it in postal service financial services telecoms medical services very much so this is an important topic it's a topic for regulators of course for governments because the regulators they have to implement the rules of of universal service the governments have to say what are the roles have to do the definition of this universal service that's not same every in every year country and the designators operators who have usually the license of the universal service who have the obligation to do the universal service they are of course the ones who have to do then the service to the citizen the the definition of the universal service is different in every country and that's good like that that's concerning the needs of the population and also concerning the national conditions for example in the european union it's very difficult difficult to do a definition for the universal service in the postal area because the situation in greece or in latvia is different than it's in germany or in spain and the universal service the definition has to be a bit different from country to country but some common rules there but there are some common rules for the universal service be it financing but be it or being also in implementing i hope we can also discuss which role the integrators have the e-base the amazon's the alibaba's of this world because they of course can pick their cherries they don't have any obligations but shouldn't they contribute to the financing for example of the universal service because it was just mentioned by the french colleague you know what about financing the universal service in many countries this is a problem and we have to face this problem because if you can't finance it anymore it is useless to talk about universal service this is a difference to the telecom sector where universal service usually is easily covered to cost covered by the market not the case in necessarily in the postal markets so i would also like in this panel to put a special focus on the emerging country because we have a national universal service but we also have an international universal service the universal service or the post situation of the postal services in less developed countries is completely different than here in geniva or in paris or in in new york and i think we as a upu family have to really also go into this discussion new ways also their innovative ways could be the way more using modern technologies like mobile payment mobile telecommunication to deliver the needs of the people in rural areas in for example in africa in south america and so on so those are the topics we tackle this morning and it's a it's a pleasure to have my colleagues here i start with the colleagues are torstein olson the director general of the norwegian post and telecommunication authority jack hamont the chairman of the belgium regulator we have you know steeper in the second the general of the pan african postal union and we have the honor to have the vice prime minister and minister of communication and information technology of ethiopia the honorable dr debretzian gabrie michael here welcome gentlemen to this to this panel and i give the floor first to torstein olson torstein olson is since four years director channel of the norwegian post and telecommunication authority he is since the beginning of this authority there he's built he has built it up he has a very active role not only norway but also in the european in the european group of regulators of the telecom regulators of the berek he was two years ago vice president of berek and so he he has of course a big knowledge of regulation general but the postal sector also belongs to this authority so we'll be interested to have your short presentation torstein you have the floor thank you mark and thank you to upu for inviting me here i'm very glad i got this chance to talk to upu also i haven't done that before so this is a great pleasure for me to do this and i will start with my conclusion i will conclude that we need to find a new definition of postal services and that made is not anymore the most important way of communications so i'll show you why and this is happening on all countries in a different phase though but it's happening in norway as many others have said today the declining volumes of letters are increasing and the increasing volumes of parcels are there and it seems quite balanced we have 22 percent less letters since 2005 and 21 percent more parcels since 2005 so it's pretty balanced but you have to remember that we are talking about billions of letters and only millions of parcels so it is not balanced and this is crucial to all postal operators throughout the world in or when our post is the main operator they are represented here so i have to be very i have to behave myself not talking badly about norway post they are a good company so is our ministry they are also here so i have to behave but our government as the one of the last countries in europe they have finally decided to propose to liberalize the postal market in norway and this proposal will be put forward for the parliament hopefully before the summer so at the end of this year we will probably have a liberalized postal market also in norway but as you see the letters are declining the number of letters are declining so there won't be much new things to compete on on parcels there is full competition already this is the estimated development of the number of letters for the next years to come so it's billions of letters are diminishing they are they are gone and there are other ways of communicating because people are still in need to communicate but there are new means of communications and we are facing this severely in in norway and we have a digital population we call it a digital population because now the figures are from last year more than 80 percent of the households have access to internet and one third of the households have actually internet connections with more than 32 megabits per second and almost three fourth of the population not the households but 75 percent of the population have smartphones so they are communicating via smartphones instead of letters and they are communicating more and more via these smartphones and via internet actually 90 percent of the population use internet banking so the bank branches are closing down also and since two years ago the majority of the population is actually reading the newspaper digitally and not in paper anymore which is a tremendous challenge to the to the newspapers and the news houses and as of next year our government have decided that all communications from the public sector to the inhabitants and the citizens of Norway will be done by email this is very severe for norway posts and others that are conveying a mail but we have to adapt to this and this shows that mail is not important as a means of communications and anymore but mail and especially parcels is still very very important the implications we see from this is that we need a new and clear definition of postal services i will come back to that and and ask the upu to to start looking into a clearer and better definition of postal services but we still need a minimum level of universal services especially when it comes to parcels there we need in in all the countries of the world we need an efficient network for distributing physical items the electronic communications have come to stay and people will switch to electronic communications for the normal communications but we need better and more secure physical networks to convey parcels and physical items and as we see we have seen yesterday and we see today that there are huge differences between the different countries in the world but there are also differences within a country or within especially within Europe it's a huge difference and that is a challenge because the the needs in the different countries are very different between the north and the south of Europe it's a huge difference and we need also to start a new discussion on the right to communicate because that is what we are trying to regulate not the let this also as such the government of the world need to ensure the right of the citizens to communicate whether this is by mail or by electronic means the right to communicate is what we are striving to achieve and we have to start this discussion in a new way we have to look into the universal service obligation within the telecom sector and within the postal sector because the way we communicate changes and the universal service obligations within these two sectors have to melt and we have to have to regard them together but to enable us to do that we have to start we can start with the postal sector and we need a clear definition of what is post in many countries we don't need posts anymore to to communicate but we need posts to ensure the fiscal conveyance of items and I would like to start with this the yellow circle is what somebody called the postal services it's include conveyance of all fiscal items whether they are addressed or not it's included in the yellow circle and a part of this yellow circle is the universal service of obligation that should depend on national needs within this yellow circle this is a white circle that is the registered and unregistered addressed mail that is smaller than the postal service as such as many define it but we are talking also about the basic postal services and what is that it's not registered and unregistered addressed items as such because in these circles we have not put in any limitation when it comes to kilos for example and that is the main lack of the definitions we find throughout the world today it's it's a definitional universal service obligation it's not the definition of postal services as such and when I was leading a working group within CERP many years ago we were trying to define what is the the real postal services what is the what is the the source actually and the funny thing is that everybody knows what post is until they are asked to define it and it's like time everybody knows what time is until you have to define it then it's almost impossible so that's why we are striving with this definition and the core element of postal services is actually the red circle it's unregistered addressed items that is the unique thing that postal operators throughout the world does registered mail can be passes or all ordinary registered letters but they are all registered and they are based on an individual agreement between the the operator and the sender but the core thing that nobody else is dealing with is actually the red circle unregistered addressed items when you need a postal operator as a third party that you trust and the trusting thing is this very very special thing for postal operators throughout the world and still there are only the designated postal operators that is dealing with this red circle unregistered addressed items and I think we have to start with defining more clearly what is postal services and then we have to start to discuss and how to ensure universal communication services including the electronic services yes thank you very much thank you for saying also thank you very much for this very interesting reviews and food for thought about universal service and I give the floor to another colleague of mine Jack Hammond he's the chairman of the council of the Belgium Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunication Jack joined the BIPT the Belgium regulator in 2013 and before he has quite an interesting curriculum vita he worked for Disney Corporation and for Verizon business he was in Cisco so he comes from the private sector and then he changed to join the public sector as director channel for personal and organization development at the FPS personal and organization he is by by profession has a master in organizational psychology and has an additional degree in management and is now the as I said the chairman of the Belgium regulator who is also regulating telecom and postal services together and he was last year vice president of Perak track you have to flow but merci mark permette moi tout d'abord de remercier la Côte d'Ivoire en tant que pays haute et de remercier bien entendu le directeur général et le directeur général adjoint de UPU pour l'organisation cette conférence dire excellences but first of all I know that I have a challenge because we have the lunch afterwards then I have two questions for you please answer quickly first of it did you get a parcel home within the last three months show me your hands last three months okay thank you and did you send a person on mail or postcards within the last six months six months okay they still work to do you know when I was a young boy I enjoy a lot to the postman of course because I was getting a nice presence from my grandmother but also because when you think about postman you think about every time all the weather is it a letter is it a parcel they are just coming to your home to deliver it it is incredible and for a long time but I have to sorry about that mark to talk about my holidays because I was on leave last week and I don't know about you but when I'm traveling the first thing I need to do is to find some post office and to find posts and mailboxes and it's so attractive and you know interesting for me that whenever you go you will find in the middle of nowhere mailboxes this is just incredible that you are a small company you are in a small farm far away you will get your letters you will get your parcels but as you know we we told that's already for the last two days there are changes in the postal environment we see a fantastic grow of the parcels and in the panel six of course we have to address that because or PMEs SMEs small medium business enterprise they need of course postal services to be successful in the e-commerce and we see the transformation the transformation based on four pillars first of all dryful changes are based on new kind of competition secondly new kind of demands from companies and citizens last but not least collaboration trends between market players and of course a number of changes like Thorsten said between economical situation social situation and technology evolution but of course what we see and I don't want to discuss too much about that very exciting products emerging for example postal e-services but we see also some changes in behaviors like community mail and we see also that in the transformation of postal players they change the way they are delivering all mail and parcels for example in boxes home or in pick up points and we can even dream to get your lunch later on delivered here by post companies at ERGP we knew that it was the right time to think about what will be the USO in the future based on the existing European postal directive and then we first had to look on what's going on in Europe of course and what we see is that there are different trends like Thorsten said we don't have one single model fits all we have changes enlightenment coverage reduction different trends and that we need to understand but also in the world we have in Canada New Zealand or in the US different ways to think about postal services coverage and universal service obligations then we continue the exercise IRGP with our consultation and stakeholders meeting first of all we see that when we look about quality of service we see about number of postal access points or registered mail we have difference within Europe member states and then we decided to go through five questions first of all what could be the common minimum scope of USO including essential elements that should be guaranteed secondly who will finance that and how do we need to define a new SP provider what will be the relationship and impact on USO and competition effects and last but not least thinking about professional or private users we have of course to think which user category should be targeted by the USO ladies and gentlemen I don't know if we have to talk about evolution or we have to talk about revolution if we look to the first preliminary bottom up feedback we got from all the players and governments ministries attending to a stakeholders meeting few months ago what we can see about US definition is one we have to discuss about reduction or at least review the scope secondly we need to introduce more flexibility three we have to consider potentially some specific user groups and needs regarding designation we have to rethink about the way we will designate some USP providers public auctions tendering a lot of questions do we have to do that question mark about financing different way to do it self financing public financing or even compensation funds we still have to discuss that further about competition also leveraging what will be the impact on the current competition and the future of it ladies and gentlemen is the time to go to the next level I invite the whole audience to help ARGP and UPU to rethink about the future of USO because it's the time now to think about the future and I'm dreaming about a time in the world when I will order something from another country from small companies and getting delivered to my home independently when I'm living in the middle of nowhere like I call it and I hope that Belgium is not in the middle of nowhere but I really would like to invite all the members to a call to action to think about that I invite also you to have a look at the end of 2015 about the report and I would like to say thank you very much for the future thank you thank you thank you Jack Hamard for this presentation and I go immediately to the next one Mr. Yunus Gibrin his secretary general from the Pan-African Postal Union Mr. Yunus Gibrin was inspector of general of Cameroon's ministry of post and telecommunication chairman of the anti-corruption unit of post and telecommunications and ICD sectors in Cameroon he brings a lot of postal experience I think you are since 30 years I didn't think you're that old but think 30 years experience in postal development in Cameroon and in other countries he's also he was also representative of Cameroon to the council of administration of the UPU so he knows UPU very well when they served there as a chairman of the technical corporation and postal reform protract group in UPU but now you present represent the Pan-African Postal Union Papu that's also where we met in Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast recently you have the floor Yunus Gibrin from the Swiss authority that allowed this meeting so far from Africa but not from Africa before starting my brief exposure I just wanted to highlight that we have observed I just noticed that we have a convergence division with the UPU in relation to the theme of the conference to bring innovative solutions integrated and inclusive the African Union for its 2063 vision of development its first inspiration is a prosperous United Africa thanks to an inclusive growth and based on sustainable development and the UPU last week organized a conference on its 2020 vision which is the pro-active post-African post to develop innovative solutions integrated and inclusive for the satisfaction of the clients and all of the pre-established parties whose term inclusion inclusion comes back in the three institutions very quickly I don't want to waste time for you to talk about in detail you have our aspirations of the Agenda 2063 of Africa that we want that is displayed on your screen it was purchased on the Pan-African Postal Union and the 44 member country it was created in 1981 it is a government institution specialized in the African Union and a few indicators that are displayed on your screen are sufficiently eloquent to tell us please I can't see my laptop there because I can't see it well here is the second what is my laptop here I thought I could read the screen but I can't read it from far away it's not okay it's me there is electronics even at the post so we have we have here nearly 76 percent of adults are not banking in Africa more than 20 percent of post offices in Africa have no electricity and even less connectivity almost 12 percent of the population has no access to post services at all which gives us at the level of the Pan-African Union of posts to this strategic vision and its missions which consists of promoting reforms in view of developing the post office in physical, electronic and financial Africa in all the countries members and encouraging cooperation between the current parties for reasons of time economy I don't give you the details that are displayed on the table it will be in all cases in the documentation that will be distributed but what I would like to emphasize is the challenge we are facing which concerns the rapid evolution of the market and the acceleration of technological innovations, more and more clients demanding in terms of quality of service a drastic drop in the volume of the courier with degradation of results and the reserving of investment reserves which with on the other hand an organization of service in constant evolution on the one hand we have requirements for the post office simple, accessible, of quality and affordable and in Africa contrary to the black that has just been presented by one of my predecessors in Africa this demand is more and more comprehensive and with concerns for the development of the post office market more and more open to the competition. So how in these conditions prepare the universal post office tomorrow? So there is a need to define a post office service to adapt to the needs of our time and to be able to take into account their evolution being heard that in one of our, one of the titles of our panel, what concerns me, we are talking about the dichotomy of development towards the evolution of new technologies I said dichotomy maybe but not antonomy because the technology is ours it depends only on us and only on us to use it in good health since even the criminals use it when they want it and we therefore have four major axes in the improvement of the quality of service diversification of physical, financial and electronic services the improvement of infrastructure and the post office regulation which are the major axes with an improvement of quality service to run it as well as the international interior, a diversification of services in a wide sense that touches as well the financial inclusion than digital because the financial inclusion theme has become currently the major theme of our organization Mer l'Union africaine which aims at an integrated development as I mentioned earlier at the horizon of 2063 quand elle fait tira son centenaire l'amélioration des infrastructures est l'autre part de marche de marche la plus importante parce que les faiblesses, les frais au développement en afrique est constitué de l'insuffisance des infrastructures et de l'absence d'adressage et de la vétisité de moyens de communication ce qui au niveau de l'Union africaine nous a conduit à retenir une priorité la priorité de priorité grâce à une collaboration étroite avec l'Union possède universelle et l'Union panafricaine de poste pour mettre d'abord non ne voulait pas mettre la charade devant les bs parce que la la connectivité est l'inclusion que nous voulons pour l'ensemble des citoyens africains ou qu'il se trouve quelle que soit la taille de l'air portefeuille nécessite une infrastructure de base en termes de connectivité connectivité qui elle-même est ribiteur de la mise à disposition d'une électricité permanente et fiable au moment où on en a besoin ce qui a fait de ce projet un projet phare qui va donner lieu à l'organisation au siège de l'Union africaine au mois de doute prochain d'une conférence mondiale des barrières de fonds pour le financement de ce grand projet qui permettra à tous les africains de pouvoir être connectés de faire partie du monde et d'être tout simplement des citoyens du monde et également l'adressage qui est un autre facteur étant un élément d'identité quelqu'un qui n'a pas d'adresse n'existe pas était notre chantier qui nous interpelle pour que le service universal universel puisse arriver au dernier kilomètre de l'ensemble des points d'afrique évidemment cela doit être soutenu par une régulation en afrique en tout cas nous y pensons même si ailleurs ça ne se justifie pas l'afrique a besoin de régler parce que les réformes économiques entreprise sous le dictat de ce qui à l'époque se présentait comme étant nos partenaires de développement ont conduit à une désastre presque complet qui a laissé sur le carreau beaucoup de nos concitoyens et qui pour notre objectif 2063 doivent être embarqués à bord et pour cela il faut une régulation pour mettre de l'ordre sur ce marché il faut aussi que le service universel puisse avoir ainsi un financement pérenne d'où la nécessité de créer des fonds spéciaux pour son financement et l'adoption d'une politique postale pertinente et des directives nationales qui se baseraient sur une directive continentale que nous sommes en train d'élaborer en collaboration avec le parlement pan africain voilà monsieur le moderateur cher collègue l'essentiel de ma présentation je vous remercie merci beaucoup you know steeping secrétaire général de la union postale africain le secrétaire général de cette union important et je vous remercie beaucoup pour vos remarques et on va discuter ça après maintenant je donne la parole à l'honorable dr de bretion gabrie michael gabrie michael's post probably easier in english vice premier minister minister of communication and information technology of the democratic federal republic of ethiopia he's also chairman of this papu of the plenipotentiary conference of the pan african conference on the post of the post union dr de bretion gabrie michael is deputy prime minister for finance and economic cluster and the minister of communication information technology of ethiopia and he is also currently the chairman of the board of the opium electric power corporation he was previously director general of the ethiopian information and communication technology so his whole professional life he put into building up technology infrastructure in his country and they welcome you warmly here he's by profession engineer which usually helps understanding technical the technical developments in a country not like me as a lawyer who usually does not understand that really in depth so you have to flow thank you moderator excellencies ladies and gentlemen first i would like to thank the organizers u p u codibor and other partners for organizing this event and inviting us to be part of the event well i think this is not the right time for me to make a speech regarding this postal services but i would in the interest of time i would be very short before i proceed to the topic that has been already introduced by the moderator i would like to talk one story that i have comes across the postal service well it's a long time back while i was a student you know in ethiopia we had a revolution the the current party in power is the one that leads us to revolution so one day i was assigned to send a letter to officials by the revolutionaries since the revolution by then is a legan i just cannot communicate the officials directly because i would be put in jail so what i have to do is i have to go through the post office i cannot i have not i should not register my name but it's an ordinary mail so mail has done the service for me and it was quite uninteresting there are a lot of messages from the revolutionaries to the then governors to let them know that they have to cool down they have to take care of our people they have to be as much as possible moderate until the time comes so this is one of my best memories of post when i was in travel when i was assigned by the revolutionaries to to hand over but i cannot do that because i will be caught so i have that good memory and today i'm the head of this well i'm not the director but as a minister i'm heading this postal service so i know the benefits during bar time now i will i will move to the the main topic the challenge of the universal services and the solutions they have they have been many speakers have discussed about it since yesterday but i just want to briefly say some few words and some few ideas on what we do with utopia and of course it also covers the region there are four challenges that i have tried to identify but i'm sure you will agree with them with me as well and i will highlight what we are doing to address those challenges regarding the universal service one of the challenge that has been been discussed time and again is of course postal volumes is declined also in our case so to address that we have embarked this e-commerce initiative in our country we are just beginning and this on this track so the government has issued strategies and many other directives to expedite e-commerce and postal service will be instrumental in transforming the digital to the physical one you cannot complete the whole process by e-commerce e-commerce you can do all the activities but the physical handover must be done by some agent and that agent i'm sure we agree is a postal service in this regard i also heard yesterday a good experience from saudi post they have said they have an agreement with amazon so they have to bridge the communication the digital is physical and that's an excellent experience we all have to emulate and we also like the experience that we heard the second thing that we have to do in our case is to serve the under serving population so in the rural community we have around 80 percent of the country is rural and they have don't have access to to posts so now we have already embarked a project at currently it's a model project to link post office to the rural community as well at the moment almost 95 percent of the rural community have a telecom service we have already telecenters we have a new list of services to the centers that is it electronic services the search service coming is postal services so now we have we are transforming the telecom centers at the villages communication centers they can provide services of telecom it and post and regarding cost there is not much to do from the postal service because it's already there the establishment is already there we are adding the services so people will be served and postal service will also get a revenue on top of it they are supporting the development of the country this is a new initiative at the moment it is a model kind of intervention by next year we are going to scale up to cover all the villages the other that had been raised time and again is increase of personal I think this is also the case in Ethiopia and we are working on it the other challenge and this is the communication behavior has changed of the citizens people are using Facebook emails and many others so the later service is declining obviously now the satisfaction of the customer will have to use it again to attract and retain customers so with the use of this tracking mechanism and then tracing these services the quality of service is changing before that the quality of service from the sender point of view was hidden the header doesn't know the quality of service as the recipient did currently because of this tracking mechanism we have applied it and we are using and tracking it from any corner whether it's from Geneva whether it is in local whether it is from ES the sender can track so quality of service is increasing and this will help us retain and attract as I said others to improve sustainability in terms of the perspective of finance diversification of business is one of the strategies that we are following and our postal services are doing non postal services like finance like payment insurance so many others are coming in the list and utility billing is also being handed and taken care of this by post and this will help again in generating more revenue there's diversifying the delivery channel is another intervention that we are trying outsourcing some of the businesses to the third party this mobile posts is also another intervention that we are trying to address so this will help us and again maintaining sustainability use of it actually it is a common denominator in all scores but we are using also it to improve the trust the trust action costs between the sender and recipient and as well to modernize the logistics and security so this will help us certain the other challenge from our perspective and it can also impress others is a limited professionals so to improve the the professional professionalism within the sector we are linking this with the universities with postal union and there are trainings opportunities that we have already benefited out of it with the support of UPU and Papu who are gaining and there are a lot to do by Papu in modernizing the postal service as well so business processor engineering and technology and application are being developed by some experts and we are being shared by Papu and Papu has a lot to play in our region including Ethiopia and we are gaining out of it so I think I just want to end by appreciating the role played by Papu as well and personally I would also like to appreciate the director general ambassador for your support for the UKP as well as to other is a postal union and thank you very much and I also thank all of you for giving the time and as well as the patience during this lunchtime thank you thank you very much thank you thank you very much that was the right honorable dr. de Bretzin Gibri Merkel vice prime minister of communication and information technology from Ethiopia just a short question to the panel and then I will open the discussion we don't have that much time anymore financing we all talked wishing list of the USO how you wish universal service obligation to be how in one or two sentences how do you see the financing of it should that be the government should that be the sector should it be another mean how do you see that Thursday that is one of the main reasons why we have to look more carefully into you universal service obligation because it's becoming costly for something that people doesn't want to the same degree anymore people are using electronic communications while the states I have to pay so far for a traditional way of looking into universal service obligation but the easiest way to do this is paid by the state pay by the state truck I want to do yes please that's that was the signal for you okay then just quickly we have three options open I think that when we did those study at RGP compensation fund benefits and of course of course some threats we have public financing and we have of course self financing it's too early to define what and how because we need firstly to review what will be exactly the USO scope then sorry Mark I cannot give you the final answer about so you don't think in for example in industrialized countries that it could be self financed it can be the gains of the of the designated post it can be but you know we definitely need to review the scope and based on that we have to to decide which is the best way but self financing is one of them of course okay Mr. Yunus Gibrin how do you see things you know to look for the source of financing you have to already see who is the profit it is the universal service made in favor of the citizens of the city of lambda and serving the citizens is an obligation of each government responsible obviously so it comes back to the government based on its economic reality to find the right mechanism this does not mean that it is the public treasury necessarily who pays but the government must find the right mechanism based on the actors present for this financing and there the options even in Africa they vary certain are the operators because the public operator is the one who has the obligation to go to the last kilometer the other operators who are not looking for to do the cremation to do their business in a restricted area are obliged to reverse the advance in a account that allows him to finance the implementation of infrastructure and the adequate execution of universal services there is still in certain countries a form of reserve service also which allows to ensure this financing and a third category concerns countries directly at the level of the state of the public treasury versus a contribution for the financing of this universal service which once again is an obligation of the government and whose operator is a command designed to ensure the mission Mr. Gabriel Michael how do you see that the financing of universal service obligation primarily I would say the postal office has to diversify its products and services so that they can finance their obligations because the second one is as long as there is market inefficiency the government can come to support some financing or expenses as well okay thank you very much I think that gave about the whole possibilities and of course this is matter of discussion also it's matter of how much we want to extend the universal service obligation the more we extend it the more expensive isn't the more we need funding for it so that's of course but that's a very political question now I would like to open the floor to the to the plenary who has a remark I have time for about two remarks or questions even better and please be be short yes that's I can't see yeah yeah and then the one to the left is what's Nigeria it's the same team okay Nigeria sorry I I saw two panels of Nigeria so Nigeria Eastern Nigeria West okay you have to flow thank you Mr. Moderator my question actually is on the definition of postal services one of the panelists has raised an issue of need to redefine or define a clear definition of what postal services means I think that being that the post office works on a three-dimensional basis both physical financial and digital and these definitions were there in the beginning what should the UPU now consider as definition of of postal services because I hear most often when this postal services and digital services or postal services and and financial services are they not now part of the post office thank you that Torstein Olson said how impossible is to give a definition what the universal serves or what the postal services in general is is it possible to do a definition on postal services or is it not anymore possible because we have so much convergence with other other elements like telecommunication like financial services and that's of course important also for the definition then a universal service obligation so is it possible to give a definition of the universal service I start now with a colleague from Ethiopia how do you see that how would you do the definition I don't expect you a clear definition in five words but still how do you see that yeah well after all we have tried to define universal services in our case in terms of say parcel is we say it should be less than 2 kg and later just later so and of course the timeline quality of service has to be also very clear and we have I don't exactly remember but I think we said it should be within a week there should be this later has to be addressed to the destination within the country so these are some of the items that we have identified in the world defined in our universal service in terms of distance with it around five kilometers so quite a clear clear definition on criteria of quality is that you know Steve if I understood if I understood the question of Nigeria it's not the definition of universal service that is looking for but it's the definition of postal service I think that's what in his question the postal service in my opinion refers to this time the dichotomy between existence and essence and in the matter I think that the essence precedes existence the postal service since the night of time exists because it facilitates communication between men communication is not only to share the news of the district of the city but it is also to exchange services and from this point of view this exchange this need to change evolve with technological developments and without diversifying and increasing needs allows us to always adapt the definition to this essence and its content to evolve and from our point of view I agree with the Nigerian colleague so that when we say that the postal network of the three-dimensional upu cannot work on a foot it is three-dimensional there is the electronics the physics and the financial it is an integrated offer it must be understood as being a whole postal service regarding definition I think that we have to take into account what is changing and then we have to make sure that the definition will accommodate with the this changing world and the needed transformation postal services for example regarding logistics and so on and also convergence regarding us so I think that as I said during my presentation we are revisiting a number of dimensions and maybe it might help to also rethink about what might be the postal services definition post time the core definition of postal services I think I gave an overview of that it's possible to define that the core that is the unique thing that postal operators throughout the world are offering today that is the unique one but then the government have to decide what kind of universal service obligations do we need and for sure we need to ensure that citizens are able to communicate whether this is by mail or by electronic communications that has to be decided by the government and further on we need all the each and every government have to ensure or discuss whether they want to have a universal service obligations when it comes to parcels and that is something totally different from communication so you have to split this in communications which can be done by mail or by electronic means and parcels which can only be done by by a fiscal network but that has been done with or by many other operators than the designated our operators so that is a totally different thing thank you now I have I can only give two interventions to place because we should wrap up and finish this session otherwise we have nothing to eat we don't want that because you already had a fantastic engagement this morning the room was always full so I give the floor to Uruguay and then to comore uruguay you have to floor please ask for as short as possible operator is designed as a tool for the economic and social development of the countries another question that is a separation the second is to give my deep desire that Africa achieves all this transformation and hopefully before 62 and thirdly I have a discord series between which the universal service can be self-sustaining it has not happened anywhere unless the services are cut off and employees and closed offices thank you very much thank you that's very interesting and the bridge over to the remarks from the african colleagues now the last intervention I give to comore I'm sorry the lady of Egypt smiles at me but still I have some I have to stop it once you can bring it put it forward in the afternoon my colleague will take it okay yes good so comore where are you minister of Ethiopia communication so we found his very interesting intervention on the plan of the approach of efficient profitability that he presented to the city of an integration of the post of the telecom this historically I'm talking about comore it's rather the telecom that uses the postal network which is a historically established network for selling telecom products and I complicate the approach developed by Ethiopia was the reverse sense it was rather the postal service that used the telecommunication service I would have wanted it to develop a little more and explain how it is happening completely on the market I would thank you thank you very much I give the floor to minister vice prime minister of Ethiopia and then we will end unfortunately you have okay I just want to reflect on both of course the raw guys is just a comment and I think it was compliment if we take the case of Ethiopia one regarding universal services by the way I said two kilo for parcel it is 20 kilo I'm sorry for that we have already standardized the kind of services that should be offered in all villages we have 16 000 villages in our country so the whole intervention of the government is all the villages has to be served by the universal service so this is a decision by the government and that is an intervention from the government well this government is working hard on development so we say this is an instrument to accelerate especially to get out of poverty we are still struggling to get out of poverty and we need and we say this is an instrument for us so there is a constitutional obligation and commitment from the government to serve the people to serve especially the poor and the pros of the poor are in villages regarding the sequencing or the experience mentioned yes in our case telecom went ahead by the way this is also an intervention from the government so the telecom decide the government has decided actually 10 years back to cover all villages by telecom and we say this is a very good instrument again to get out of poverty to spread education to connect people to health doctors and to get market information so this is a line again to get to the whole project supporting people to get out of poverty so telecom came first that was the the thoughts of the government so telecommunication is spread in these village areas now this year actually we added electronic services to it and then posts and this is historically how it was designed postal actually came lately so we preferred to connect the rural population by telecom first than post against his uninitiated by the government I think we were right in terms of sequencing but it could have been even done together this is the reflection I have and thank you so much for your comment and for your identifying actually the reason and your interest also to know why we have done that thank you very much and with this I would like to finish this panel I thank you very much panelists dear gentlemen for for participating and I would like to to wrap up by saying I think just the last panel showed that we talk about a right of communicate that is all that what we said it's a human right and that is of course mean needs a universal service a post universal service a telecom universal service a financial universal service but it mainly needs inclusion it needs access and it needs connectivity it's these three things which unfortunately we've seen the figures this morning are not given in the whole world by far not most parts I must say do not have these three points inclusion access and connectivity of the human right to communicate and I think in all these discussions also e-commerce which is of course a fact whether it's in all in all the countries of this world e-commerce is the future of the postal services of the communication also of the of the businesses but also here we have to have two speeds in one way in the in the industrialized countries and in the merging countries are two different speeds in the industrialized countries we have to bring down obstacles we have to make this trade cheaper and so on all these things customs is a big issue but still though there are big efforts done but of course we also have to see then in Africa in some parts of Asia and South America there are other obstacles to overcome for this right to communicate the infrastructure has to be done electricity it was shown by our African colleagues many countries don't have electricity if you don't have electricity it's difficult to run a post office we have to have for that the infrastructure of the post office of the professional teaching of the people who run this post offices and of course also an address system and for all this it can be overcome also by the use of new technologies like telecommunication mobile telephony more sms and so on this can can be done but with all these things it needs the engagement of the facilitating by the regulated by the government and also of course by the by the upu we must be aware that the postal network that was said in the morning first is the biggest physical network we have almost 700 000 postal offices in some countries it's by far not enough we know that but still this is a big physical network which has to be used but it's it's necessary to have more logistical efficiency that the cost of trading must go down and that we design a regional integration mail and postal services is not a matter of nation to nation we must work regionally and that was as I said this morning impressed when I was on the Ivory Coast in Abidjan or Grand Basin how for example the eastern western African countries work together it's not a matter of Tanzania Ethiopia and Kenya but they work together and that's how it should be that's also what we try here in Europe to do so so this must be the future and the other thing is the red tape we still have much too much stamps and paper and so on we need to use the technology ladies and gentlemen we are not enough that everybody who delivers parcels and so on knows we are going in this direction but we're not far enough we need speedy clearing and we need simplified declarations otherwise we will never get where we want to go Peru was a very interesting example we should take like what they're doing in South America but it was also very interesting to listen to the lady from the Caribbean's from how she shows how important for the people who do agriculture who do small trade how important it is to have post office to be physical able to send off their goods be it nationwide or into another country so opening these things in concrete and practical ways is essential for growth of wealth and for fighting poverty in the whole world and I think that's that's something we should take with us but the colleague from Malaysia gave us an optimistic note he said we are going into a golden area for the postal sector because e-government because e-business e-commerce gives tremendous possibilities tremendous opportunities for the postal services and that's true because the combination internet and physical logistic delivery gives tremendous opportunity and with this positive note of the Malaysian colleague I would like to finish this panel but not not saying we must accept the channels try the challenge the postal operators they must change their mind set the authorities the regulators and the government they have to do big changes to face these these challenges which e-commerce bring to us but this I would like to thank you very much everybody here in the room I'm impressed we're all hungry and thirsty and you're still all here that's that shows that you show a big interest on the topic and I'm looking forward to the discussion in the afternoon which my colleague will will lead and I wish you all the best and thanks again for your engagement and I give now the floor to the right Honorable Minister of Ivory Coast Monsieur Cooney. Thank you. I don't need to come back the e-commerce which are in the center of everything we should do in all our posts in the next few years without any doubt we have noted the very important traffic so at the level of e-commerce noted the improvement of access to the market which is a necessity to allow our populations especially in developing countries to access the possible in the service post we have noted with interest the proposal that was made on the opportunities offered in certain countries to the PME and PME post service I noted what concerns me logistics services access services to the internet which certainly can present an interest in many of our countries the regulatory aspects we all concerned I think we will listen with a lot of interest the exchanges that there was and without any doubt we are all convinced here that a good regulation a good regulation allows to have a postal service which develops better because we have operators who are more dynamic who are secured in their operations and then we have consumers who are protected who feel safe the notion of postal service universal has just been mentioned I don't want to go back as long as there have been some bsb at the level of definition of the definition of this notion of universal service and also at the level of the definition of the postal service itself but I hold on to what concerns me that our network needs to extend our network needs to extend and it is necessary that our states contribute to this extension our networks face the challenges of technological developments and it is difficult that our states do not intervene I also note that our networks and our consumers face the price at the cost of postal services and it may be important here too that our states play the role that may be theirs I noted that there are needs that may be covered by the service of the international service especially the availability of post offices the connectivity it has even been called the electrification electrification of certain post offices so everything that if they are well addressed can perfectly help the development of the postal service in our countries to increase the inclusion and help the vulgarization of the services marca concludes by talking about the right to communicate I think it is indeed a good summary of everything that has been said during this session I would like to present ladies and gentlemen that you give us a few minutes to allow us to give the word because it has been asked in Switzerland I do not see it ok so I give you the word to address you at the assembly thank you Mr. the president you are at the heart of communication and information that is why in full confidence I would like to share with you a confidential information that came to me a few minutes ago according to which the next point during the day should be of gastronomic nature I know how difficult it is to listen to the stomach empty that's why I took the strategic decision to reduce my intervention to a small hour Mr. the president ladies and gentlemen the ministers ladies and gentlemen the high representative mr. the general director ladies and gentlemen the representatives of the universal postal union ladies and gentlemen it is a great honor for me to be able to address you in the name of the swiss government and as a representative of the state of the universal postal union on the occasion of the sixth world strategic conference of the universal postal union after the one of bern from 1992 je neve in 1997 je neve in 2002 dubai in 2006 and Nairobi in 2010 the strong participation in this demonstration fully rejoins us and the best is the best my brief intervention will be articulated around four elements the swiss state haute the swiss solidarity the swiss candidate and the swiss partner of the reforms the swiss state haute as a state haute of the universal postal union the swiss is happy to be able once again to provide the conditions the conditions of the dialogue by the disposition of this international center of je neve conferences far from your usual bases not very far it is true that they are bernois these infrastructures are not foreign to you since the universal postal union has been here even in 2008 under the presidency of your current general director that I greet as for many other international organizations who have their seats in swiss we are always ready to facilitate meetings and exchanges of experience in quality of countries of many international organizations we are more sensitive to the synergy that it can establish and this will be more and more the case in terms of numeric in this perspective we would always be ready to play the role of facilitator the swiss solidarity as we had done for our friends from kenya in 2008 we do it for our friends from the Ivory Coast today we are all Ivory we know that they have been the circumstances that have led to relocate the place of this conference this epidemic of the bolas that has all moved us has not spared a certain number of countries of the sub-region in the Ivory Coast fortunately no case is to be deplored we are in thought and in solidarity with all the affected countries that the Ivory authorities are to be thanked here fortunately for all the efforts that they had already focused on in the perspective of its development to abidjan the swiss candidate the swiss is committed she wishes that the initiatives will continue our role and our involvement in the universal postal union since its creation 141 years ago are known and we call on continuity it is in this spirit that the swiss government will ask you to renew your support to your general vice director within the international office pascal cliva during the next universal postal union in istanbul in 2016 we are convinced that it will continue if the re-elect the magnificent work he has already accomplished with skills and enthusiasm that is not diplomatic because i have the privilege and honor to count among his friends and i can assure you that for once what we are asking to read a diplomat is the pure truth additional waste of our commitment in lupus the decision of my country to be a candidate for a seat at the next administration council our wish is to fully participate in the many challenges that await the universal postal union these next years and bring our experience for the relever the swiss is being present very actively within the bodies of the union during the next cycle finally the swiss partner of the reforms this strategic conference reveals a particular importance because it allows for two days at the different intervening panels and participants to bring their intellectual contribution to the strategy of the universal postal union indeed these contributions will serve basic elements to elaborate the great future lines of lupus its leaflet during the next congress in istanbul the swiss government pleads for an universal postal union open effective and at the service of everyone a lupus that brings solutions to added value in a world full of upside down comme vous l'avez rappelé hier le directeur général et comme nous le constatons à travers les débats de ces deux jours le rythme des réformes doit encore s'accélérer pour que l'organisation soit au rendez-vous de 2020 les 141 les 141 ans de lupus sont un succès pour le secteur postal qu'elle a réussi à mettre sur orbite et a développé dans une belle continuité et une garantie incontestable pour l'avenir l'union postal universelle est devenu un modèle de coopération internationale longue vie donc à la deuxième plus ancienne agence de la famille onusienne poursuivons ensemble avec elle nos grands projets que nous sommes en train de dessiner ici à genève vous pouvez compter sur le soutien du gouvernement suisse bonne continuation plutôt bonne fin de conférence et merci à tous et bon appétit merci beaucoup madame monsieur cher délégué je voudrais en votre nom à tous remercier le secrétaire d'état qui vient d'intervenir au nom de la suisse et je voudrais remercier vous remercier monsieur pour les mots très aimables prononcés concernant la Côte d'Ivoire mais vous remercier surtout d'avoir abrité cette conférence d'habitants ici même à genève et d'avoir mis à notre disposition toutes toutes ces commodités qui ont permis je pense le succès jusqu'à maintenant de cette conférence votre message a été certainement très bien entendu je vais passer la parole à quelques personnes dans la salle qui souhaitent intervenir relativement à ce message en ce qui me concerne je retiens la partie la suisse candidate et je dois dire tout de suite mon sentiment et mon support évidemment à la candidature suisse qui est proposée en même temps que je dis publiquement mon support au travail remarquable qui est fait par les directeurs général et toute son équipe donc je passe la parole à la salle et à tous ceux qui voudraient intervenir oui allez-y monsieur nous merci excellence monsieur le ministre de me donner cette opportunité pendant cette heure si tardive de dire quelques mois suite à cette excellente annonce que en quatre axes que la suisse vient de nous donner évidemment on disait ventre affamé na point d'oreille mais c'est là nous donne davantage plus d'appétit parce qu'ils viennent de nous annoncer que l'équipe qui a gagné va continuer à assumer parce que traditionnellement on dit qu'on ne change pas une équipe qui gagne et du côté africain nous sommes je voudrais au niveau de la communauté postale africaine avec la permission de mon président la conférence de plein potentiel qui est là que l'afrique a été pleinement satisfaite depuis les deux ans et demi de cette équipe de ce ticket gagnant qui faut-il rappeler était un ticket africain il était peut-être suisse mais c'était le pascal cliva et buchard et c'est était nos candidats ils ont gagné au la main et nous ne sommes pas dessus du résultat qu'ils ont fourni dont nous espérons qu'ensemble ils feront encore du chemin au grand bonheur de nos postes parce que pendant leur mandat plus que jamais par le passé la coopération avec l'union pan africain de postes au profit de ces dames ces états membres a été intensifié et nous souhaitons sa continuation et promettons d'être d'être déjà de continuer dans ce sens pour les soutenir merci encore je vais demander aux prochains intervenants d'être plus bref dans la mesure du possible je passe la parole à l'egypte je parle en arabe merci je ne suis pas sûr que nous ayons compris madame ce que vous avez dit parce que je crois que la traduction n'a pas marché mais bon nous reviendrons peut-être à vous tout à l'heure si d'aventure la traduction marché je passe la parole à l'iraq je crois allez-y oui iraq à l'aluminium a tarjoua mutaha amla ayvan naan nashkor je pense que la la traduction arabe ne marche pas nous allons passer la parole à d'autres langues reviendrons à vous dès que possible dès que la traduction arabe marchera s'il vous plaît je vous remercie et guébuti si vous parlez en anglais ou en français par exemple oui bonjour en fait c'était juste pour laisser ma place à l'egypte parce qu'elle est francophone elle pourra poser sa question en français merci i can speak in english no problem yeah okay no problem english french no problem on behalf of the egyptian government i wish to thank mr bashar hasen the general director and his deputy mr pascal clivas for the effort they spent during the last two years i strongly believe that they spare no effort to fulfill their commitments and to provide support to all the country and i wish to continue the fruitful operation with the upu and thank you very much we also support the the continuation of both secretary general in the deputy secretary general because they have shown outstanding performance during their stay for the last two and a half years thank you senegal so i would like to thank you so i would like to take the floor to simply say that senegal appreciates the work that is being carried out by the general director mr bichard isan and the general director mr pascal clivas the work of transformation of the upu and the transformation of the post we estimate that this work must continue and that a winning team must be carried out so senegal assumes that mr bichard isan and mr pascal clivas the director general must be carried out for the next cycle i would like to thank you well i see a lot of other hands raised but i imagine that the comments will go in the same direction i would like to thank you all in your name mr the secretary of state and so congratulations to the team who is today leads the upu for remarkable work what she does and also congratulations for the support that most of the delegates here come from him to bring him so thank you and i would like to present someone said earlier that we had other priorities the next priority is obviously the questions that linear or gastronomic it doesn't matter i will therefore invite you to the lunch that is offered by the divorce court at the exterior of these places thank you and bon appetit return earlier at 2 o'clock return at 2 o'clock resume work at 14 o'clock thank you stage so we can slowly start and have everybody seated so we can go on this afternoon with the different panels so one is here so namely i would like mr ambassadors swing to maybe come here nice meeting you well nice meeting you now it's meeting you cheers hello thank you it's on just that yes hello absolutely mr minister hello it's going very well and you too otherwise we will never get there i think so i leave you madame monsieur we are going to start i hope that you enjoyed your breakfast it was reported to me that some delegation leaders still wanted to intervene regarding the Swiss delegation earlier what i propose is that we do it at the end of the science content of the delay that we are already accusing we are now going to start the third science that is used to bring innovative solutions integrated and inclusive the science of this afternoon will be devoted to the challenge in terms of economic and social development to which we will have to face the members of the ipu the access will be put on the essential role that can be played by the government to ensure that the post that the post can bring innovative solutions integrated and inclusive in order to respond to the needs of their clients and the needs of the other prominent parties that are often neglected but who are only the actors of the sector and the states the role of the post sector as a motor of economic growth and reduction of poverty these assets as a vector of social and financial inclusion and as a social service provider will also be mentioned the intervenants will examine how the government has committed more strongly towards the post sector and will see how to attract more investment in the post sector finally i think it will be possible to see eventually how to reconcile the imperatives of profitability with this linked to sustainable development these two problems that are often put hand in hand and not together this workshop will be animated by mr siruti siruti who is journalist and correspondent of tv five world in swiss siruti i will pass the word to introduce and animate this panel thank you very much thank you mr president thank you thank you thank you mr president so i propose that we move out quickly because as you have noticed obviously we took it late this morning and then it is difficult to leave a short meal because you don't just have to feed the mind which was the case this morning you also have to eat your stomach so this afternoon we talked about financial inclusion and post financial services which represent both challenges and opportunities after the banks the posts and their large financial agencies are the world's actors who contribute the most strongly you know it better than me to the financial inclusion and the question that is often asked is to know how they can do even more even better and for the largest number a billion people already benefit from financial services for their transactions thanks to a post that manages more than a billion five hundred million accounts post savings and two deposits are the figures obviously that would not read in wine any traditional bank nothing that we have in 2012 well 30 million new accounts post and savings have been opened and the money delivery is the entry door for the people without banking relations in the most formal and traditional financial system at the global level the repatriation of money made by migrants by the formal channels is raised to more than 400 billion of american dollars in 2013 an extremely significant sum and the intervening this afternoon well of this panel will address the question of the challenges the post sector will have to face and the opportunities that it will be able to take advantage of by exploiting precisely the potential of financial services and post we will also examine together the role that the posts can play with the full support of their government I think it's an absolutely essential point in any case for me who comes from the outside and who has been listening to you for two days now as well as international organizations in order to increase financial inclusion in general our first speaker to start this afternoon will be ambassador william lacy swing is the director general for the international organization for migration is currently serving his second five-year term just to remind you the organization for migration is a 1.7 billion budget organization and which has about eight five eight thousand five hundred staff all around the world and prior to this ambassador swing had successfully led the largest UN peacekeeping operation as a UN special representative of the secretary general for the democratic republic of Congo and before that he did the same but in western sahara is also had a long diplomatic career the u.s. department of state state and was a sixth on ambassador ambassador swing please the floor is yours thank you thank you very much a good afternoon it's a real honor and pleasure to be with you today to take part in this world strategy conference especially since iom is a partner with upu and the barundi post and a joint project that we think is very exciting on migration and development with the focus on lowering the cost of sending money home migration is a mega trend of our century there are more people on the move today than at any other time in recorded history this is likely to remain a mega trend for most of the century because of the driving forces for one thing demography um numerically there are more people on the move because the world's population quadrupled in the last century for the first time in recorded history unfortunately much of the mass migration is forced migration more than 50 million persons displaced today the largest number since the second world war as we speak our organization has a flight leaving today from sana in yemen to take out the first of 16 000 third country nationals that 38 governments have asked us to bring to safety um the other driving forces of course are the digital revolution three billion people today connected to the internet compared to 300 million in the year 2000 the distance shrinking technology budget travel climate change environmental degradation labor demand all of these are driving forces that mean that now one in seven persons is a migrant about 250 million of them crossing borders and three quarters of a billion moving within their own country china alone has more domestic migrants than there are international migrants so it gives you some idea of the dynamic we're talking about here if all these migrants crossing borders were to form a country they would be the sixth largest country in the world slightly larger than brazil slightly smaller than indonesia and as moderators just said sending home more than 400 billion dollars a year a total that's supposed to rise next year to much more than 500 or nearly 582 billion so migration cannot be ignored and that's why more and more governments have it as a priority so i want to make three points the first one i've begun to make already which is the remittance impact i don't know why we should have a global debate now on migration and development as to whether migration contributes to development of course it does my own country is was built on the backs of migrants is still being built today on their backs rather than what seems to be the mood today of anti-migrant sentiment driven by a lot of other forces foreign direct investment and economic aid are much smaller than the totality of remittances sent home the number would be much higher if it included informal remittances which people bring back home in their pockets when they return they're also about the well-being of our families migrants families benefit because it covers the expenses on food health and education it helps alleviate poverty and it provides a better standard of living these development outcomes can be maximized through programs that aim to increase financial literacy and i really commend the upu for its efforts and my good friend director general hussein is very committed in this regard and we're grateful for that and want to be part of it on the macro level migrants remittances are stimulating economic growth they are a source of microfinance that stimulates innovation it creates jobs and adds to countries credit ratings so all of this is in is in the mix and during the recent crisis such as the 2008 2009 worldwide economic downturn remittances proved to be remarkably resilient in fact in major migrant countries such as the philippines and bangladesh migrant remittances actually increased in this period because migrants recognized their families needed more help than in more normal times so we believe that my thesis is of iom that migration large-scale migration is inevitable because of the forces i mentioned at the beginning it is necessary if jobs are to be filled skills to be available and economies to flourish and it is highly desirable if we have the right policies which means helping to reduce the cost of transfer which is my second point the cost of transferring money home now is exorbitant it is too high according to the world bank migrants sent 60 billion dollars back to africa in 2012 but they were overcharged four billion dollars by money transfer companies which averaged 12.4 percent in finance charges this is unfair migrants work hard they're highly motivated they contribute but to have to pay 12.4 percent to get their money home is something that needs to be addressed and director general hussain and i and our organizations are doing that right now and i'll come to that project that's my third point in barundi where we're collaborating in this joint project the diaspora sends home 50 million u.s. dollars a year of which more than 10 percent is lost in remittance transfers if you say the figure is 450 billion dollars a year and you're paying 10 percent or above that means you're losing between 40 and 50 billion dollars which should be putting children in school putting bread on the table and taking care of the sick and elderly there's a great need now for a focus on lowering these remittance costs there are many obstacles the g8 in 2009 made a commitment to reduce remittance costs by five percent this has not been achieved because the obstacles and the barriers are many restrictive regulatory framework a lack of low cost and reliable money transfer operations and so forth but we aim to do something about it money has been diverted for various fees and costs that are assessed by the money transfer companies so my third point is to say let's support the upu iom joint project we've gotten some support from governments but we need more and we will be making an appeal as i appeal to you now to think seriously about supporting this because we have many countries both in africa and other parts of the global south waiting to see the success of the barundi project because they'd like to have the same project where they are we want to lower these costs and improve the contribution therefore of migration to development we're launching a joint initiative the first pilot as i mentioned in partnership with our good friend director general salvatore and ziggy yamana who's with us on the panel today and we hope that this will make international funds transfers possible through existing postal networks i think you have probably at least 600 of these transfer points around the world and that would aid us enormously barundi is affected by a range of issues first of all they have prohibitive remittance costs that i mentioned at least 10 percent more than twice the international target of five percent set by the g8 in 2009 they have widespread financial exclusion in rural areas especially from savings investment insurance and credit services and there is a lack of economic opportunity for businesses due to difficulties encountered in us in accessing international markets so the upu and iom we're leveraging the multifaceted strengths of our respective organizations and the postal network in barundi to implement a project that will reduce the cost of migration remittances we emphasize this is only a pilot if it is successful we will be going globally with this project it is the cost of remittances that need to be managed and made affordable and then we will replicate these efforts in other countries and i'm so pleased to be with you i want to leave with you a swahili proverb because we're talking about barundi kirima ya kirima ayi kutanake la kini watu wanakutanaka that means simply it's my very poor swahili i apologize it means simply that mountains can't meet but people can and i'm so honored to be with you thank you thank you very much it was brilliant thank you very much well thank you very much ambassador swing so are we pleased to be with you and to have your expertise with us this afternoon of course bien nous allons maintenant inviter le directeur général de la régime nationale des postes du barundi ms salvatore nizi li mana j'espère que je l'ai prononcé juste avant ça il a occupé de nombreuses responsabilités tant dans le secteur public que privé en lien avec la poste et les communications il a notamment été directeur général de l'agence de régulation et de contrôle des télécommunications du barundi et président de liens call list african communication organization j'imagine que vous allez également nous parler de ce projet que vient de nous dépendre on parti l'ambassadeur swing merci oui messieurs les ministres monsieur l'ambassadeur sain bichard monsieur l'ambassadeur swing cher collègue distingué délégué mesdames messieurs c'est en réel plaisir et au-delà en grande honneur de me retrouver à côté de ses éminentes personnalités pour partager un peu de l'expérience du barundi dans le domaine des services financiers et de l'inclusion financière qui me soit permis de vous exprimer ma grande reconnaissance en sola et je saurais très humble dans ma présentation puisque monsieur l'ambassadeur swing vient de donner l'essentiel mais il a donné le temps il a tracé la route je vais contribuer à vous présenter dans les détails le projet qui nous occupe avec l'organisation qu'il dirige et l'union poste anniversaire à laquelle nous appartenons permettez-moi aussi de vous transmettre les chaleureuses salutations de la famille poste du barundi avant d'aborder le sujet je vais vous pour l'intérêt du temps je vais vous entretenir sur cinq points très brièvement d'abord on a perçu et en contexte général du barundi en pays d'une petite superficie d'au moins de 28 000 km2 qui appartient à deux communautés de l'afrique de l'afrique centrale et l'afrique de l'est en pays à 10 millions d'habitants en pays essentiellement rural en seul habitant peut prétendre habiter dans les villes c'est-à-dire que l'auto d'obanisation est très faible en pays dont l'auto d'obancarisation est encore très faible et estimé selon les derniers études à 12,5% en pays où la démographie est importante avec un ton de croissance de 2,8% en pays où les points de services financiers sont très peu élevés on n'a que 10 banques dans l'ensemble et dans tous les pays et la cartographie de ces banques se limite dans les villes où les agglomérations urbaines en pays où l'auto de pauvreté est assez élevée et l'obondé est reporté parmi les six derniers pays sur la liste pays riches pour dire que et ça c'est selon le rapport du tenu de 2014. Au regard de ce panorama, le gouvernement en deuxième point a commis ou a identifié la poste parmi ces piliers d'inclusion financiers et de réduction contre la pauvreté. Des preuves à cela sont manifeste et d'abord en transformant le cadre légal de la poste en lui d'autant d'un statut d'une régie avec autonomie opérationnelle autonomie financier depuis 1991 et avec une modification en décret qui a apporté modifications du décret 1991 qui lui accorde davantage au-delà de son statut d'opérateur postale désigné qui lui apporte un mandat particulier d'être l'opilié d'offre de services de proximité des services financiers aux populations rurales et aux populations des zones éloignées généralement exclues du système bancaire classique. Une autre preuve à cela au niveau de la volonté du gouvernement, la volonté politique je veux dire, c'est que le cadre stratégique de croissance et de lutte contre la pauvreté qui est un instrument de politique du gouvernement du Burundi mentionne la régime nationale des postes comme l'opilié centrale de l'inclusion financière et surtout de la mise en œuvre de l'accès de ce cadre stratégique en rapport avec la croissance économique et la transformation de l'économie pour une écroissance soutenue et créatrice d'emploi. Une autre preuve à cela c'est que le gouvernement a confié à la régime nationale des postes la paix des salaires de tous les fonctionnaires de la police, la paix des pensions de retraite, la paix des frais d'assistance pour la protection sociale des familles et ménages vulnérables. Et en même temps, dans le programme national de subvention des engrais au Burundi, la poste a été identifiée par le gouvernement pour la distribution des fertilisants et des entrants agricoles. Et c'est à travers les postes que les fermiers, les agriculteurs, je parlais, je disais que l'économie bondaise est essentiellement basée sur l'agriculture, c'est à travers les bureaux d'oppostes que les agriculteurs et paysans accèdent aux entrants agricoles et aux engrais. Je voudrais aussi mentionner un autre aspect important en rapport avec la part ou la place des services financiers dans le développement de la poste du Burundi. Je veux dire l'ensemble des opérations des recettes que la poste, de l'ensemble des opérations et recettes que la poste réalise, les services financiers emportent 75% de l'ensemble, c'est-à-dire les comptes chez poste et la poste finance et aussi contribuent à plus de 75% dans les recettes, dans l'autornava, dans le chiffre d'affaires de la poste du Burundi, pendant que les services poste et autres services associés contribuent à moins de 25%. Ce qui veut dire que le service poste, plutôt les services financiers sont en axe une ligne de production importante pour la poste du Burundi et je pense pour pas mal d'autres postes. Je voudrais m'en aller au niveau de la présentation dans les détails du projet que l'ambassadeur Swing vient de vous parler et j'ai deux slides que je voudrais et qu'on vous montre. C'est un projet tripartite qui entraîne les trois organisations, les deux organisations du système des nations unis, l'OEM, l'UPU et la régime nationale des postes que je représente et de la volonté de la vision de l'UPU en rapport avec l'innovation vous allez le découvrir, en rapport avec l'intégration vous allez aussi le découvrir mais aussi en rapport avec l'inclusion vous allez le découvrir avec moi. C'est un projet qui a cinq composantes en un seul, qui vise la réduction des coûts de transfer d'argent, qui vise l'éducation financier, qui vise l'inclusion financier, qui vise l'accès au marché d'exportation et qui vise la facilitation des communications. On va vous montrer un diagramme qui, un seul diagramme qui vous montrera ce que représente son projet. C'est un projet centré sur l'apport d'émigration dans le développement et c'est pourquoi d'ailleurs mon grand frère et chère ami, ambassadeur swing, vient de vous entretenir à ce sujet. C'est un projet qui vise, comme je le disais, la réduction des coûts de transfer d'argent. Au Burundi, les taux de transfer d'argent varient entre 10 et 12% et nous allons à travers ce projet trouver de nouveaux canaux et de nouveaux corridors de transfer de fonds de manière à réduire ces taux et ces coûts de transfer. C'est un projet qui va accorder ou contribuer à l'éducation financier des migrants et de leurs familles dans le cadre de l'inclusion financier. Un exemple simple, un migrant, d'entre nous ici, beaucoup ont été des migrants, d'entre nous beaucoup sont des migrants. Pour l'un ou l'autre qui a un membre de la famille à qui il voudrait transférer de l'argent, vous transférer, vous leur transverez de l'argent pour un seul besoin ponctuel. Pourquoi pas ne pas envisager de transférer de l'argent sur en compte de votre membre de la famille, de telle manière à permettre à banqueriser les zones et les milieux ruraux, à banquer les membres de vos familles. C'est un aspect qui sera abordé dans le projet. C'est un projet, comme je le disais, qui va renforcer, influencer l'inclusion financier. Je n'insiste pas là-dessus, mais c'est un projet aussi qui va faciliter l'exportation, qui va faciliter l'accès aux petits producteurs ou producteurs locaux à l'accès au marché international. Nous sommes membres des diasporas, nous sommes membres des communautés des migrants, mais nous sommes toujours liés avec la terre qui nous a vu naître. Nous avons toujours besoin, nous avons toujours des besoins ethniques et des besoins nostalgiques. Les producteurs locaux pourront attraver ce projet, nous envoyer les produits ethniques et les produits nostalgiques de nos besoins, et le projet va adresser ces soucis. Avant de terminer, je voudrais aussi insister sur cela. Cela va redonner de la vie aux postes. Cela va donner de l'activité aux postes. Les colis, c'est notre métier. Les paquets, c'est notre métier. La logistique postale, c'est notre métier. J'imagine que tout le monde ici présent le comprend. Et enfin, le projet contribuera à l'amélioration de la communication entre les migrants et leurs familles. Dans mon pays, par exemple, où l'auto-dopénétration de la téléphonie mobile n'excede pas 25%. Vous comprenez que les populations rurales non seulement ne sont pas financiellement exclues, mais sont aussi exclues au niveau de la communication. Et il y a des difficultés de communication entre les migrants et les membres de la diaspora bourrondaises à travers le monde avec les membres de leur famille. Nous pensons que la solution de création d'un mvno postal en mobile network virtual operator pour les postes serait une solution et nous envisageons cela sur laquelle, c'était plateforme sur laquelle nous allons mettre une application de transfer d'argent pour permettre, à même temps, de faciliter de communication, mais aussi d'ouvrir un corridor de transfer d'argent. Avant de terminer, j'aimerais vous indiquer aussi une opportunité que la poste en tant que opérateur pour la régime nationale des postes a pour améliorer ou tout au moins pallier aux défaillances du marché de transfer d'argent ou même du marché financier au Burundi. Le réseau postal du Burundi est le réseau le plus étendu de tous les réseaux, au moins du réseau bancaire. Nous sommes pratiquement dans tous les communes le Burundi en A129 dans l'ensemble, mais nous avons des bureaux au-delà de 140 bureaux et dans chaque commune, nous avons au moins une présence. Ainsi, cette présence physique nous donne un avantage par rapport aux autres. D'abord, parce que nous sommes en agent ou en réseau de proximité. D'une part, mais d'autre part, nous avons en capitale confiance le plus grand qu'il soit. Et parce que nous payons, nous payons les salaires, nous payons les pensions. Nous, et à travers les bureaux d'oppostes, nous offrons des engrais, des fertilisants. Tout le monde jusqu'à la vieille maman connaît la poste et lui donne confiance. Nous payons l'assistance sociale, mais au-delà de cette confiance, au-delà de ce qui est basé sur les services que nous offrons, mais beaucoup plus, nous sommes en agent public. Le cachet public, comme institution du gouvernement, nous donne une grande confiance parce que les autres microfinances privées ont eu des bas et des hauts, mais la confiance est basée. En conclusion, puisque nous sommes à la conférence stratégique de l'U.P.U. La poste aujourd'hui est un agent pour beaucoup d'acteurs, notamment le service financier mobile. Les opérateurs de téléphonie mobile nous donnent les contrats d'agents. Mais pourquoi ne pas penser un jour que la poste puisse elle-même mettre en place un service de transfer d'argent par le mobile? Elle-même. Des plateformes existent. La poste bourrondaises irurgale est de près. Je vous lance son défi. Nous allons en discuter, mais comme il s'agit de notre stratégie, il faut penser dans le sens de l'initiative de l'U.N.C.D.F. du Mobile Manifopoie. Et on ne saurait l'offrir qu'à travers un opérateur de transfer d'argent mobile postale. Je vous remercie. Merci donc au directeur général de la Régie Nationale des Postes. D'où on dit Monsieur Nizidini Mana. Et je pense que nous allons effectivement parler confiance. I think we're going to be talking about trust this afternoon. Our next speaker comes from Hungary. His name is Chaba Polisak. He's the Deputy State Secretary in State Secretary for National Finance Services and Postal Affairs by the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office. What's interesting is got both a private and public experience, has been head of corporate portfolio of the Hungarian state holding company since June 2010. And before that he worked for Deloitte et Touche, Credit Anstalt, Credit Group and CIB Security. He's been involved in numerous merger and acquisition, privatizations and capital market transactions. A finance professional, so I said with political experience. Let's welcome him. Good afternoon everybody. I would like to introduce very briefly the position of the post and Hungary. Hungary is a small country in Central Europe. We have 10 million people, 10 million citizens and every fifth citizen lives in the capital city of Budapest. Hungary and Puszt, Magyar Puszt is one of the largest companies in the country. We have 2,700 post offices, 30,000 employees, over 800 million dollars of revenues in 2014. And we do not have banking network. We do not have banking license. We do not have a banking subsidiary either. Now I'm not going to talk about the traditional mail services. I'm not going to talk about parcel and logistic services either. However, I would like to just note that we are the largest logistics company in the country in the e-commerce related transportation services. We have over 30% market share. What I'm going to outline here in the presentation would be the financial services that we provide, especially for people who have limited access to financial services because they live in smaller villages or they do not have access to modern technologies. On the other hand, I would also outline how we address those people who do have access to modern technologies, but who would like to use our services. First, I would like to talk about payment-related services that we provide. One of them are the bill payments, which we call yellow checks. These are special bill payment notes that are used by utility companies, by tax authorities, and numerous other issuers. We would like to talk about the disbursements note that we use. It's a kind of domestic money transfer. We also provide payment-related services for pension disbursement. There are a large number of pensioners who do not have bank accounts or who are not familiar with modern banking services, and the postman goes out and pays the monthly pensions. The number of pension disbursements is decreasing, but still we have about 15 million disbursements a year, and we perform Western Union transfers as well. Now, this yellow check, this is how they look like in the old form. They had a control slip, and a utility company was attaching it to the utility bill, and the customers went to the post office, paid it. They got a stamp on that. They got a control slip, and the post was doing the settlement. Now, what we have in the first of January, we introduced QR codes on each and every yellow checks. Before that, we started it a year and a half ago, and it was introduced to only a limited number of issuers. This is basically, we have to solve the situation that we need to provide the traditional services of people who want to use cash-based services, but since we got a commission for that, we would not like to lose this business, but we would like to address the people who would like to use modern technology, modern banking technologies, because our biggest competitor in this segment are direct debits by the banks. Obviously, the banks are urging the customers of the utility companies to allow direct debits for them, because they got the transfer and they got the funds, while what we are interested in is to keep those funds, and because we do the settlement with the issuers, and it provides a huge liquidity to the post. So for what we did with the use of QR codes, we have a new application for smartphones available in the iTunes store, also in Google Play, and also for Windows phones. So when you download this application, you need to give the bank account. You can designate several bank accounts and decide to determine a PIN code, and then when you launch it, that's what you see. You have the options to scan the invoice. There are invoices put on hold, invoices that are paid, and the various settings and help functions. If you decide to scan it, then it scans and it gives you the information of the issuer, the due date of the invoice, and the amount, and you can decide whether to pay immediately or pay later. If it's paid later, then it goes to the items on hold. If you decide to pay, then it just a few clicks of the PIN code, and then successful payment, and there it is. It accounts for as a transaction with a bank card, so this is absolutely free for the users. In addition to that, we also have check, these white, yellow check teller machines. For example, my mother is never going to use internet banking, and she's not going to use mobile banking either. She doesn't have a smartphone. It's just too complicated for her, but she may not want to go to the post office and queue up and pay in cash, but we have this check paying teller machines that she can go there, or elderly people can go there, or people who do not have mobile internet can go there, just put in the check, optical reading, reads the characters, and you can pay it immediately with your bank card, like with a very simple transaction. In addition to that, we have the traditional electronic bill presentation and payment system, so if you register with our EPP system, then you get the bills electronically, and you can pay it with a bank card. Now, the disbursement note is something also an old-fashioned instrument, but still used, obviously less and less extent, but it is used to pay various social subsidies for people who do not have bank accounts, or it was also used in emergency situations. It happened just over the past few years that some savings and loan institutions went to bankruptcy, and we got the funds from the deposit insurance fund, from the central deposit insurance fund, and we were paying the individuals. We are not talking about big amounts. We are talking about a couple of thousand dollars that were paid per person, and then they got it in cash, and they could open up an account wherever they wanted to. Also, when the subsidiary of Banco Popolare Italia decided to leave the country and wind up the operations, we paid the smaller millions on their behalf. We are also active in other financial services, and I have to address that what we provide are financial services, basic financial services, mass services, but with our network of 2700 postal outlets, we can access a large segment of the population. We have bank accounts with debit card. It's a white-label product with our strategic commercial banking partner, so they can open up a bank account at the post, and they got a maestro debit card, and they can use their account, and to them it doesn't make a difference whether we have our own current account system or as a white-label product, we are provided by professional partner. Also, we are selling deposits. It's a white-label product specifically developed for us by a commercial banking partner, and we are selling insurance products as well, life and non-life insurance products. We have subsidiary, which is jointly owned by a German strategic partner, we have a one-third share in post-insurance companies, and there's a mutual exclusivity. They are not selling their products elsewhere other than the post, and we are not selling other insurance products than post-insurance companies. We also provide investment services to our customers. We have a 50-50 joint venture with our strategic banking partner, and we are selling investment funds, again, basic mass products, so we have a money market fund, and we have a real estate fund, and we are selling government securities. We are probably the largest distributors of government securities, the retail sector. We are selling physical securities, because still there is a demand for physical securities, but also our customers can open up securities accounts, and they can get dematerialized government securities, and we also offer other financial products, so we are aid for two building societies, and the customers can sign contracts with us and pay the monthly installments in our post offices, so we provide services even in small villages or smaller towns, and we have our loyalty cards that are available to our clients, and the points can be redeemed in post offices. As I've shown previously with the bill payment product we are having, we have a very close link to the utility sector, and with this we'd like to use the entire value chain, and because of that, two years ago we acquired a company which was the largest service provider for utilities in the Budapest region, and based on the know-how, the technology, and the contacts, now we are rolling out this practice nationwide. What we can do, and we will do, our postman, our colleagues in the post can go and read the meters, the utility meters, after that the system of the IT system of the post can generate the invoice from the metadata received from the utility companies, we can print the invoices, we have the largest document printing capacities in the country, and also one of the largest one in the Central European region, and we deliver the invoices, and we collect the invoices, and in addition we provide customer service points to the utility companies, on behalf of the utility companies. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Well thank you. Mr. Chobhapolishev, that was a good example of a lot of partnerships between companies and the post. Thank you very much. Mr. Minister, Mr. Connais, Mr. General Director, Mr. General Director of the UPU, Mr. Ministers, Mr. Ambassadors, President, General Director, Delegates, dear friends. Yesterday my President said how much he was recognizing the co-divorcy of the organization of this meeting, I would say not better than him, he is also the President of the Postal Bank, I would add a few words personally to those who have heard me several times intervene in Bern to say how much it was necessary to think about the good of people as a place of the conference, except the sadness that I had when I learned that we would have to give up, but it may only be to start again. And I wish. I came this afternoon rather to testify in front of you an example of the Postal Bank, there are others, it is not to give lessons, but simply to say where we are today and to understand it, I think that we have to make a little bit of history. So obviously we will not go back to the age of Pierre, but simply remind us that the French Postal Bank has been transferring money from Bordeaux-Mestique since the 19th century, when 1880 created a Postal Bank case and that after the First World War, the Postal Bank accounts, the CCP, started little by little to make financial inclusion, to bring people who were not especially rich to take post accounts, bank accounts and to use them. And then in the 60s, 70s in France, banks discovered the activity of network banks, began to develop during the 20th century, so that the population itself became more urban. And after a while, the question of knowing if the post still had an future in the banking domain, if it had to pursue its activity. To do so, it was absolutely necessary that it adapt, and it needed a complete offer. But to have another complete offer, it was necessary that it be a bank account, to be able to show that there was no cross-subvention between our current activity, which was still under monopoly, and the banking activity. And that's why we have advanced. But we have put a lot of time, we have put a lot of time to get there. Why? First, because banks have made a lobbying to do it, to prevent us from becoming a bank. For the anecdote, the best way, I can characterize the difficulty of this lobbying. In 1994, I had the opportunity to have lunch, we were three, with the most powerful president of the BNP, the National Bank of Paris, BNP Paribas, which many of you may know. Mr. Pébro, a very, very powerful man in the French banking establishment. And Mr. Pébro told us, me alive, there will be no post bank in France. So, I assure you, there is a post bank in France, and Mr. Pébro, you know him well, Mr. Céreti, is still alive, and I hope so, but he had a bad time. He also had to convince the government and the parliaments. Why did they follow us? Well, because they wanted, that they remain in France, a network of important post offices. And each one knows that with the only activity of courier and colleague, we do not maintain a network of post offices of 17,000 points, as is the case in France by law. And then, whether we want it or not, the reasonable, serious people know that a part of the population is not reached by the traditional banking system, and that it takes a particular operator to do it. I was particularly surprised by the numbers that were given yesterday by our Brazilian friends, which are really quite remarkable. Or by the success of the Kiwi Bank in New Zealand, which first closed its activities, recreated them, and we can see that even in a very banked system, there is still room for post offices operators. And then it was also a difficult choice, because I am sorry, I have a lot of admiration for the FMI and the World Bank, but these two institutions, like others, have explained to the government for a long time that it was not good for the posts to be made by the bank, and even stopped the financial services activities of the banks, which today are in very difficult situations. So in 2006, we created our bank, on January 1, 2006, which was created by the law, by an amendment to the Senate, that is to say that all of a sudden, the Loan project was not made for that, it was made to transpose a European directive, and by amendment, very long amendment, we created the Postal Bank in France. So it is now the bank of all, it is there to accompany, of course, the weakest, but we also insist on the fact that it should really be the bank of all, that is to say also a patrimonial bank for those who have money, and we have offers that go, offers for the smaller patrimonial banks, up to the higher patrimonial banks. And then I forget here the money transfers, we have talked about it, of course, we are agents of a great operator that I will not cite here, but many here in this room know the fight that we have led for at least for 10 years to accompany the Universal Postal Union for the development of the IFS and the International Express. It is obviously part of our concept of the bank for all. A bank as useful in the service of the real economy, for example in 2014 we gave 60,000 property loans, 220,000 loans to consumption, and I must say that we have opened the loans to consumption of populations who did not have access to the banking system. We also make micro-credit with other partners and then we have also begun to finance the territorial collectivities. After 2009, the territorial collectivities in France were almost found in front of a credit crunch. They did not find any more money to finance themselves. And the state asked the Bank Postal, which is still liquid, to devote a part of its liquidity to finance the territorial collectivities, the municipalities, the departments that invest in all the public investments you can imagine. And today we have 25% of the market share of this financing. It is a bank of trust. We have talked a lot about trust already. Of course, the posts are characterized historically by the trust that the citizens make, when they make them the citizens. It is obviously the case in France and we try to make sure that this trust continues to be deserved. And we also work as responsibly as possible in terms of social responsibility for companies. An independent agency of us, of course, has tested 370 banks in the whole world and we are extremely proud of having been designated as the first in this ranking. We have a 5.7 billion euro account, a result of 600 million euros. I will stop for a moment to tell you that this result is superior to that of the consolidated post. So you see, if for a very, very long time it was the courier who financed the post, today the growth rate of the bank is determined for our future. We have a rate of about 300 billion euros. Another specificity in our development, we did not want to invent everything alone. We are humble and we have been looking for activities to quickly launch them that we do not master. We are going to look for partners and we have created a common branch with partners who were ready to value our network of post offices the most. So in the activity of, in particular, for example, we are allies with the general society in the field of insurance, housing and vehicles with the Groupama and then it is the same thing in the field of health care and in the field of the management of financial products. We come from our allies with Egon who is a big Dutch operator. Here is a word to avoid saying that everything is pink and everything is beautiful. It is not easy. Why? Well because we finance the weight of the network and this network in France is expensive and it is true that it is a challenge, it is a challenge that we accept but we still have to know that in terms of profitability, the level of profitability of the post bank is inferior to that of these homologues in France. But beyond that, we have to know that we are under the eyes of the bank regulation who knows a lot about Lourdes. We are looking now, by the way, by the European Central Bank. The size of the post bank means that we are the regulator, it is the European Central Bank which obviously is extremely resourceful on the prudent ratios which led us to recapitalize our bank several times and I know that maybe for other operators, as for us, by the way, we have to say that post operators who have banks who suffer in their courier activities, it is sometimes a little difficult to be able to follow the prudent ratios that are asked by the regulatory authorities. But nevertheless, we think that the post bank is, for us, a fantastic opportunity and I would not be too incited by the government and post operators to think about it for the next one. Thank you very much. Thank you, there is an interesting explanation that shows, if I understood well, in any case the real point of political will in the implementation of this good question. Our next speaker comes from Spain, his name is Mario Garcés San Agustín, he is the Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport in Spain. Previously, he has been an Inspector of Finance and Treasury of the State Controller and Auditor, as the Director of Finance and Public Administration of the Government of Aragon and President of the Corporación Empresarial Pública of Aragon as well as Professor of Administrative Law at the University of Calas, Madrid. Sir, the four is yours. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hello. I would like to thank all the authorities who are at the room today. Ministers, vice ministers, State Secretaries, general directors and although they are not ordinary, they add on from the Moderator. Thank you very much Moderator, you are a great Wirecrather, precisely for lending me this facility and I want to compliment I hope that next time I have the opportunity to talk to you in this forum, because the Spanish have a great capacity to talk to you. Thank you very much to all of you, and especially for the opportunity that the Spanish government gives to be able to participate in this forum, this importance, this relevance, and where it allows us to manifest and express the experience of Spain in the field of practices and practices that exist in post and in matter of transfers and resources, in what we have given to call the world's exchange of emails. This is a process in which Spain is not alone. First of all, we work in coordination with the UPU, I want to thank all the authorities present here, its magnificent collaboration, its rigor, its discipline and the commitment of our country to continue collaborating not only with UPU, but also logically with UPAAEB. But above all, we are participating in a collective project, an integrated project in which we participate with 10 countries from Latin America, Portugal and of course also with Morocco in the opening of certain corridors that allow to guarantee that the transfer of financial resources reaches its final destinations. The first orator said, my first colleague, William Lacey, with good criteria that right now the world is characterized by migratory flows, it is characterized by social movements. We live an absolutely integrated, globalized society where we have to look for channels of relationship, not only personal, but also fundamentally emotional, familiar, but also financial, economic and financial. Spain has been a country that throughout the 20th century was a country of emigrants, precisely today that we are in Switzerland, it was a country where many Spaniards arrived in the 60s and 70s to work in this country. But right now Spain is a country that receives a very important flow of immigrant population from other countries. I am going to give some data to consolidate and to evaluate the magnitude and reach of this demographic explosion, of this flow of social movements and demographics that have occurred in our country. The 3.5% of the population of Ecuadorian origin lives right now in Spain. The 2.6% of the population of origin of Bolivia currently lives in Spain. Or the 2.3% of the population of origin of Morocco lives right now in Spain. And from this moment I want to thank all these populations and all those countries, the immense collaboration and contribution to the Spanish economy. And that is why we want to reciprocally, in the framework, I say, of international collaboration, to favor those capacities, those income that those families, those citizens, in our country have the right channel so that they can flow in a agile and effective way to their respective countries. Because it is economic value in Spain, but obviously it is value in the countries of origin of these citizens that, to all effects, we also consider Spanish citizens. Therefore, in a globalized world, the public operators, the large institutions, the international organizations, we have the obligation to contribute this value, to give this capacity, because if we did not lose all the utility as public servers, in that sense, Spain will be a faithful collaborator and it will be a loyal provider of resources and ideas to any international organization that is valued. We started in 2010 in the strategic conference of Nairobi. It was in Nairobi when Spain presented, for the first time, the Correos Giro project as a new project where they had already reached agreements with international organizations and where we wanted to expose that there are paths that can act with full competitiveness and in the same standards and in the same quality conditions that financial operators to provide the services of delivery, of resources of all kinds. And I think that five years later we are in conditions of saying that thanks to the collaboration of all, thanks to the collaboration of the countries of destiny, thanks to the international organizations and thanks, of course, to the Spanish state society, the Correos. Today it is a consolidated reality and the result of these works is perceived by many families in the world. We are also responsible for the Doha strategy and we also want to mark the trend of what is going to be the future of Istanbul in the next year where, from this perspective, we understand that the project must continue consolidating. We are analyzing the volume of income that represent right now the financial income in the context of the consolidated joint of the income of the post operators. These reach approximately 15 percent and in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean this percentage rises approximately to 19 percent. Therefore, as you see, it is not an absolutely minor issue. And it is not a terminological issue, but it is a material issue. It is a conceptual issue to define what financial inclusion is. The word financial inclusion is already used in English and Spanish exceptions. What it really allows is to provide financial services that are basic to all people within a global and integrated system. And where can there be more problems? Logically, there are more problems in areas where the population density is much more extensive, where there are also areas where there is widespread poverty or where there are populations where there are large territorial displacements. Therefore, poverty, territorial displacement or migrations are two or three factors to which we have to respond and that we have to propose with what we have given to call the Post Financial Inclusion. The data is sufficiently limited, not only in Spain, but in the rest of the world. In the year 2013, the returns that were made in the world reached $414 billion The next year, in 2016, we can already reach the figure of $520 billion. This is, in three years, we have been able to increase almost in 35% the amount corresponding to the returns in the world. But for many countries, the returns represent almost a third of the raw product. It is not a minor issue. It is not a matter of geographical barriers. It is not a matter, as I say, of conciliating family or personal effects. It is even a matter that fits directly in the economic and social development of a country. In the world, there are more than 600,000 post offices and there are more than 5 million, in total, 5,400,000 employees of post services. It is evident that there is a mesh network, an extensive network, a network of offices that can lend a permanent service and that can lend a permanent service competing with the more advanced financial operators. But to lend that service, we have to lend a service of quality, of guarantee, of solvency and that is more economical. More competitive. Because if we were not so competitive, we would obviously have problems. And I am going to give you some data from Spain so that you can really see how the immigrant population in Spain is responding to this demand of public services. In Spain, as I said, the 11.5% of the population that resides in Spain is the immigrant population right now. And of these 5.5 million immigrants that are in Spain, 1.7 million are from a very dear area for us, which is Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, Spain is the third country of the European Union, according to Eurostat, the number of remittances and the import of remittances. The 19% of the remittances that come out of Europe come from Spain right now. And in some American-centered countries, the remittances that are sent are the 10% of the gross domestic product. What effects does this type of remittance have on the receptionist population? Well, as I said, a dynamising effect, an explosion effect, economic, social and cultural effect. Multiple studies have been done. Some studies are directly linked to the activity that our country has or other countries around us. Look, money transfer has impacts on the children's population. In the psychophysical development of societies, it reduces the rate of infection or even reduces possible psychological disorders, as we have seen in some countries, because this potential for growth generates positive benefits in all areas of activity, as I say, in the economy, in the social sector, but obviously also in the health sector. And what is Spain going to do? Spain is going to consolidate this project because we consider it to be a success and a maximum guarantee project. It is a utility project not only for our country but also for the international community and obviously for the community of the receptionist countries. In 2007, we signed the first memorandum with the Secretary General of the International Office of the Universal Postal Union. On July 28, 2011, in July 2008, we had already signed an agreement for the implementation of the mail service with Chile, Uruguay and later, in 2010, we expanded the subjective area, we expanded the territorial area to other important countries of the Latin America area such as Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru and the Dominican Republic. Outside the American area we also signed agreements with Portugal and Morocco. And what was the current situation? I am going to give you the details because I think we can be very proud of those data. And when I say it is not a national pride it is the pride of doing things well and doing it at the service of the citizens at the service of the international organizations. First of all, in 2014, from Spain, 17 million people and 17 million euros with an annual growth that surpasses the two digits. A growth sustained, permanent throughout the last years and I am convinced, absolutely convinced that it will be maintained in successive exercises. Second place, if we analyze the number of tours issued, look at the exponential growth that has occurred. In 2011, there were 32,559 tours in 2014 and they have already reached 85,378 tours. And third place, which is the third most important factor has to be an attractive and competitive service for citizens. Citizens who also command quality and security services in economic conditions. Currently, the commissions that are being charged are below 3%, so we are at a level where the exchange rate allows us to be fully competitive in very professional markets very competitive, as are the financial markets. I want to end by reiterating the commitment of Spain I already said it today, I will not do it in its agile and I will do it next time I look here at this forum I want to reiterate my gratitude the commitment of Spain with the UPU, with UPAEP the commitment to continue implicating us not only with economic resources and budgetary resources but also with the will to help and develop new markets. That is based on three principles that seem to us three principles and three completely essential and cardinal actions. The service that is implanted is competitive. If we are not competitive we will not absolutely win in a market as integrated as the international financial market. Secondly, that it is a quality service and thirdly that it is a reliable and secure service. If these projects are maintained with these guarantees obviously as the Spanish Government as the Minister of Firmament that we will continue to collaborate because we have shown the success and we are convinced that we will show it in the coming years. Thank you very much. I think the example that was given by La Banque Pestelle in France it shows that there is a political will behind it and as Mr. Sanagustin was saying you need to be competitive you need quality you need to be trusted but also you need a political will to back the whole thing or else lobbyists or traditional banks will never agree or let this happen or let postal banks gain ground. So how do you see I'm going to ask each of you how do you see this how is it easy or difficult to convince Government or how much Government should actually be part of the process of helping postal banks appear on the market. I'll start maybe with Mr. Forseville who has that experience. Thank you. I don't know if I'm the best place to ask this question. What I can say is that we have discussed recently or in the past a number of countries in this area and some of the posts and each time we find ourselves going forward in front of this political choice whether Government is already convinced for a whole lot of reasons but sometimes it's the passage in front of the central banks is a difficult moment because the central banks are populated by people who are bankers that sometimes the image of professionalism of the postmen and the bankers is at fault from our point of view so we really need to convince key people to the Parliament to the Government who can go beyond these obstacles for which I can give you several testimonies in different countries that I wouldn't quote here but which made it really difficult to move forward on this matter of postal banks. What about political will if any in Hungary to come up with a postal bank? There's not such a will to have a postal bank as it is but the fact that the post is providing services to the large number of people and to provide services to people who otherwise would not necessarily have access to financial markets would not necessarily have access to financial services it does meet the intention of the Government. In addition to that the Hungarian Post signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the same loan cooperatives which means that over the time there will be we will have to elaborate on the synergies since the Post has 2,700 outlets and the same as the loan cooperatives have 1,600 outlets which means that they have the largest network in the country and they can reach people in remote villages or in small towns and people who otherwise may not have easy and convenient access to financial services. On the other hand you explained that there is a real political will in any case to support, to be part of the Post and to provide services to the population it is an evidence. Yes, I confirm it I said it in my light notes it is that even the Government in the framework of its national policy which was called strategic framework of growth and to fight poverty and the Post was identified as independent and put into the work of one of its most important axes the transformation of the economy in a growing support and in the creation of jobs and to be more concrete and at the end it could only be done this way of a country essentially rural with a scattered habitat a nation with a number of still weak urbanization very weak and 10% or 12% of the population can live in cities or in urban areas and the Post which on the other hand represents the most broad network of proximity if we want to leave poverty I talked about the notion of poverty there will be no nation developing without banking there is no other choice than to give to the Post which is the network a public network since the Post is 100% or having an operational and financial autonomy it remains a structure dependent on the government it is a tool the government has given and the political will is there that is in part what I would like to say I would like to add another aspect in relation to the question you are asking at the time and at the time of the convergence the banks I was saying at home are very limited and their cartography is limited in cities or urban centers I don't think there could be an alternative to the Post and for the government at least in the current conditions than to give it to Somanda and for financial inclusion and I was saying in the decree of March 2011 which organized the Post and which adopted in the department in charge of the Post and Finance the government gave it another mission especially the mobilization of the banks the offer of micro-assurance and the mobilization of the banks and the 3 credits to the association and the production group in rural areas thank you I will get to you Ambassador just to speak about remittances but one last question to you Mr. Sonagustin do you think do you have the impression that maybe governments at least here in western countries it is fully understandable what was explained for Burundu that governments tend to fade away rather than step in do we need do the Post needs more government just for the banking system for example the Post cannot compete from the financial market with the big financial entities in the national sector in fact, the Post is no longer a national bank from the financial system in the Spanish sector but nevertheless we have the confidence that the Post can provide a spectacular service in certain countries where there are migratory flows to be able to position the financial resources that are obtained in Spain, in Spain in the corresponding destinations that provide mail that do not provide banks that is the value that we really have to identify because in the end the citizens freely choose in a market economy freely choose which is the best which is the most efficient service and that offers mail offers in the first place a very wide network of offices that allow to channel precisely those flows in a much more stable way and much more extensive that would make the financial establishments in strict sense In addition, it is being done in terms of the point of view of very competitive prices which obviously allows us to be competitive with other possible competitors and agents in the market and there is a plus which is the brand that offers mail a security brand a reliability brand it is curious but the citizen not yet in the field of the public sector thinks that mail will guarantee delivery in time in time and in conditions of the return that is offered There is still a cultural resistance to some private operators while that brand we are able to consolidate it in the market it will be a third value a third bet that will be able to maintain in Spain and in other countries However, there is one service where people tend to privilege a private operator rather than postal bank its remittances What would you ask? We both are clients today What would you ask In order to What solutions do you have to use more of the post and cut down the costs which are exorbitant as you were saying for remittances To be very frank and to give you more of a global perspective on this I think that we are living in a period of the world is sort of in disarray we have more conflicts than at any other time in recorded history and both that has come a great distrust of migration the anti-migrant sentiment is very rampant in the world and so globally speaking I think the two things have to happen the two greatest challenges number one we have got to begin to change the narrative about migration I am very grateful that Swiss television and radio is involved here because the word needs to get out there that migrants are a positive force for development you have to deal with that you have to deal maybe they are coming to take our jobs maybe they are bringing in disease all of that we have to get rid of those stereotypes and get back to the reality that we all need migrants migrants contribute if you can't change that narrative then you are going to have trouble really bringing to fruition what we want to do with Burundi and other countries to reduce the costs to a normal level 5% or below the second aspect is very much related to that is that we have to know that we are dealing with a situation where there is going to be inexorably countries are going to become much more multi-ethnic multi-religious multi-cultural and therefore we have to deal with the challenge of learning to manage cultural, social, ethnic, religious diversity I mean I am sorry to put it in such global context but I think that is the backdrop against which all of us are now working to reduce the question of remittance transfers thanks very quickly as time flies how do we get to that 5% cost for remittances according to you what kind of solution would you propose well I don't know if it is a good idea to start with you but let's start with Mr. Sonninglustin do you think or Mr. Forceville rather ok let's start with Mr. Forceville I missed it sorry oh you didn't listen to it now Mr. Lace was saying that maybe we should get down to 5% cost for remittances for example what kind of solution do you have do you think it is realistic to go down to that level of cost I don't know what I know is that it is expensive and what is expensive is the manipulation of the cash and as long as there is manipulation of the cash because you have to protect yourself you have to carry it it is something very expensive especially when you go in remote areas where are the offices so obviously we wish that it would be as expensive as possible so after if we get out of this cash problem we go on the electronic money I mean the exchange of money which ends by telephone and payment also by telephone because it is good that to have money on your phone you still have to be able to spend it and also computer development important frankly it is true that we would all like to reach this morally today by curiosity what percentage it depends on the product you choose we send money abroad it is strange but it can go up to 10-12% yes for the international express itself I do not have the range in mind especially that as we try to promote it we have consented more of tariff bays if you want on a market which is very competitive we cannot sell at a loss and that is why you have to be careful you have to try to do the maximum and it is true that the massification will help us because the more there is the lower cost it is an economic scale as the courier so yes we can hope to advance but we must not dream of a universal service and that there is a subvention to do this universal service which can also be a choice but until then the cost is still important you agree with that you share the same analysis in my opinion as he just said the solution is in technology it is and today the posts which traditionally are called in the use of technology of communication information and I confirm that the possibility where the solution is in the dematerialization of money that is the transfer of money by mobile and the posts are able to do it and then on site today all the posts where there are many posts mine misunderstood which intervenes in the transfer of money by mobile we are agents operators mobile phones or banks but I think the option in this conference and in the post world community and why we post operators designated we could not become ourselves autonomous operators to transfer money by mobile it is feasible technology is there where at the limit we can envision research in this sense and I think that I share the same life with others the case of Spain the commissions that are charging the same mail by the remittances have not exceeded any of the years 3% therefore it is good to set objectives but in any case to have in a competitive market very reasonable pressure conditions well gentlemen thank you very much for the discussion I'll quickly have a look to say if the audience wants to add anything I think we had the organization of the Francophonie who wanted to take possibly the word I do not know if it is there I have a little bit of pain to distinguish if Mr. Ambassador is in the room and wants to take the word I do not believe it is the case or someone I have also seen it is the little bit that we just put me that India asked to intervene so where is the Indian representative hello yeah thank you okay please yeah go on thank you chair thank you for giving India this opportunity to speak in this important forum I would like to take this opportunity to specially thank kothidawar and sudzilan besides the director general of the ibu pu and the diptydg for organizing this excellent conference I would also like to thank the director general of international organization for migrations for his excellent presentation and recognizing the role that post offices can play in reducing the cost of operations in 2014 the just released world bank figures show that India received over 70 billion US dollars in remittances which is about 3.5 3.7% of our 2 trillion dollar economy the cost of remittances with MTOs the transfer organizations are very high and there is definitely a need to reduce this cost I would also like to mention that the world bank reports repeatedly have said that south to south migration sorry remittance which is remittance from one developing country to the other generally tends to be very high I take this opportunity as co-chair of the postal operations council's committee 5 on postal financial services and as the chair of ad hoc group on creation of postal financial services user group to emphasize to implement the last congress resolution which calls for the need to develop a common brand like EMS for the designated operators and create a cooperative on the lines of EMS I would also like to seek the support of all UPU member countries in this important endeavour of the UPU I would also like to mention that with over 155,000 post offices all over India we play a big role in financial inclusion through postal savings bank postal life insurance social services payments and domestic money orders India will like to invite designated operators in the world to make use of our large network to reduce the cost of operations thank you well thank you very much so we'll conclude this panel as I'm repeating myself but Tom flies and we have to other panels to discuss about so gentlemen thank you very much for your thoughts and for sharing them with us a very good afternoon to you very much 5 minutes break and then we go on with the next panel thank you it was brilliant thank you very much so so everybody back everybody ready to go on we have our panelist which as far as I'm concerned is the most important part now I hope you guys have a nice quick rest and we'll go on now with the next panel so please have a seat so that everybody can work in a comfortable way so and sell that it is obviously in your profession in your professional occupations or that it is in the private home at home of course, it creates new opportunities and new challenges while pushing companies around the world to operate precisely the digital transformation the post-it actors you imagine do not want to stay at the edge of this phenomenon we have been talking about it for 2 days now the intervening of this panel will discuss precisely the question of knowing what governments and posts can do so that this trust associated with the products and physical services of the post can also be translated as well as even better why not in the digital world that must invest the post to start this panel I will ask the Vice Minister for Policy Coordination Ministry of Internal Affairs in Japan, Mr Yasuo Sakamoto to come up the stage and take the floor he has previously held numerous responsibility within the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication acting as Director General for Global ICT Strategy Bureau or ICT Strategic Policy Planning Mr. Sakamoto, please thank you very much thank you very much Mr. Koinete good afternoon and I'd like to express this year I'd like to to the Chairman, panelist and participant for giving me with this opportunity to make a presentation I'd like to discuss what role the postal sector is expected to play in the future while keeping in mind the role it has been playing to date the postal sector has been playing the following roles over number of decades by making the most of its greatest advantage i.e. physical infrastructure including the post offices and delivery networks in economy and business fields the postal sector has been playing a role to deliver information by letters and postcards goods by parcels and money by limiters from the viewpoint of social responsibility it has been playing an important role as a hub to connect community including rural areas of the member countries it is an undisputed fact the postal sector has been gained the trust of society through such initiatives meanwhile the world has been changing significantly as a change in economic and business field the world is seeing digitalization of economies which is represented in the term digital economy it is said that the internet and mobile phones will split to cover the whole population around the world by the year 2025 internet of things and artificial intelligence are expected to see new development in the future given this situation the role of the postal sector delivering information through conventional method such as letters and postcards is facing a significant challenge on the other hand new possibilities are emerging in the parcel area which is a service for delivering physical goods thanks to the development of e-commerce moreover the globalization of socio-economic activities has also expanded the amount of close border commercial trade in terms of social aspect nation around the world have been continuing their effort to reduce domestic regional gaps and to develop and revitalize rural areas while advanced countries are facing new issues such as collapse of communities and super-aging society in addition new global issues that cannot be solved by a single country have also arising and disaster prevention these changes could be a challenge for the postal sector but at the same time we should take them and opportunities if the postal sector is to continue to develop an integral part of the global communities and economy it must accurately respond to such social needs digitalization including the development of internet is evolving at a speed that no one could imagine it is crucial for the postal sector to perceive such changes as a means to create new added values and to empower postal services rather than an opponent for the postal sector we should not perceive them in a versus structure the biggest weakness in digital space is the lack of trust in communication which is represented by information security issues such as cyber attacks meanwhile the advantage of the postal sector which delivers information by physical means is well established reliable physical networks however it also has been weaknesses such as lack of speediness and efficiency I think the most important thing in envisioning the future of the postal sector is to build a win-win relationship between the digital economy and the postal sector with the disadvantage advantage and disadvantage of the both parties in mind there are three key points in designing the future of the postal sector first point is to accelerate the deployment of ICT to the postal system second point is to create new added values by embracing and integrating ICT third point is to proactively utilize postal office as trusted hubs for local communities I'd like to skip the first point as it is obvious with legal effort for the second point I think based on recent development of e-commerce the postal sector can be more and more expected to play the following roles first to increase the reliability of its delivery services which is the core of the postal sector for this purpose additional functions such as tracking services are demanded second direct marketing web marketing, consumer management sales activities etc which utilize the internet third to enhance different payment means such as payment after post office cash on delivery on electronic payments with legal effort for the third point the maintenance and rebuilding the regional communities especially those in rural areas come as an important issue in terms of the social responsibility of the postal sector as the world is seeing digitalization flourish in turn face-to-face communication between people is declined in Japan where the aging of the population is advanced compared to other countries employees of Japan Japan Post are providing mimamori services mimamori is Japanese in the sense of supporting elderly people the post offices played a significant role in the great East Japan earthquake four years ago providing barrier service for disaster victims post offices which have been built upon the direct communication between people can be a great effect in this era of the internet I think they can make a significant contribution to society as a hub for delivering all land services to citizens in local areas moreover in consideration of the prospect that globalization will be further advanced in the future it will be crucial for us to make further effort to seamlessly interconnect the trusted network of postal offices around the globe lastly needless to say postal services are provided beyond national boundaries to respond to the digitalization slated above in accurate manner the role the UPU should play with an eye to globalization become more and more significant such as developing common rules on introducing ICT and capacity building as we have Mr. Sanu director of ITU here at our session coordination between the UPU and ITU also another topic that we should consider thank you very much for your kind attention thank you Mr. Sakamoto, thank you very much Mr. Sanu, please distinguished participants ladies and gentlemen all protocol observed because the moderator asked us to be very brief of course it is indeed a great pleasure So of course it is indeed a great pleasure for me to be here today at the UPU World Strategic Conference to discuss with our sister organization, UPU, I repeat our sister organization's UPU, just to show you how we feel close to UPU and to discuss here how the post can continue to raise to the challenge of remaining relevant and how to leverage the trust that we all have in physical postal services to deliver innovative development and business services. Actually, all the ecosystem and the stakeholders of ICT, which is today the driving force for all economies, all those stakeholders and players, governments, regulators, service providers and consumers are facing the same challenge. The technology is evolving so fast that no matter at what time you go to bed, when you wake up in the morning, the first question should be what have changed when I was sleeping. And the second question, what I must do to remain relevant. If you are not relevant, you are out of the picture, you are out of the market. So then the post being one of the major stakeholders in the communication is also facing, are also facing the same challenge. So transforming trust in the physical world to the digital economy is a multifaceted challenge with tremendous opportunities. On the telecom ICT side, I would like to focus today on three issues. One, for all this to happen, we need services that should be accessible through resilient and high quality network at affordable price, I repeat affordable price. Post connected with high speed capacity, post offices can serve as local platforms for a range of essential government, financial and other services and thus provide governments and business communities with a vehicle tool to reach out to the hard to serve communities where normal business model may not work. ITU and UPU are currently working, for example, on projects to explore innovative business models to connect postal offices in remote areas using low cost broadband connectivity solutions and we are studying ways to cover the cost of the connectivity from the revenue generated by the digital transactions. Additionally, with mobile subscription over passing 7 billion, it is clear that mobile communication could bridge the digital divide and become a universal tool with benefits far beyond the voice and the text communication originally envisaged. This is for the reason that myself I launched an initiative that I call M Powering Development, M for mobile dash for partnership and powering development because today this technology has been well accepted in the most rural and the most remote part of the world. Then it is just a golden plate we have to use for development and go beyond voice. The second point is that for all this to happen, citizens should be sure that their private and confidential data will be well protected. This brings us to the security of the users of the ICTs. The recent cybercrime statistics are alarming. The likely annual cost of cybercrime to the global economy is estimated at more than 455 billion and there have been a full increase in the number of banking and financial related malware on some software platform from the first quarter to the first quarter of 2014. Making confidence and security in the user ICT therefore remain one of our top priorities. ITU launched in 2007 the global cyber security agenda and I'm happy to tell you that in this front ITU has continued to play its role as a catalyst through initiatives and programs which we are implementing to facilitate international cooperation and improve cyber security in each country and globally. The ITU telecommunications development bureau that I led is working to implement the mandate of ITU in the framework of which we have now 152 countries member states who have formally joined ITU global cyber security initiative aimed at facilitating the deployment of computer incident response team. With the increase in usage of such e-services catalyzed by the use of the dot post, top level domain, certain national posts will soon be counted as critical information infrastructure. There is then a great window of opportunity for the post to become a trusted partner in the delivery of e-services to citizens and businesses. The postal network and UPU are therefore our natural partner in cyber security. The third point I want to talk to you about today is that customer should not be limited and they will not accept to be limited anyway to constraints or geography or by operators or any service provider. So now we are living in the area of convergence. Convergence of infrastructure, convergence of services and convergence of service providers. We no longer have vertical service providers. We have a convergence of service providers and this is a new landscape where the assurances of yesterday could become the threat of today and even become the lethal weapon for tomorrow. There is then a need to explore innovative and sometimes disruptive services, business models and partnership. The universal network and the international legally agreed and binding mechanism through UPU position well the postal services to facilitate cross border transfer and ensure interoperability among payment system deployed at national levels through a multilateral approach instead of separate bilateral agreements. So UPU can then provide a neutral interoperable platform, a clearing house, leveraging UPU's international financial system to allow various players who are offering a payment solution to transfer money between wallets from various mobile operators or banks. I'm glad also that UPU is participating to the new ITU focus group on digital financial services which would provide an important vehicle to bring together various players and develop new joint international standards for interoperable mobile financial services. Now looking at the future, ICT will continue to open new opportunities. The widespread of the physical postal network make it a perfect candidate to equip everything. Postal vehicles, mailboxes, parcels, whatever you want with smart sensors, useful data about many things. Some panelists here have mentioned the tremendous number of services that can be offered. The post can be part of it. The post should not be out of it because we are in the new environment where as I said we have a convergence of infrastructure. If you don't go to others, they will take your business anyway, better be part of the solution and not be part of the problem. Consequently, I could see that with the internet of things, cloud computing, big data, open data, et cetera, are few examples that are a kind of gold mine where the postal service could find a way to provide new services. The post are at the strategic juncture to use the digital economy as an opportunity rather as a threat. However, for this to happen, I will conclude on that each stakeholder should play its partition. Government should put in place policies conducive to the development of the post in their new environment. We cannot assign such an handicap to the post and expect them to win. Regulators who are now more and more converged to regulate post and telecommunication should play the role of facilitators, I insist facilitators, the way they did it one decade ago for the telecommunication. The telecommunication sector should look at the post as a serious client and ride on their comparative advantage to cut costs and make business. The postal service providers should reach out to the new profile of client, particularly the youth, the youth that we call in ITU the digital native and propose services to cope with the need. This is where the clients are now. I'm confident that the post will raise to the challenge and tap into the tremendous opportunities of ICTs. As the director general for UPU said, post must step out of comfort zone and build its future, their future, ITU is committed to play its role together with UPU to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Monsieur le ministre de la Poste et de TIC, excellence mesdames et mesdames et messieurs les ambassadeurs, monsieur le directeur général du bureau international, monsieur le vice directeur général du bureau international, mesdames et messieurs les délégués, avant tout je voudrais joindre ma modeste voie à celle des plus hautes autorités de mon pays, la Côte d'Ivoire pour remercier la Suisse et le bureau international pour toute la tension dont nous sommes entourés depuis notre arrivée. Hier dans son discours, le premier ministre a souligné l'importance de la poste du secteur postale dans la vision du gouvernement à l'horizon 2020 pour l'émergence de la Côte d'Ivoire. Le premier élément qui illustre cela est la dénomination de notre ministère à savoir ministère de la Poste et de TIC, ce qui est chose rare dans sonotropique aujourd'hui. Je voudrais en profiter pour remercier monsieur Bruno Connais, le ministre Bruno Connais pour le temps et l'énergie qu'il consacre à la poste dans la mise en œuvre de cette vision partagée. Encore d'Ivoire, nous disons souvent que la poste revient de loin en pensant à la crise que nous avons traversée, mais nous disons aussi qu'elle vise loin par rapport à nos ambitions. Cela dit, le sujet qui nous regroupe aujourd'hui en ce moment précis, c'est que peut faire le gouvernement et les postes pour que la confiance associée aux produits et services physiques puisse traduire tout aussi bien et même mieux dans le monde numérique. Mais je préfère dire que doivent faire le poste et le gouvernement parce qu'on n'a pas le choix. Pour avancer, il est bon que nous nous entendions sur le concept d'économie numérique qui renvoie d'une manière réductrice aux commerces électroniques, laissant de côté d'autres composantes telles que les services, les infrastructures et la technologie sous-jacente. Pour être complet, le terme devrait renvoyer aux télécommunications, aux audiovisuels, logiciels, réseaux informatiques, services et contenus en ligne. Il apparaît donc clairement que le numérique regroupe les TIC ainsi que l'ensemble des techniques utilisées dans le traitement et la transmission des informations telles que les télécommunications, internet ou l'informatique. Dès lors, le secteur du numérique désigne le secteur d'activité économique relatif aux TIC à la production et à la vente des produits et services numériques. Il est donc clair que le gouvernement et les postes ont suffisamment de matière à ne pas se mettre à marge de ces paradigmes nouveaux. Il doit donc chacun, dans son périmètre, jouer le rôle catalyseur et de développement d'un monde en pleine mutation. Au niveau du gouvernement, il s'agit de bâtir des politiques et des orientations pour permettre l'appropriation et le bénéfice du numérique par l'ensemble des citoyens. Comme a eu parvenir, je prendrai l'exemple de mon pays. Une loi portant code de poste a été adoptée qui voit donc la création d'une autorité de régulation donc qui régule le secteur. La loi sur la protection des données à caractère personnel et la loi sur le commerce électronique renforçant ainsi les actions sur la lutte contre la cybercriminalité et autres mots de l'économie numérique. La mise en œuvre du vaste programme de gouvernance, pardon, électronique, l'administration santé, e-learning et le programme pour lutter contre la fracture numérique. Le ministre en parlait l'autre jour devant la presse. Il s'agit donc du projet un citoyen, un ordinateur qui correspond à l'accès internet. Dans mon pays également, le secteur a été libéralisé puisque il était défaite. Donc l'autorité de régulation a le rôle de réguler le secteur, de permettre à chacun de jouer son rôle et donc de permettre aussi à l'opérateur historique qui, nous le souhaitons, sera à l'autorité désignée de jouer son rôle dans le sens dans le secteur du service universel. En ce qui concerne cet opérateur, il s'agit pour lui d'appliquer la stratégie postale de l'UPU et celui du ministère tout en étant en ligne avec les évolutions du moment et selon les attentes du marché. Alors, comment cela pourra se faire? Il s'agit d'abord pour la gestion de nos bureaux de les informatiser et donc pour cela, des outils ont été mis à la disposition de tous les outils informatiques, bien sûr, ont été mis à la disposition de l'ensemble de nos bureaux. Il s'agit aussi d'introduire progressivement l'été ici dans le développement des services donc c'est pour cela que nous parlons de postes, de plus en plus de postes numériques. Il s'agit de mettre en place des business units. Nous avons aujourd'hui créé un centre pour le courier hybride. Nous sommes en train de mettre à la disposition de nos clientels de machines à franchir de nouvelles générations. Nous avons un service de courrier express international et domestique aussi. Nous avons mis en ligne un portail de e-commerce qu'on appelle Sandy Shop donc pour y aller pour ceux qui veulent, c'est www.sandleyshop.ci Il s'agit également de développer des partenariats et des alliances avec l'administration, ce que nous appelons la Poste Courcier de l'État et la Poste est au service de l'administration pour être son courcier et nous sommes en passe de conclure un partenariat avec la direction générale des impôts pour distribuer les avis d'imposition. Nous mettons aussi nos bureaux de poste à la disposition des citoyens qui veulent établir des extraits d'actes administratifs, ce que nous appelons CEDAD, service express d'établissement des actes administratifs à distance. Donc ce qui fait que le client n'a pas besoin de se déplacer pour se rendre à son lieu d'innocence pour établir un extrait d'innocence. La Poste aussi est historiquement le tiers de confiance. Donc dans le cadre de tout ce que nous constatons en termes de numérisation, la Poste doit être le pilier numérique et le pilier qui n'essaiera réalité que via donc les outils, les applications, services autour de l'électronique. Les États attendent de la Poste une solution au vaste programme, Iguv, j'ai cité tout à l'heure, on parle de plus en plus de big data concept qui n'est pas une nouvelle, une nouveauté, pardon, pour les postes, car il y a été toujours les manipulateurs et les générateurs de flux d'information. Par exemple, les services citoyens à nos guichets, tout ça constitue des bases de données importants. On parle aussi de cloud et l'internet dans nos bureaux de Poste comme une réponse à la fracture numérique, les messages, les messageries électroniques, le travail collaboratif, donc toute la mutation des services est un levier d'intégration entre les différents services postaux. La Poste aujourd'hui par rapport au e-commerce, la plateforme logistique de distribution est un élément important dans la mesure où elle permet à la Poste d'assurer le dernier kilomètre. Et donc pour cela, l'étendue de notre réseau, nous, était facteur favorisant pour nous. Voilà, je vous remercie. Merci beaucoup. C'est un enveloppe pour vous dire que la Poste est toujours liée au courrier malgré l'évolution. Merci. On sent à vous écrire si jamais. Merci Monsieur Connette, merci. We'll go on now with our next speaker. She's Deputy Inspector General of the United States Postal Service, Tammy Whitcombe. And as such, she leads a team of several hundred employees in an office of Inspector General identifying opportunities for the agency to promote integrity, reduce fraud, waste and abuse and increase efficiency and economy. And prior to her current appointment she serves as the assistant inspector general for audit and before that she worked for the Internet Revenue Service Inspection Service. Tammy, all yours. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I want to take just a second at the beginning to explain my office's role because offices of Inspector General are somewhat unique to the United States. We perform an independent oversight role. We conduct audits and research focused on improving the Postal Service's economy and efficiency and we also investigate internal crimes against the Postal Service. Thus my remarks here today do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Postal Service or the U.S. government as a whole. Being trusted is one of the highest compliments you can receive. But it's more than that. In a research paper that we recently published, we found that being trustworthy was among a handful of attributes of the U.S. Postal Service's brand. We also conservatively estimated that the Postal Service would forgo about $3.6 billion a year in financial benefits if it had no discernible brand. Trust is not only good for organizational character, it's good for business. That is certainly informed my office's work. It's an implicit part of our job in the Office of Inspector General to help the U.S. Postal Service hold on to the high degree of trust that has been placed in it by the American public. For seven years in a row, the Postal Service has consistently ranked as the federal agency that is trusted the most to protect our citizens' privacy. Even more than that, the Poneman Institute's 2014 survey, they asked 100,000 participants to name the top five companies they trusted most regarding their privacy. The U.S. Postal Service was named enough times, not only to be the first among federal agencies, but it rated the 10th among all companies and organizations in the entire country. I'm sure that many of your posts have similarly high trust levels. With these points serving as guidelines, we've conducted studies and research and have found that the Postal Service could become even a more trusted intermediary in three broad areas of opportunity in the digital economy. And I'm going to talk about those today just for a minute. Government services, commerce, and serving the underserved. First of all, in government. The Postal Service is already hosting a pilot digital identity program, and it's called the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange, FCCX. It's sort of an online interface that allows citizens to securely access multiple government websites using just a single password. FCCX is kind of a software middleman. It makes access simpler by letting people bring their own credentials from approved external providers and then use them to log into the federal websites. By streamlining digital authentication, FCCX reduces overall government costs and it enhances privacy and simplicity for citizens. So why was the U.S. Postal Service selected to host FCCX? Well, it runs one of the world's largest computer networks and one of the largest email systems. It handles about 4 billion communications annually. So when you combine that with the unique law enforcement resources of the Postal Inspection Service, the Postal Service was ideally situated to support this type of a project. So let's talk about some possible future expansion opportunities for such a digital identity effort. Could this kind of effort be expanded into a new Postal Digital Identity Verification app which could assist with things like processing applications for various licenses or handling requests for vehicle license plate renewals, maybe processing filings for building permits or even guarding against election fraud or providing disaster relief assistance, as we heard from my colleague from Japan. I think I had it too many times. There we go. Commerce is the second area I want to talk about. With an address linking capability, a digital identity verification app, as I spoke of earlier, could also make online transactions more secure. Post could use digital identity verification to reduce security risks and fraud associated with domestic and international peer-to-peer transactions. Another option might be having verified a business's identity and address Post could issue a trust mark, which would be essentially a logo that a seller could display on its website or on other forms of advertising to inspire consumer confidence. Trust marks would not assure merchandise quality, but they could assure the fact that a seller has a legitimate business address and is identifiable. Such a trust mark might even become an international postal standard or could help increase the security of cross-border transactions. How about hybrid and reverse hybrid apps that allow senders and receivers to convert digital documents to physical or physical documents to digital to elevate the value of both types of media? Finally, serving the underserved, if the vast postal infrastructure as we just heard about were enhanced with sensors, it could serve as a platform to collect information that would help citizens provide better service, would help cities provide better services to its citizens and could also help postal service develop maybe a new role as a neighborhood logistics manager. In theory, each component of the physical infrastructure, whether it's a mailbox, a vehicle, a machine or a letter carrier could become a source of new data. This network could be smarter and even more useful providing almost any community monitoring service. What about using postal facilities as neighborhood centers connecting citizens to government and to emerging smart technology services? These neighborhood centers could serve as broadband platforms to bring the digital economy within reach of everyone. They might also serve as easy access points for government services or even convenient places for people to try out emerging technologies. For instance, today it might be 3D printing, but tomorrow who knows what it might be? Could posts also be stronger logistics support centers for citizens that are temporarily or permanently homebound? Since letter carriers have built up trust in the communities that they serve, could they provide present services or important delivery services beyond packages such as dry cleaning, groceries and medicine? Another way posts can help assist people that are currently excluded from the digital economy could be to offer a suite of financial services as we heard on our last panel as many posts already do. So you can see that the possibilities are certainly out there. So many in fact that the transition to the digital realm presents as many opportunities as challenges. It's true that digital services have not yet proven to be especially profitable, but as more people perform more of their daily tasks online, posts cannot afford to not meet the digital needs of customers along with their physical needs or the cost will be instant irrelevance. Talk about unprofitable. So in closing I want to say that the likely winners in the digital economy will be the ones who understand the very definition of trust. What's essentially is to have confidence in someone or something, who they are and what they do. Good character and demonstrated competence these form the very DNA of trust. So as we go forward in this transition, in addition to finding the best ways to transfer trust into the digital economy, we should also be asking, do we have the necessary level of competence to successfully execute? If we don't, how do we get it and how can we get it quickly? I believe the key to meeting these challenges of trust lies not just in great ideas, but more importantly in maximizing a workforce that comes to the job every day with strong character, good judgment, and the ability and desire to effectively use technology to serve the citizens of this world in their ever increasing expectations. Thank you very much. So last speaker now comes from Ecuador. His name is Roberto Cavana Merchan, he's the secretary general from Postal Union of the Americas, Spain, and Portugal. He draws upon decades of extensive international and national experience with the postal sector. He was a general manager responsible for the modernization of the Ecuadorian mail at Correos del Iguador, and also the executive chairman at the same Correos del Iguador. Please, sir. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much to the UPU for the invitation to participate in this panel, to my colleagues who have given me the word and to all of you for the patience that you will have to listen to me in the next few minutes. I think it's important to begin to review a little the differences ahead and after. What do these photographs tell us? I think they tell us something. The postal sector a long time ago, and not a long time ago, not many years ago, it was managed in a calm sea with speed, at the same pace, probably some more than others, but in a calm sea. Today, in reality, it's the opposite. There is a lot of turbulence, there is a very aggressive internet service, there are aggressive telecommunications, there are drones, there are obviously greater expectations of consumers, there is legal competition, by part of a complete deregulation and we have to do a lot more, but with less. What do we have today? Well, today, there is no money to invest. We have problems because we have to be innovators. We have talked during these two days that we have to be very innovative. We have to fulfill markets of market, month to month, and the picture you see is of a colleague and a email that I'm not going to mention the name, in November, which did not fulfill its quota. It's a bit complicated, because month to month we demand not just to commercialize, but to look for business. And now what do we do? Well, I want to allow myself to read a phrase from Roberto Goizueta that says, all rights imply a responsibility. All opportunity implies an obligation and all possession a duty. Do you know why? Well, my personal criteria because customers have the right to ask for a high quality of service and we have the responsibility to deliver it. We have the opportunity to innovate and change the situation post. Obligar nos a encontrar soluciones de a buscar mas conocimiento y compromiso para ser bien las cosas. Tenemos herramientas que son importantes. La reforma postal, el comercio electrónico, los servicios financieros. En fin, un completo sector postal a nuestra disposición. Bueno, y como lo hacemos? En la reforma postal, perdón, me pasé uno? Si, ahí está. De acuerdo? En la reforma postal tenemos que revisar mucho que no se busca únicamente leyes o no se busca únicamente una regulación postal. Se busca una reforma, una reforma integral completa en la cual los gobiernos participen activamente de la reforma postal. En la cual, la reforma postal sea socializada con todos los sectores del mercado y financieros del país. De otra manera, la situación va a ser muy difícil. Vamos a caminar mucho más complicados. Y por qué tenemos que decir esto? Porque obviamente el sector postal es un elemento clave del desarrollo socio-económico de las naciones. Pues las cifras no nos engañan. Somos el mayor generador de empleo, 5.4 millones. Generamos riqueza con más de 345 billones de dólares y tenemos más de 663,000 oficinas en el mundo. El comercio electrónico lo hemos hablado durante estos dos días y obviamente hay que incrementar la paquetería. Sí, señores, hay que trabajar mucho con lo que es la paquetería, el comercio electrónico, porque las cartas van disminuyendo. Lo hemos oído, repetido, en muchas ocasiones y resulta que las cartas no sabemos cuándo van a desaparecer en un año, 10 años, 50 años. No lo sabemos. Entonces lo que tenemos que dar es calidad de servicios en todos los servicios, incluso en las cartas. Cuando a mí me preguntan cuándo van a desaparecer las cartas, señor Cabana, yo no lo sé. Siempre digo si bien tengo cara de brujo, pues no soy brujo. No tengo una vara mágica, no soy Harry Potter, que me pueda decir cuándo se van a acabar las cartas. Pero también tenemos que hay empresas que se están transformando en logística, en una empresa de logística y también se están transformando en empresas de paquetería. En el comercio electrónico y hemos hablado bastante y escuchamos a Brasil, a Perú, sobre el tema de de comercio electrónico, en el tema también de lo que es exporta fácil, escuchamos ampliamente la importancia de este negocio que es incluyente, que este servicio, perdón, un programa de gobierno incluyente que debemos incursionar según nuestras medidas. Sobre el correo transfronterizo nuestro querido amigo Deepak Chopra me ayudó muchísimo con su presentación porque habló ampliamente de las necesidades de tener un correo transfronterizo serio, bueno, y recuerdo la necesidad de tener para aquello tecnología, accesibilidad y por sobre todo que sea sostenible. Sobre los servicios financieros hace momento escuchábamos muchísimo sobre ello y es importante para nosotros las transferencias de dinero por apoyo de los migrantes le escuchábamos en el panel anterior la banca postal existe banque existe correos que ya tienen este servicio Brasil, Francia, Italia, próximamente Portugal en el mes de noviembre sin mi memoria no me sin grata en la cual aprendamos de ellos no le tengamos miedo a los a aprender los éxitos y también los revises que han tenido los compañeros pero eso sí analicemos abiertamente e internamente las posibilidades de nuestro correo para incursionar en un tipo de negocio así. Sobre los servicios postales es interesante conversar como por ejemplo que son los tradicionales pero también puede ser innovadores un correo de la región creó los sobres de embalaje postal en la cual conversaron con municipios que permitían poner la publicidad de cada una de sus ciudades y eso regalarlo a los clientes de los correos cuando ellos se acercaban y no tenían como enviar en ese momento con un sobre los correos regalaban el sobre de embalaje postal y hacían turismo al mismo tiempo no le tengamos miedo a las alianzas estratégicas con cooperativas de transporte público aerolíneas y con las empresas privadas bueno y ahora que hacemos señores ya no hay tiempo que perder definitivamente la tecnología avanza a pasos agigantados y nosotros no nos podemos quedar en la retaguardia tenemos que ser correos de vanguardia en la región se habla mucho de cambiar la imagen y trabajamos muchísimo en buscar cambiar la imagen de los correos con el menor costo posible haciendo entrevista boletines de prensa utilizando incluso las cajas que se envían de los correos para tener mayor posibilidad de publicidad claves que tenemos para el futuro una buena gobernanza del sector la calidad del servicio y diversificación de los productos la incorporación de la tecnología y trabajar con UPU las regiones las uniones restringidas como elemento integrador para el desarrollo postal que hacemos desde la UPU de la UPAP pues desde la UPAP nosotros damos apoyo a los gobiernos para los procesos de reforma que son importantísimos para nosotros no podemos trabajar de forma aislada tenemos que trabajar de una forma íntegra con los gobiernos también trabajamos con el proyecto Cimiento un proyecto que nació propiamente de la UPAP para mejorar la calidad del servicio en el servicio EMS le damos seguimiento durante un año de tal manera en que ya los resultados los tenemos tangibles hay correos que estaban hasta hace un año atrás en el puesto 167 y hoy en día están en el puesto 77 y otros en mucho mejor posición sensibilizamos a los gobiernos del sector postal qué importante para nosotros es trabajar directamente con los gobiernos para sensibilizarlos que somos apoyo para ellos trabajamos en proyectos regionales como el desarrollo de la cadena logística impulsamos el certificado de seguridad postal como bien mencionaba nuestra compañera la importancia de tener seguridad en el sector postal porque personalmente para mí no existe correos si no hay seguridad trabajamos también con correos y aduanas trabajamos con el programa es portafácil que es insisto un programa incluyente sumamente importante para la región y por qué no decirlo para el mundo trabajamos con transferencias dinero y nosotros buscamos fuentes de financiamiento obviamente sin rembolso para poder promocionar nuestros proyectos para concluir pregunto yo hay que hacer negocios postales con agilidad pues sí tenemos no simplemente que buscar comercialización postal tenemos que buscar negocios postales pero el servicio postal también tenemos que recordar que tiene una sinergia enorme en la cual cuando un correo desarrollado envía su correspondencia a un correo en desarrollo y el mismo correo en desarrollo no tiene la tecnología y no tiene los elementos para salir adelante de forma general el correo será catalogado y calificado como malo ya no tenemos tiempo que perder el tiempo de cambio es ahora no hay un mañana y depende de nosotros de las decisiones que tovemos aquí en cara al congreso de estambul para cambiar las cosas los invito pues a que junto formemos una cruzada por un nuevo sector postal dinámico importante con más servicios con innovación y una altísima no una alta una altísima calidad de servicios muchísimas gracias thank you very much that was brilliant thank you so I think before before I ask anything I think I'll go to the floor this time and if I recall correctly le burkin infaso voulait intervenir tout à l'heure mais n'a pas eu l'opportunité de le fin est-ce que son représentant sa représentante est dans la sainte et souhaite le faire désormais non pas de burkin infaso bon est-ce que les questions is there any question from the floor anyone wishing to add anything to Dominican Republic please sir si el señor cabana est yes please I'm sorry I think I was addressed to you yes sir I'm going to a one of the retos que tuvimos que enfrentar en la secretaría general es trabajar justamente con los gobiernos unir a los gobiernos con los correos para tratar de salir adelante en todo y cada uno de los proyectos que son necesarios dinamizar a los correos en muchos temas en el tema tecnológico porque en ocasiones tenemos proyectos que quieren ser aterrizados sin antes haber despegado el trabajo del proyecto de correos de comercio electrónico puede ser importante de entrada pero si no tiene hacia atrás una tecnología una plataforma tecnológica de primera servicios de primera entrega se va a caer de manera inmediata y obviamente trabajar con los correos y los gobiernos apoyando esta clase de proyectos nos ha salido fue un reto bastante complicado porque los gobiernos en la región de la UPI estaban muy separados de lo que es el sector postal pero en este momento ya después de un año de trabajo tenemos mucho dinamismo con ellos thank you very much Garnier question je donne la parole a la Côte d'Ivoire alors vous avez une minute pour poser la question ou faire votre statement parce que vous êtes le président de cette conférence et nous avons terriblement de retour donc on nous demande de faire très vite donc une minute pour poser la question et une minute pour répondre voilà merci merci monsieur le modérateur je pense que on va être aussi bref comme demandé alors je voudrais remercier tous les intervenants pour la qualité des exposés et principalement monsieur de l'UPEP j'ai noté pendant toutes les présentations qu'il y a un bon listing de de quelques innovations de quelques solutions dans lesquelles il faudra s'embarquer mais je pense qu'il faut regarder où il faut donner un chapitre aussi à la question de la promesse client parce qu'en réalité le marché aussi bien les gouvernements les clients enfin tous ceux qui constituent l'écosystème ne nous demandent pas des sorties de solutions d'innovation parce que c'est évident déjà pour le marché ce qu'on nous demande c'est de nous engager à respecter la promesse client donc les postes ici présent aussi attendent beaucoup de contributions pour que nous puissions améliorer la qualité des services et surtout respecter la promesse client merci Merci de cette remarque je ne suis pas certain effectivement qu'elle engendre une réponse je crois que c'est plein de bon sens je vous remercie d'avoir pris la parole pour cela Dear panelists, thank you very much for participating in this panel unfortunately the time is really really really running fast and we have another panel and some guys I think have catch a plane so thank you very much for your time and for your expertise and have a safe return home thank you one more thing before we go on just a quick question actually this is a technical problem we have we're missing a microphone so I think Ambassador Lacy left with his microphone so if anyone sees Ambassador Lacy or anyone sees a microphone you know just wondering around it's surely missed and we appreciate to have it back so thank you so we'll ask the next four panelists to please step on stage namely Monsieur le Ministre Connais Mr Jennings Mr Cliva Killa and Mr Guzman as well please step on stage so that we can fix your microphone and then we can start right away thank you Jennings oh yeah yeah that'd be perfect I will try thank you yes you are I made the announcement ok so I'll wait for him I'll wait for him ok you give me the go ok I'll wait for you yes Mrs Mohamed do you hear me yes we do hello there well good so you're with us so we can start then good we'll formally start then third panel now and last one and we're going to be talking about essential components for the global economy and sustainable development in the current international context in the global postal network universal and resilient being a major and important tool to support the objectives of sustainable development at the national and global level in the three dimensions economic, of course, but also social and environmental the different panelists of this panel will examine how the U.P.U., its members and the postal sector can contribute to the development program of the United Nations of the economy, of the society and of course of all the citizens of the world we have different speakers and one of the speakers we have as you heard and witnessed is live with us but from New York Mrs Amina Mohamed she's the UN Secretary General Special Advisor on post 2015 development planning she was previously Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on the Millennium Development Goals after serving three presidents in 2005 she was charged with the coordination of the debt relief funds a one billion per annum towards the achievement of millennium development goals in Nigeria Mrs Mohamed served as a coordinator also of the Task Force on Gender and Education for the United Nations Millenium Project so now Mrs Mohamed I'm not going to say the floor is yours as you're quite away from us but the microphone is yours and we are all ears to listen to you Thank you very much and my appreciation for being invited to participate in this really interesting discussion with the UPU and our fellow panellists so good morning from New York we are of course 15 years down the road from when we had the first opportunity of using the MDGs as the first set of goals to really try to bring together an anti-poverty push over 15 years and here on in we have mixed results the glass is half full, half empty I certainly spent a great deal of my life at the country level trying to address the MDGs so we will regard them today as unfinished business but successful in that we are debating the new framework for another set of goals this time for sustainable development and two and a half years ago member states did make another difference in the way in which we at the United Nations approached shaping the new agenda and that was by taking the lead that 193 of our member states would fashion and shape out what would be the successor we've witnessed over the last year and a half member states in two processes one around the next set of sustainable development goals produce a set of 17 goals and 169 targets in really the most inclusive discussion that we've had from governments to external stakeholders in business, civil society our academics and I think really an agenda today that shows is owned is responsive and representative of the many challenges that we all face but better still what we've done is add another conversation to this and that is how would we produce means of implementation for this what would we agree and therefore the second process which is the financing for development is also in play in fact as we speak now we have our member states negotiating the first zero draft of that part of the process to see how they would engage with making sure that at the end of this agenda we have the means of implementation it's I think critical to underscore here that many of the challenges in the existing agenda still remain however they are exacerbated by new situations and in particular the issues of unemployment of migration of conflict and all of these are really reflected in how these goals ought to address it but it is a new narrative it is a new way of us addressing development of the country that is not incremental that is universal and about everyone but it is also about an integrated approach where we are not taking the agenda of a minister of development to the cabinet table but we are saying that the transformation of economies in fact the results we are looking for are in the social agenda and on the environmental agenda an integrated whole environmental, economic and social so this really does bring in many more stakeholders it brings challenges of how we will look at ourselves as institutions, as individuals as experts in trying to make ourselves fit for purpose on this agenda. We see here that in many cases finishing off the social agenda and human well-being cannot be done without us taking an integral look at how the economy itself will be geared towards addressing this and that when we do that, when we grow our economies we are looking at the environment and some of the technologies that we need to make sure that we do less harm and that we really do deal with a new way of the demands that we make in terms of our consumption and production. We are in fact looking for a more sustainable path. We are also looking for investments in sustainable development that are irreversible and I think that we have learned from the MDGs that anything that we do incrementally that addresses only part of the problem really does come unstuck and perhaps one of the most vivid responses to this has been the challenges that we dealt with for instance on the health agenda with Ebola in Africa where really addressing just health issues around child mortality and maternal mortality did not go deep enough into looking at the systems that we need to respond to health as a whole from the local level all the way through to tertiary care and I think this agenda really does try to say that in all its ways. The narrative certainly has changed. Where are we today? This year we will address these three issues. The set of goals that we hope we will have approved by the member states is of implementation but also make a very strong attempt to get a meaningful agreement on the climate change in December in Paris and I think it is important that these three issues that we speak about addressing a more sustainable path to development the means of implementation in unlocking resources and that means really looking innovatively at what else can we do to bring from billions to the trillions that we will need all hands and deck for this and how do we get an agreement on climate change where from the country level we are making commitments to greening and having a sustainable path. So this is a year of definitely big, big actions that we want to take and we want to approve. How then do we look at a key stakeholder like the postal sector in this, the relevance and the implementation of your role as you look at your strategy. Certainly here we know that it is key that we look at the means of implementation for this. We see that with more than one billion people who have accounts in the post office it is the second largest contribution to financial inclusion and this is an important part of this agenda is that the inequality aspect of this making sure that we include everyone regardless of where they are coming from or who they are needs to learn lessons from those that have been involved with this but for which we have the greater challenge of going to scale versus the gender meaning just that and I think that here the nature of the multi stakeholders involved and of the experiences that you've had within countries across countries globally in bringing together excluded groups and populations particularly young people and women will play a big role in the means of implementation and therefore what happens come January is at the country level how do we bring together our constituencies within the UN system new stakeholders to implement this big agenda we will be looking at how we access information again you have been one of the vehicles that has cut across all those barriers in providing that but how can you become a much more integral part and substantively that information that we're carrying reinforcing the agents of change and those decision makers that will be found in different parts of government of parliament and certainly of our communities in reducing the cost of access to many of these facilities there has been much discussion on this and the current financing for development and in particular when we have spoken about remittances and the value that that will bring both in a global context and how to do that and where we would find the most advantage coming from in terms of the possibilities solutions we need I think we know the what, the how and the how as it represents different regions in the world who have a different level of being able to address this different sets of priorities different regulations and policy frameworks that need to come together to make this happen so it is quite clear that inclusion is going to be a big part of this new agenda of international inclusion social and economic inclusion and I believe that the UPU will be in a good place as you think through being fit for purpose for this how will you engage with the UN system that we become the facilitators of ensuring that this new agenda is an integral part of what countries visions and plans will integrate how can we then lend from your toolkit and broaden it make it usable and accessible for many more new players that will come into this it is really an exciting moment right now I think there are many who are thinking we do have a big sense of what's coming down the road the 17 goals that we have will be the ingredients that we use for this new agenda we have yet to finish really fashioning out the means of implementation as I heard in the session before the digital divide really being closed but the role of technologies in all of this as a means of implementation bringing that to the fore and using that much more effectively to bring these different stakeholders together it's a clearly exciting because it is the first time that we can in this generation end poverty it's also the first time that we can really come together to see that we have a meaningful agreement with climate change and we bridge the conversation the sustainable development is the overarching narrative that we need to achieve both the eradication of poverty and certainly the climate change deal that we need going forward UPU does have a big role to play here I think in the strategy of what you've learned so far in addressing the MDGs but in a much bigger more integrated agenda bringing the role of your your partners in this to participate in this discussion and I hope to continue to engage all the way through to the end of this year when we should have three very important outcomes for the next 15 years thank you well thank you well thank you Miss Mohamed for this presentation I'll ask you a quick question now because I think you have other meetings to attend according to what ways do you think you can engage in the post 2015 Dil Lopman agenda I think they already have been we have seen quite an incredible engagement both at the level of the United Nations and in the different negotiating processes that we've had here but also internally within the technical support team that has brought on expertise to inform much of the how I think going forward is to continue to bridge what is happening here in New York with what is happening at the country level I think that we're not quite there yet in understanding what it is that is going to come through the door come post come January 2016 so I think it would be essential for you to engage again with the stakeholders at the country level and discuss the implications of this agenda going forward I think it's really important that we get a conversation going at the country level really noting the different levels that we are all at not everyone has got the same situation not everyone has access to the same level of expertise institutions and certainly players and so to come bring that multi-stakeholder grouping together and using the platforms of the UN that this has already begun with bringing together as I said business bringing together different stakeholders in civil society as we see what would be an implementation plan what would it look like please let's underscore the importance of the transition this is a really big agenda it will require a lot of capacity building a lot of facilitation and tools to address an integrated approach to this so we do see that over the next two to five years a real deepening of this but to start as we would say yesterday what are the implications of this new agenda with your partners broadening that base at the country level this is where we really need to make the connection so we don't repeat the mistakes of bringing a prescription from New York but rather that this is a part of what we have engaged in and we can hit the ground running well thank you very much for this precision have a great day in New York I think you won't be able to stay with us thank you very much we will continue this discussion now the minister of the post and the technology of information and communication of Côte d'Ivoire, Bruno Cavagnier knows a long experience in the field of post and telecommunications since before occupying this post he was director of the regulatory affairs of the AMA zone Africa, Middle East and Asia for France Telecom, sector telecommunications the director of the audits of finance France Telecom the general director of Côte d'Ivoire of telecom, sector telecommunications the president of this conference thank you thank you hello everyone the sustainable development has become an essential element of post development the constant that we all have heard since this morning it allows to improve the relations with the partners, to create new markets to better respond to customers' expectations to respect the preservation of the territory on which our activities are exercised to ensure the management of our employees to make public awareness on the social and environmental causes sustainable development also perceived as the old economy of innovation and profitability for our posts since the Congress of Dois in 2012 a certain number of actions have been committed on the next problems primarily the environment the actions of the UPU such as the exchange of good practices the annual inventory of gas emissions in the post sector efforts to achieve the climate neutrality of the UPU international office and the cooperation with the United Nations so the United Nations program for the environment and the organization of the international civil aviation must be strengthened the second problem is more social social matter it is necessary to continue the campaign of sensitization in terms of contamination of certain diseases for example the VIH or today the Ebola and of course to extend this procedure to the non-transmissible diseases to continue the implementation of action plans made by the international organization of the work and the UPU in the context of the promotion of the integration of employment and the descent work it is our posts of responsible actors more of the sensitization and social dialogue mainly to allow their employees often very many and to allow their clients even more many to be in better health it is in general the ambition that all citizen companies are given and I think it is good that our posts are considered as such but the problem on which I would insist the most is that of the economy the third problem must be the first concern of our posts of become companies or business posts our posts must be viable to re-establish their activities to be the top of economic development of our countries and to create jobs in terms of environment we must certainly put forward a policy of purchase offer of products financially and socially responsible such as microcredit financial services affordable etc but we must make sure that each of these actions each of these points each of these activities whatever their destination whatever their beneficiary remains profitable continue to generate value for our companies this will contribute without any doubt to make our posts economic actors both attentive to their environment but also full economic actors once we have presented these good intentions which are very likely to be translated by a large number of acting actors of our countries in particular countries of the north we can legitimately question the relevance of these actions for our countries in poorer development and as he said higher priority which are other priority which are more directed towards the economy I specify here that my point of view is without pretension it is constructive I try to have a look both lucid and pragmatic on these questions which are often treated in a too philosophical way naturally these questions of sustainable development concern all of us I consider that we are on the same boat and each hole in the boat concerns each one of us in the same way but in a developing country the contribution of posts is above all expected I indicated it earlier to the economy it is the same goal that we assign to the technology this last must be to the service of the rest of the society and the economic actors mainly in the view of creating value and wealth and to contribute to create jobs this is why our propositions are pragmatic basic, some even say too low at the earth it is especially the use of post offices for example cyber community centers this is what we decided to do the use of post networks for the benefit of PMEPMI even of special economic actors for example farmers for example artisans the use of post offices in the view of increasing financial inclusion and raising the rate of banking this was long treated in a panel earlier we must know that in the majority of our countries less than 10% of the population have access to banking services as you can see we will record in this moment about 8 billion francs per day of transactions on electronic networks 8 billion is about 12 million euros per day of transactions or more than 4 billion euros per year this service was really launched 2-3 years ago and today it concerns almost a quarter of the base of our country's customers so you can see the potential when the 22 million subscribers to the mobile phone of Côte d'Ivoire today will really start using this service 22 million subscribers to the mobile phone on 23 million people this makes a lot of banking which you can see right away takes a leap the use of post offices also for providing to the administrative service population Director General of the Post we are working on the numbering of the supply in the next 2 years of 300 services that we call informational to give information of the state or government to the population and of 200 transactional services so demand and interactive communication with the population we also use post services for the information the awareness of the population especially the prevention against certain HIV diseases and Ebola to conclude I would like to say that obviously we salute the implementation of the carbon fund which is intended to promote the development of more respectful services of nature and before good hope that this fund will reduce by the developing countries certain actions are to be saluted and I take this opportunity to mention that there is a post that today free products from the first necessities to poor women in China but products that have been collected by donors in Chile there is an organization of Christmas presents to children of small actions but which have an extremely important social goal I also salute the extension of the action of some developed countries towards developing countries this is the case of the Austrian post which funded projects for cooking in Mali and Ogana these are 50% more performance than traditional ovens but they are ovens that allow to reduce the affordability of women and which allow to reduce the amount of wood consumed for cooking most developed countries already practice daily measures and good practices today in value or in work in developed countries our offices for example are very few energy consumers they even arrive in some cases there is no electricity in the offices our distribution is made for the essential through the post office the last mile it was said several times probably the part of the circuit of the courier which is the most expensive and the most energy consumer and we see today countries that are coming to the distribution through the post office precisely to fight for excessive energy we are already I was going to say we are good in Côte d'Ivoire the business model the logistic platform that we are working at the level of the post office integrate the fact of putting this platform at the disposal of other actors of electronic commerce so we mutualize these equipment that will be used at the post office but that can also be used including our competitors already a part of our local when we estimate that they are too large in relation to the activity that we do in this local we have decided to localize the national triple station from the port area to the airport area to precisely reduce the displacement the essential of the courier today being mined as you know by plane you see so these are small pragmatic measures which are made in work it is not great a junction of great philosophical proposals but we have the assurance that by these measures we bring to the protection of nature we bring socially to our populations and above all we remain economically viable I insisted earlier on the interest of this to finish I would say that we are working to make our economic actors that create value and jobs and that help in the same time to improve the living conditions of our populations while watching, and I insist on this term in the possible measure while watching in the possible measure to the protection of the environment in which our activities are exercised for this and this has been said several times so I would like not to end the policy of development that we conduct at the level of the post is very strongly attributed to those who are working at the level of the technology of communication training because we want a performance post we want a post that offers inclusive services and for this we cannot not take into account the whole of the development of a digital economy it is extremely important because many things have been said here which are said for the post but which do not take into account the fact that beyond we would have to have an ecosystem of TIC which itself can allow what we want at the level of the post in many of our developing countries I can say that this is not yet the case and this fertile tarot for the development of a digital economy is in my opinion a performance regulatory environment it is a connectivity of deep and deep which touches the maximum of the population it is an accessibility especially the computer equipment which is facilitated and it is for this that we have the construction code of 3000 cyber centers the Prime Minister spoke yesterday we have the development of local content so local content to attract precisely to the TIC the populations especially the rural populations and it is like that the reinforcement of human capacities which will allow to support all this ambition that we have both at the level of the TIC and at the level of the post the path is long as we can see it but we have good hope to arrive because we think it is the interest of our populations we think it is the interest of our states and above all that we do not have other choice than to go there so let's go Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you for this testimony we wish you every time that these initiatives in favor of the development of local content are released and have not suffered I think at electricity or at the post office it is all that I can wish you in the future in any case close Next speaker now we have listened to a minister now we are going to be listening to a union representative to balance the speeches Mr. Phillip Jennings is the secretary general of UNI Global Union he has been the head of the UNI Global Union since its creation in the year 2000 and described as the labour movement's global warrior his organization represents the service sector and counts 20 million members in 150 nations and 900 unions Mr. Jennings accepted the nomination of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to serve a three year term on the board of the UN Global Compact he also received the Nagasaki International Peace and Friendship Prize, please welcome him Thank you Well, good afternoon everybody and thank you for those very kind words of introduction and I'm sure that the paradox of being turned a global warrior and receiving a peace award from Nagasaki is not lost on the observant of you I wish you a very good afternoon I'm very pleased to see so many here at such a late hour I represent UNI Global Union we are the voice of postal workers in this global economy of ours we are the voice of the 5.4 million staff and their families and dependents we are the beating heart, the public face if you have a strong brand as postal service is everywhere it is because of the people that you employ they are the public face they are the face to the customer to the man and woman in the street and I'm delighted to see that the US Postal Service has put a 3.8 billion dollar valuation on the brand of the postal service the trade unions in America for this and no doubt this will be an essential ingredient to the next round of pay negotiations worldwide we organize we negotiate we promote we take a stand but we are partners for the growth of this sector this is a big year for all of us this is a year of what I would say is a planetary reset the financing for development talks and above all sustainable development the question to all of us as leaders now is what did we do when we were challenged so to save this planet to finance development and to make sure that people were at the center of a new and sustainable world we can all agree that the Wall Street business model has not brought sustainability it has brought financial calamity the question to all of us is what responsibility will we take will we be up to the challenge can we unions, yourselves postal regulators and operators can we deliver on this planetary reset Martin Luther King said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice the challenge to us and meeting that challenge is what are we going to do to deliver justice and to put people at the center of this sustainable development challenge you have spent these last two days talking about the challenges you don't need me to repeat them it's important for me to say what is the pulse of postal workers today those 5.4 million people I would say there is justifiable fear declining male volumes digitalization a new world of work fear insecurity what does that new world of work look like I would say ferocity and resilience knock us down seven we will get up eight times ferocious in our belief in the postal network ferocious in the added value that it brings to our economies brings to business brings to people ferocious in our attachment in the recognition that this binds people together and above all hope hope of new possibilities of new alternative services of hope for post and its networks in the long term now time is short I would just like to leave a number of key messages to you you are a key to sustainable development the universal service obligation at an affordable price stands full square against the savagery and the short termism of financial markets of the business of business just being business I don't think that is your business you have broader societal obligations and responsibilities don't be knocked off course by come here go there political pressure or by market pressure be resilient be ferocious in your defense of public services and bring the leverage and the added value that it brings to our economies you are the bridge between that digital and the physical world you are the bridge in terms of financing for development and we heard from Aminar about the 1 billion account holders in the postal services side the bridge to families and communities not just in the neighborhood but in the global neighborhood and I'm so pleased to see that in Asia and Africa you've been launching new initiatives in terms of remittances the messages being listened to at the G20 in Brisbane I was there and it's now got a priority at a global level where it did not have it before I also think that in this process you don't need me to repeat all the good things have been said about the role of post-complay in reducing its carbon footprint therefore I think that you have to present yourselves as a key in sustainable development don't be modest take a stand that when your government is talking about its plan for sustainable development that you have to be seen as a key actor don't be modest take a stand in the sustainable development goals they talk about people and democracy this has to be a sector where no human rights are questioned in the postal services every worker if they desire should be a member of a union and should be able to join a union free from fear and intimidation and victimization that we are now in a new era within the United Nations system with the rugged principles of business and human rights and that sense of the due diligence you will now be obliged to have due diligence in the extent to which you respect the human rights of the employees that you employ therefore no postal operator or some of those large private sector integrators should be acting inconsistently with those principles that there should be no union busting no intimidation I am getting fed up of the calls that I receive from around the planet to join a union is questioned why should I be thrown in front of a tribunal because I stood up for my people set the example in this postal sector that you will exercise due diligence to respect the rights of people to organize and also that we will take those agreements globally I'd be clear we want a global agreement with DHL with FedEx, with UPS, with GeoPost and others to begin a conversation about how we can put some of these principles into practice we realize when we look at the distribution of wealth in our economies this is my point number three can we be inclusive in this sector tomorrow there's a day of action it's called 15 for 15 that is a push by workers at the lower end of the wage scale who basically live in poverty in the world's biggest economy people working at McDonald's and Walmart at airports and cleaners and security guards have decided in 200 cities and in 150 nations around the world to take a stand to say that the wealth being produced is not being distributed fairly and therefore I think in the postal service that you can also be an example in those sustainable development goals of the importance of collective bargaining that no postal worker in employment is living in poverty this can be done there is enough wealth in this sector and as far as we're concerned one of the key ways of achieving this is through collective bargaining in conclusion the role of the UPU I see the sustainable development goals as being a very significant part of your future evolution and development I would say you must care about these goals and ask yourselves the question we want to make an impact not just to listen to the music but to make the music that you say clearly without fear but with great ambition we want to make an impact that you will measure the results of the work that you do and you will report back to one another on the progress being made there are 17 goals in the SDGs as Amina mentioned let's have a UPU 17 goals let's take some yardsticks from within those 70 goals I'm not saying the whole piece of 169 to report on progress to show that you are making the contribution in this direction we welcome the dialogue that we have with the UPU and the continuation with your Director General Bishah Hussain and with Pascal Cleaver and the Bureau and the Secretariat they are open to our ideas and open to our participation we are delighted to have the social dialogue in Asia, in the Americas in Africa and in Europe these are platforms, these are bridges towards the achievement of sustainable development goals and we welcome this partnership and we seek to work with you I started with Martin Luther King and I'll finish with Martin Luther King when he said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere the challenge to us in this period of implementing the sustainable development goals is that all of us work together to ensure not just the future of posts and decent work but that there is justice everywhere thank you now if you ever wondered whether the international peace recipient or the global warrior would suit best Philip Jennings I suppose you have the answer as we all do we'll go down now with our next speaker I was with us through a pre-record message is Achim Steiner the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program the UNEP General of the United Nations he couldn't make it to Geneva so he sent us a video Achim Steiner has been having the UNEP since 2006 and will do so until June 2016 and prior to joining the UNEP Mr Steiner served as Director General of the International Union for Conservatory of Nature he also was Secretary General of the World Commissions of Dams here is his message Excellencies ladies and gentlemen Director General of the Universal Postal Union my fellow panelists let me begin by thanking you for this opportunity to join this panel and also the discussion in the context of the UPU Sustainable Development Working Group and in particular the reflections upon how the universal post-unions global community can be part of a response to climate change both in terms of managing the risks but also in realizing the opportunities that these responses offer to us and above all to make the universal community part of the capacity to respond to what is ultimately a Sustainable Development Challenge I want to begin by commending the partnership that we have enjoyed between the United Nations Environment Program and the Universal Postal Union for quite a number of years now and I'm grateful for the Director General for having continuously provided both direction and momentum to build on both the successes that we have had in the past in working together but more importantly in guiding and fully conscious of the fact that for many of you who work in the postal services across the world the question of whether sustainable development and indeed the challenge of climate change belong into the mainstream of your work I would begin by saying that first of all if not you and if not me then who else if not us and only them would we indeed be able to respond both to the basic tenets of sustainable development also hopefully out of the September summit a new set of sustainable development goals and ultimately also our collective capacity to address the challenge of climate change it is everyone's responsibility and therefore I would appeal to you that in the way that you have already framed both your work on sustainable development but also the steps you have taken in addressing the issue of greenhouse gases and also the opportunities for both reducing carbon emissions and then examining the options of mitigation and offsets really do belong into the mainstream of the business strategy of any postal service but let me also try and bring perhaps a few encouraging aspects that make this not an effort that would detract you from essentially delivering an effective and efficient postal service across the globe but to make the response and also the objective of sustainable development and addressing climate change an opportunity for an even more effective, efficient and responsible universal development community. The beginnings of this really are first of all to establish what is our footprint and I think many of you will have been surprised that indeed postal service across the world are not an insignificant contributor alongside many other sectors to our collective emissions of CO2 and greenhouse gases therefore we are all part of both the problem but more importantly we will become part of the solution. You have already taken a number of steps to establish your postal service at the national level to establish their greenhouse gas footprint and I want to commend you for this because without measuring and establishing and positioning your individual entities along the scale of whether you are a low emitter or a high emitter it is very difficult to even begin to talk about measures that could be taken. We are continuously evolving the greenhouse gas inventory and the methodologies and I'm very grateful and also commend UPU for having been part of this effort and I think that is the members of UPU have already begun to undertake this work it continues to build our capacity to respond both based on science and empirical evidence rather than speculation or aspiration only. A second step clearly is how we can mitigate and ultimately also manage down our emissions footprint and here what has emerged in recent years first of all through the experience of many pioneering actors in our economies and societies north and south large economies and small economies is actually quite encouraging equally within the United Nations system we now have a number of entities amongst them I probably would mention also the United Nations environment program who are climate neutral entities far from actually making us poorer or imposing on us undue costs we have found that we have achieved significant efficiency gains in contrary to expectations we have actually found that in many of the measures that we have since undertaken we have not incurred additional costs we have actually made savings we have become a more efficient and also more transparently managed organization but it is in the context of our travel policy whether it is in the encouragement of video conferencing but it is also in the context of managing our infrastructure our buildings offices vehicle fleets and electricity supplies across the world the net impact of trying to make UNEP a climate neutral organization has been that managed to between the year 2013 and 2015 to manage down our emissions footprint by a remarkable 17% even with the offsets that we have had to pay for those emissions that we could not avoid we have found ourselves in a position where we have actually saved money the potential for efficiency gains is quite remarkable and I think particularly in a logistics and infrastructure based service such as the Postal Service and particularly in your global network postal organizations I think you would be surprised if you have already indeed discovered this to be the case that there is a significant potential for repeating this experience but let me also be clear the idea is not to be politically correct the idea is to do what we can responsibly and within the context of the budgets and means by which we can act the bottom line is that for the foreseeable future many of our organizations will still have a carbon footprint to eliminate and therefore the next step is to offset these emissions through the kinds of offset schemes that exist today it is part of taking a responsible role but also to signal to others that we lead by example we cannot always ask other institutions, other countries, other individuals to do the things that we are not prepared to act on in that sense I hope I can convey to you today the message that in measuring greenhouse gas emissions in actually exploring the potentials for reducing emissions and thereby achieving enormous efficiency gains and ultimately also taking responsibility for offsetting those emissions which we cannot avoid we become part of a global fraternity a network of countries, institutions, individuals and enterprises that are indeed becoming part of the solution our partnership between UNEP and UPU is one expression of this confidence in our ability to make a difference we stand ready to work with you and also with your individual members wherever it is possible, feasible and wanted to try and explore the opportunities and also the boundaries within which we can act but ultimately let me conclude my remarks by simply emphasizing again how critical it is to interpret our response to climate change not only as a constraint or indeed as a cost factor but as an intelligent contribution to the broader sustainable development agenda indeed to the realization of the goals including the principle of universality and integration that will form part of the framework within which all of us will have to act in the years to come thank you and I wish you a very successful meeting Alhim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program our last speaker now comes from the Dominican Republic Mr. Modesta Guzman is the General Director of Impostom Dr. Guzman is a lawyer with experience in both the private and public sectors it was a decisive part in the reorganization of the Christian Social Reformist Party through which he came to occupy a seat in the chamber of deputies he's also been CEO of Impostom over two different periods and his achievements have earned the Impostom glowing praise Mr. Guzman was also one of the main actors in the recovery of Haiti Postal Services in transport of humanitarian aid in that situation thank you when I came to the conference I was impressed by a poster with the photo of an old man who helped him write a letter he had the word inclusion inclusion is the magic word for the mailings of the world at this moment and in the name of inclusion we are going to present an announcement of the inclusion of the Dominican Republic because it is a product that includes it is not the video is not clear the color the I like it well the economic for Latin America in in its economic growth has determined that the countries that will lead will be the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, with the largest regional growth of 5%. The Dominican Republic has experimented in the last decades one of the most notable economies of growth in Latin America, reaching a 5.5% average GDP between the years 1991 and 2013. The Dominican Republic has excellent geographical conditions, political flexibility, democratic security and is a key and tourist destination regional and worldwide. One of the main challenges we have in the short term is the need to adapt postal infrastructures to the new reality and to a new horror that must be played. Our permanence will depend on knowing how to use the strength of the postal to become the greatest logistics. The tendency will be marked that there will be an important demand of financial services. Tamara Cotts from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said that the UPU must continue to work intensively so that mail can be included in the financial sector and this will be one of the key factors in respect of improving and providing new postal services providing a postal infrastructure that supports the economic objectives and policies of the governments. In this matter, changes must be made in the region to clarify the concept of universal postal services and the conditions in which this service should be provided the needs of the fulfillment of the same have changed. Our vision declares the contribution of the postal for the construction of a future committed to society and the main test of institutional responsibility lies in the formulation of its strategic objectives designed to improve the service performance to the users of the world. A great achievement of the postal service was the inclusion of the postal sector in the National Strategy and Development until 2030, contemplating the strengthening of the sector in its set to support the bet in the march of the initiatives of national development to a better country as a governmental support. In this context, we are forced to contribute to the transformation of a better country providing our arena for the development of the country. In the context of a better economy we are forced to contribute the ability to improve the efficiency and competitiveness that the postal market requires offering the best solutions to users and customers. Through a strategic leadership capable of driving store mail in a solid position as an economic activity and as an interrelation ha sido el desarrollo del comercio electrónico con la creación del impospat y el exporta fácil. Impospat es el servicio que ocurre el Primo de la República Dominicana con transporte internacional, de correspondencia y paquetería y con cobertura nacional, es un servicio de ICOMER, pero con un grado importante de inclusión, porque es un 40 por ciento más barato que el que tiene la competencia. El exporta fácil es un mecanismo simplificado desarrollado por el impostón para la exportación de paquetería comerciales dirigido a pequeñas y medianas empresas que desencursionan en mercados internacionales. Consiste en la entrega garantizada de los envíos de mercancía a todas partes del mundo y su finalidad es convertirse en catalizador del crecimiento de la pequeña y mediana empresa PIMES, lo que también es un sector de inclusión como es también el sector artesanal para que estas puedan perder su producto en mercados extranjeros a través de un servicio innovador en forma directa, simplificada, económica, segura y diminuyendo temas logísticos y burocráticos. La visión de correos y dominicanos es que todos estos servicios contribuyen a facilitar la vida de las personas y alcanzar la inclusión social, siendo esto una plataforma para el desarrollo nacional. Quiero destacar que el desarrollo sostenible se ha convertido un elemento fundamental del desarrollo postal, mejorar las relaciones con los consumidores, desarrollo de nuevos mercados, satisfacer la expectativa de los consumidores respecto del territorio donde se realizan las actividades, promover el desarrollo personal de los recursos humanos y sensibilizar a la población sobre temas sociales y medioambientales. La gestión de trabajo debe seguir estando en el centro del sitio postal. La productividad y el crecimiento de ahora será más dependiente de la capacidad para introducir más prácticas de trabajo flexible y agil y para manifestar los beneficios de automatización. Sin embargo, estos modelos para tener éxito y ser efectivo deben ser presentados de una manera que resulte atractivo y equitativo. Nosotros hemos estado reduciendo lo que es el uso de motocicletas, polbicicletas. En esto, reconozco que el correo francés estuvo de primer orden con un aporte de bicicletas tanto nosotros como a Cuba. Tenemos unas jornadas permanentes de mamografía para las mujeres que tienen que tardar si tienen cáncer. Tenemos el proyecto de tamizaje, del aporte de lo que son muestras biológicas de niños que acaban de nacer en lo que es un proyecto con el despacho de la primera dama de la nación. Pero como soy el último, me voy a apartar un poco del tema para decir algo y quiero que me hayan oigan muy bien, oiganme muy bien. Soy el director gerente que más experiencia o de lo que más experiencia tiene al sector postal. He oído muchas conferencias en todos estos días. He oído muchas planteamientos. Cuando recibí la carta del señor director general, el del señor Husein Bichar, decía esta conferencia estratégica tendrá lugar en un contexto de evolución permanente del sector de las comunicaciones. Decía debemos analizar juntos las dificultades y las oportunidades que enfrentan los países del sector postal y aquí estamos. Pero hay un elemento fundamental para lograr estos objetivos, es la fe. Necesitamos fe, fe en la permanencia de los servicios postales, fe para continuar con ahí en cuite son en nuestros trabajos, fe en que podemos darle al cliente las respuestas que necesiten, fe en que podemos ir por más. Y este mensaje se lo mando a los países desarrollados y a los países enviados de desarrollos a lo que yo pertenezco. Y ahí me llega la memoria, Mauricio Cartín, y me llega la memoria, Solaña Moreira, que tuvieron dos intervenciones aquí. Fe en que nosotros estamos reunidos aquí en el día de hoy y estamos reunidos aquí en esta conferencia por fe. Hemos venido de cada uno de los rincones de nuestros países de los diferentes sitios a reunirnos aquí por fe. La fe es un elemento fundamental y hemos sido convocado aquí porque José Bichar tiene fe en el servicio postal, porque José Bichar tiene sensibilidad y se sienta en la piel y que se sepa que yo no fui de lo que apoyé en su candidatura. Pero es un hombre que ha demostrado que tiene fe y que cree en esto de manera firme. Señoras y señores, esta exitosa conferencia es una muestra de ello, es una muestra firme de que nosotros todos estamos interesados en el servicio postal, en que el servicio permanezca, en que el servicio esté, en que nosotros somos nosotros y que como nosotros no hay muchos. Así que el servicio postal estará por mucho tiempo si nosotros seguimos teniendo fe en ellos. Muchas gracias. Thank you. Y après cette expérience dominicaine, bien, je vous propose d'écouter cette fois le vice-director général de l'Union Postale Universel, Pascal Clivin. Les Postes, eh bien, c'est un domaine que ce dernier connaît bien puisqu'il a démarré sa carrière en tant que conseiller scientifique auprès de la Poste Suisse avant de devenir le directeur des affaires internationales, où il a eu notamment la responsabilité de ses relations avec l'UPU déjà, et fut à de nombreuses occasions chef de délégation de la Suisse, conseiller l'administration, conseiller l'exploitation postal également. Il a de plus assuré au nom de la Suisse la présidence de la Commission de rédaction du 23e Congrès de l'UPU, Pascal Clivin. Mesdames, messieurs, chers collègues, chers amis, messieurs ministres, messieurs les panellistes, messieurs mesdames, messieurs collègues, directeurs générales, j'ai toujours pensé que la Poste était une des plus belles femmes du monde, mais en jugée par le nombre de courtisans que nous avons eu au cours de ces deux derniers jours, nous avons beaucoup d'espoir devant nous. Le secteur postal composant essentiel de l'économie mondiale, tout le monde l'a reconnu, c'est l'énoncé de la vision que nous avons depuis quatre ans, que nous avons depuis huit temps dans cette organisation, et c'est une vision qui ne se dément pas. Nous sommes de plus en plus invités à réagir par rapport à cette vision. Nous avons inclus cette composante développement durable, et c'était bien naturel, et c'est le privilège du dernier panelliste que de pouvoir réagir à ce que les collègues ont déjà dit, et donc je vais tenter de le faire. Nous avons été invités il y a quelques minutes par Amina Mohamed. L'organisation mondiale auxquelles nous appartenons, les Nations Unies, vend dans quelques jours, dans quelques mois, discuter à New York des ses objectifs du millénaire. Elle nous a appelé tout et tous à être au cœur de leur mise en œuvre des objectifs du développement durable. Eh bien les postes, eh bien l'UPU, sont déjà des acteurs du développement durable. Nous l'avons entendu à diverses reprises et je prendrai quelques exemples pour illustrer ce propos. En ce qui concerne les postes, elles ont eu un intérêt toujours évident à s'inscrire dans cette démarche du développement postale autour des trois piliers, l'environnement, l'économique et le social. C'est la garantie de l'aravenir, c'est la garantie de notre avenir. Par exemple, en matière environnementale, comme la soulignée tout à l'heure à Riemsteiner en mettant en place une gestion environnementale, nous réduisons nos coûts. Et ce n'est pas simplement un constat, nous avons des exemples. Je prendrai la poste australienne qui a fait une économie et jolie de 16 millions de dollars entre 2012 et 2015 par une gestion responsable de ces bâtiments, de ces véhicules, ou encore la poste de Samoa, petite poste, petite exemple, qui a réduit ses dépenses de carburant de 54%. Monsieur le ministre connaît, nous a interpellé tout à l'heure par rapport au modèle économique. Eh bien, c'est possible de refaire rejoindre la responsabilité environnementale et le modèle économique. Sur le pilier social tout à l'heure, Philippe Jennings, comme à son habitude, a fait la brillante démonstration que la prise en compte du dialogue social, de la diversité des minorités, de la formation de longue durée, ne peuvent qu'être des bénéfices pour les postes. Et là aussi, nous avons des exemples, et je prends toujours volontairement des petits exemples. J'ai en tête l'exemple de la poste du Salvador, concernant l'accès aux handicapés, aux postes de travail, mais aussi aux bureaux de poste. Voilà, ce n'est pas la panache des grands de réaliser, c'est tout le monde qui peut réaliser. En termes de développement économique durable, les choses sont encore plus claires. Et l'exemple de l'inclusion financière est éloquent. Nous en avons parlé cet après-midi, l'ambassadeur Lassé Swing nous a fait l'honneur d'être parmi les nôtres. La force des postes dans l'inclusion des personnes exclus du système bancaire est un atout extraordinaire, tant du point de vue du développement économique des pays et de leur politique d'inclusion que d'un point de vue des activités et des revenus des postes. Un exemple, là aussi, tout récent, nous avons produit une étude avec UN Women. Cette étude sortira dans quelques jours et elle vous démontrera clairement que les postes inclus économiques et financièrement, les femmes beaucoup plus que n'importe quel autre secteur économique, comme les banques par exemple. J'écoutais tout à l'heure avec attention ce que disait mon appui Jean-Paul Forceville par rapport à cette capacité d'inclusion de la poste par rapport aux services financiers. Et moi aussi je crois fermement en cette capacité là. La poste a été et demeure un outil de puissance publique. Les postes sont déjà partenaires des gouvernements dans de nombreuses politiques publiques d'intérêt général, que ce soit dans les transfer sociaux, les démarches administratives, l'aide à l'organisation des élections, l'urbanisme au travers de l'adressage. Au niveau national, les postes ont donc déjà démontré être des acteurs du développement économique durable. Voir parfois des leaders, comme le montre l'exemple de la poste française, qui a pris la tête d'une plateforme d'achat de véhicules électriques ressemblant de nombreuses entreprises. C'est aussi le cas de la poste de Maurice, Mauritius Poste, qui a été choisi comme partenaire principal dans la stratégie de développement durable du gouvernement. Bien sûr, les postes peuvent encore faire plus. Bien sûr, les postes peuvent encore faire mieux. L'UPU est justement là pour les guider et les soutenir dans cette voie. Alors l'UPU, justement, dans cette perspective de contribution au développement durable, l'UPU est ambitieuse. Oui, nous sommes ambitieux, mais nous devons d'être lucides. Nous ne pouvons pas prendre la place des autres, nous prenons d'ailleurs la place de personne sur ce sujet-là. Nous ne sommes pas le penude ou une grande agence de développement, mais nous prenons nos responsabilités, ces responsabilités sociales, économiques, sociétales, mais aussi aujourd'hui environnementales. Nous avons l'ambition des plus petits, tout en sachant qu'ensemble, nous pouvons apporter des solutions globales. Notre force, c'est le réseau mondial, ce fameux territoire postal unique qui a été rigé il y a 141 ans. Nous n'avons pas toujours les moyens de notre politique, notamment financièrement, en termes de ressources. Et c'est là que nous devrons prendre la mesure des nécessités de partenariat. Nous les avons vues au travers des deux jours, l'Organisation Internationale des Migrations, le FIDA, l'UNEP, Arrim vient de parler, UN Women, Gates Foundation et je pourrai en citer d'autres. Depuis des années, nous n'avons pas ménagé nos efforts pour faire en sorte de convaincre ses partenaires de demain à travailler aujourd'hui avec l'Union Postale universelle. Nous devons encore davantage accentuer notre stratégie de partenariat, c'est essentiel. La force de l'UPU, c'est aussi celle d'une organisation globale qui peut accompagner la communauté postale dans ce rôle au coeur du développement économique durable. Dans la liste des fameuses 17 propositions d'objectifs du développement durable qui sont discutés en ce moment en Nations Unies, je relève que, soit seul, et plus souvent avec les partenaires que nous avons à l'UPU, l'UPU est déjà active dans 13 de ces objectifs, que ce soit l'inclusion financière, la formation, l'apprentissage, la croissance et le développement des PME et leur accès au marché international, mais aussi la promotion de l'investissement des infrastructures durables, la lutte contre les changements climatiques et leurs effets économiques et je pourrais continuer à l'angliste. Surtout ces objectifs, nous agissons déjà, mais nous devons certainement faire encore plus pour montrer que le secteur postal est une infrastructure importante pour le développement durable et la cohésion économique et sociale. L'un des atouts de la famille postale et de l'UPU, c'est aussi la solidarité, l'efficacité d'un secteur. Et j'aimerais saluer ici le rôle de Modesto, Modesto Guzman, qui a joué au moment où Haiti était difficilement touché. Il y a quelques années, le rôle de premier secours. Ensuite, bien évidemment d'autres, la poste américaine notamment, est intervenue. Mais nous avons conduit des crises, des crises telles que le tsunami en Indonésie, des crises que le Fukushima au Japon. Et encore une fois, là, les postes ont été capables de venir en aide, non seulement au moment des événements, mais ensuite dans le cadre de la reconstruction. J'étais moi-même avec d'autres, la poste américaine et d'autres, récemment à Sendai, à la conférence mondiale sur la Disaster Risk Reduction. Et nous avons pu montrer quel rôle le secteur postal pouvait jouer dans ces moments-là. Les moments de crise, les moments de catastrophe, eh bien la poste est un élément structurant. Au-delà, la poste peut être aussi un élément qui signale les problèmes. Et donc nous avons un projet qui va naître bientôt avec l'organisation mondiale de la métérologie pour essayer de prévenir les crises, d'avertir les populations. Et c'est ça aussi le sens de notre action. C'est tous ces éléments que nous allons devoir intégrer dans nos activités et dans notre fameuse stratégie pour que l'UPU soit efficace, pour que le secteur postal et pour que le développement économique large soit réalisé. C'est par sa contribution aux impératives de développement des postes, mais aussi par sa contribution aux objectifs de développement durable de ces pays membres que l'UPU sera pleinement efficace et pertinente. La stratégie est au centre de l'action, une stratégie mondiale qui intègre les éléments et les contextes évolutifs de notre temps. C'est pourquoi nous ne travaillons pas et nous ne travaillerons jamais isolément. Nous avons besoin d'intégrer, de mettre nos atouts au service des membres et au service du développement. Notre force est dans la réalisation, le concret. Toutes nos initiatives sont traduites dans le quotidien économique et social et continuent ainsi. Merci de votre attention. Merci Pascal. Before we conclude, I have one quick question to all for you, a very quick one. And maybe I don't know if the answers will be quick, but you guys try. I hear all these positive thoughts about sustainable development, about the bright future and the difficulties as well that the post will be confronted to. But at the same time, isn't it difficult? Or isn't it even somewhat of an utopia to be willing to achieve all these goals while at the same time, the post-main competitors do not play by the same rules socially, financially, environmentally? How do you tackle that or try to tackle that? Mr Prime Minister, Mr President, I don't know if you have the time to understand or not. Yes, I have a very difficult question to which I will try to give an answer. I said earlier that our posts had the obligation to be citizen companies. And as citizen companies, they have this obligation to go beyond the simple aspect of profitability, of their activities. But nevertheless, it seems inconceivable or difficult for me to conceive a post that does not worry about being profitable. It leaves to humiliate its universal service by the state, by the government. So there is indeed a circle of things that needs to be realized by doing things that in this activity are mainly towards populations, often towards the poorest populations, for this activity that is a social activity in reality, which is communication between the populations. We must ensure that our posts, despite everything, are able to preserve their profitability. Today, most companies in the world are confronted with this new problem of sustainable development. And all companies in the world impose themselves on these obligations and these obligations are coups. Whether it is in energy, whether it is in banks, whether it is in insurance, we can clearly see all the measures taken by the insurance companies to avoid being accused of going against sustainable development, of going against the protection of the planet in a general way, even of crossing the zone as we have said it several times. So we all have this obligation. I indicated earlier that we are on a pirogue together and a hole in the pirogue is our concerns. We must avoid that there is this hole. So each of us has this obligation of surveillance, this obligation of prevention, and each of us has this obligation, eventually, of correction if someone has experienced this hole. So I estimate that our posts cannot be ignored by this obligation. Mr Jennings, you seem to react quite rapidly when I was asking that question. I would say you have this great, big, wide, wonderful, representative, socially responsible community known as the UPU. Strong in values, strong in principles, a very long history. Therefore, I see you as one of, as probably the most long standing community of interest within the UN system, bar none. But there has to come a time in a world where the family has to take some of the difficult family members to one side and say, look, we understand as a global integrator you want to provide globally integrated services. However, that should be on the basis of fair competition. And we will not accept any of these large, globally integrated integrators taking an anti-union message undercutting what all of you are trying to do is to provide a service, a universal service at an affordable price. And I think the time has come to think very carefully about how can we deal with instances of behavior such as this? To question for your administration, but surely there must be a place where we can take these issues to you and say this behavior is not acceptable. We know what the labor cost element is in all the contracts and the services that you provide. And I think when you are trying to provide decent work to your national postal workers that when markets are open and those markets are open to competitors who may be responsible at home but are not responsible with you, then I think it's time for the UPU to take a stand and to try and find a way of dealing with these measures. In the case, we have an interesting example with DHL. We have a number of issues around the world and we've taken the issue to the OECD contact point and we are now in a, but I would say a developing dialogue with DHL to deal with these cases as they emerge. In recent weeks, we have FedEx and TNT. We have the new situation with Japan Post in the process to purchase ZITEL in Australia. And therefore, this is gonna come to your doorstep, this question of unfair competition and therefore you have to try and find a way of dealing with this within the context of your work on sustainability. Maybe controversial, but I think it's only fair to all of the decent work employers in the room that your decent work agenda is not undercut by unfair competition. Thank you. See, Agusman, do you have to face this already? An unfair competition. And you can do it practically. You managed to achieve that on a daily basis. That's what puts us in another place. It's the feeling that we have for the sector, the love that we have for the sector and the delivery and the passion. The others have static numbers, cold numbers, nothing more. Thank you. Because the EU must be committed to fight against a competition that wouldn't be made. The EU remains an intergovernmental organization. The objective of this organization is to create the conditions of a global network. So we are, even if Philippe is a partisan to call the people of the family who come out a little bit, I would say, clueless. The most important thing is that the states, among them, decide the rules of the game. And the EU must make sure to provide the opportunity to discuss the rules of the game. We will have a congress in 17 months. It may be the opportunity to put these things on the table. This conference is the opportunity to put the things on the table. So it is obvious that we all have to take the measure of our responsibilities. We cannot replace our member countries. But together, we can confront those who would be tempted to take out the clues to have a more responsible behavior. Thank you. This time is flying, as I was saying. I think we have questions now from the audience. And if I'm correctly know what I'm talking about, I think the first one should be coming from Pat Mendocca from the USPS. Is that correct? No. No Pat Mendocca. Well, Japan also asked for... Yes? Okay, please. Please go ahead then. Open, there you go, open your microphone. Okay, thank you. Sure. As you said, my name's Pat Mendocca. I'm from the US Postal Service. I've been speaking in my role as the chair of the UPU working group on disastrous management or recurring theme that we've heard at the conference is the need for the post to adapt and change in order to stay relevant. Disasters are events that all posts must effectively deal with in order to accomplish their mission on a daily basis and maintain trust. And as a result, the disastrous management and building of resistance is very important to maintaining the postal sector's relevance. The United Nations Development Program has highlighted that every dollar invested into disaster preparedness saves $7 in dealing with the aftermath of a disaster. That's why disastrous reduction is an integral part of the sustainable development agenda, as Pascal mentioned. Our objectives for disastrous management are to identify ways for the UPU member posts to share lessons learned, identify best practices regarding preparation for disasters and building resilience, as well as providing assistance for the restoration of basic postal services after disasters. As we prepare for the next cycle and identify the challenges that will be affecting our sector, disastrous management can be an investment in the postal sector as a whole and the UPU member posts. So on behalf of the members of the Disaster Risk Management Group, I would like to appeal to all the participants here to support and promote our efforts to include the basic elements of disastrous management and resilience building into the post cycle. Thank you. Thank you. Any reaction? Does anyone want to react? No. So shall we go on? I think Japan also requested to speak. So if there is any Japanese represented, please open your microphone. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Modeler. But regarding a disaster due to climate change and other factors, natural disasters happen anywhere in the world. Actually, there were many natural disasters in the world, as Mr. Cleveland mentioned in his panel, such as in Indonesia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United States of America, China, Philippines, Haiti, and recently, Banuatu and so on, including our country. There are many challenges for disaster risk deduction, which are being implemented as one of the important common issues in the United Nations. In this situation, last month, Japan, with its initiative and collaboration with the United Nations, they were held the third United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Disaction in Sendai, Japan. The first conference in Yokohama and the second one in Kobe in Japan, indeed. In this opportunity, Japan would like to express our sincere appreciation to Mr. Pascal Kribas, Deputy Director General of UPU, to participate in this conference. We recognize the postal sector has an important role and function to achieve transportation, financing services, and base station for affected community. Even during natural disasters happen. So Japan would like to highly appreciate UPU's active role to play, to establish disaster management framework in line with Toha Postal Strategy. It is important to minimize the damages and effect by natural disasters. Postal sector should improve its resilience for sustainable development. At the same time, it is efficient that UPU transmits that postal sector is able to contribute for disaster risk management activities to the world as its social responsibilities. Japan also would like to expect these points to be reflected to the next Istanbul strategy in the next UPU Congress. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, actually next expert, would you like to react? Anyone? Yes, I know, France as well. But in the list, I have the WMO also wanted to speak. The World Meteorological Organization is currently represented there. If so, please open your mic. I beg your pardon. Please open your mic, sir. There you go. Thank you. I beg your pardon. Mr. Léminisme, Mr. Director-General, ladies and gentlemen, the delegates, I would like to thank the speakers of this panel for their extremely enlightening explanations and also to share what Madam Aminam Mohamed or Mr. Steiner said about the contribution that the WMO and the UPU can make to their members, both to support the goals of sustainable development but also to fight particularly in the case of the reduction of poverty and also the reduction of the risk of disaster. The WMO and the UPU are two of the oldest organizations in the United Nations system and we are lucky enough to be able to collaborate on a very positive side of collaboration. And therefore, in the future, which will be marked by these important events in terms of the reduction of the risk and climate change, I think that as much as post services, that the weather services and hydro-meteorological services of our member countries will contribute, both to make themselves even stronger, more resilient and therefore to remain effective, including in severe situations, to help governments and collectivities to become even more resilient and more effective in the face of climate change and the reduction of disasters. So it is in this spirit and in this hope that I can reaffirm the solidarity of the WMO and the UPU to work with our members for these goals. Thank you. Thank you for your precision. Now let's talk to the French delegation who also asked for it. Yes, I wanted to come back to the carbon fund. So I wanted to give you some precision. It has two ambitions. The carbon-based development of the post sector and this carbon-based development must be done via funding from the north that must finance energy efficiency projects, electrification of the posts via renewable energy or the financing of alternative vehicles in the south posts. Thanks to this implementation of these projects, the posts from the north can display their carbon neutrality. So it is a co-benefit. The second ambition is climate solidarity. The idea is not to simply transfer green technologies but also to make know-how. The carbon fund is the first sectoral carbon fund in the world that puts into play these two ambitions. It is a winning device that invokes, in terms of repatriating the 192 countries, members, in any case those who are willing, a demand for Istanbul to develop this carbon fund more quickly. We can ask ourselves the question of its integration in the EU and in its strategy. In any case, the post-carbon fund will be as shown during COP21, the next conference on climate change, the first proof of which is the first development of projects. This kind of international alliance for the climate is an extremely strong attempt that has been announced by Ban Ki-moon, that we have anticipated for us to transform and leave to associate quality of service and quality of air. Thank you for this clarification. And then I think in the last country willing to add something with Costa Rica, is it the case still? Hi, how are you? Hola a todos y a todas. Definitivamente Costa Rica pertenece a una región que por muchos años ha tenido problemas de terremotos y volcanes activos. Es por ello que para nuestro país es fundamental el papel que juegan los correos con las unidades locales de las emergencias. Para prueba, en el 2008 Costa Rica tuvo que enfrentar un terremoto y fue gracias al correo que se logró una intervención fuerte en las zonas afectadas. Lo que solicitamos a los demás correos indudablemente como señalaba Estados Unidos y los otros países es la importancia de que los correos jueguen un papel activo y presente en todas las intervenciones con las comisiones nacionales de emergencias y que con ello se puede ayudar en ese papel social que juegan los correos locales. Muchas gracias. Thank you. Do you want to add something, Mr. Guzman? La experiencia de Haití fue una experiencia que ayudó a crear una sinergia importante entre y activar algunos mecanismos que quizá estaban dormidos donde Estados Unidos participó de manera activa y más países de Europa con una acción rápida de solidaridad en la que nosotros fuimos intermediarios pero esa serie de catástrofe que han ocurrido han ido fortaleciendo la conciencia y el sentido de nosotros tenemos en relación que tenemos que tener cierto nivel de fortaleza en ese nivel de prevención y de solidaridad y de acudir en apoyo de los países que tienen esa catástrofe en determinado momento. Thank you. Mr. President, Mr. Minister, I speak under your high authority. We have a long way to go. Is it time to conclude this panel? Is it time to take some more questions? I don't know about the protocol. I will refer to you. I think we will stop there. Thank you for your attention. I think this afternoon we touched on sensitive and important issues for the future of the post, not only for the future of the post, but also for the citizens, and also for all of the post between universal service, between competition, between sustainable development, respect for the environment, respect for employees, respect, of course, of a certain margin of profit, of an economic reality. All these different equations, all these different problems that the future of the post will play, that it plays today. I think you all are aware of the need to innovate, the need to go forward, but also the confidence that you can have in your institution and then in the way that customers have that we are in green, this institution that is the post. I thank you infinitely for your attention. You have a very nice evening. I will leave the seat to Mr. Minister and Mr. President for the continuation of this conference. Thank you. I would like to thank in your name to all Mr. Serouti for the perfect moderation of this panel. Thank you also to the panelists for the wealth of their interventions. I would like to present ladies and gentlemen to invite the general director, Mr. Bichard Hussien to learn the word to formulate its conclusion remarks and I will come back to you later. Mr. Bichard. Honorable Minister, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. Well, after two days of very intense discussions covering the main issues facing our sector, I have been given the daunting task to summarize the work and the thoughts, the ideas, the suggestions, the preparations and the presentations given by 46 imminent speakers and interventions from many delegates from this floor. Your Excellencies, I want to tell you this that no stretch of imagination can I be able to summarize all the things that have been said here with the space of time that we have and certainly I will not be able to match the passion and eloquence with which the great speakers before me have spoken here. However, let me take this opportunity, your Excellencies, just to let you know that I want us to have the same pictures speak a thousand better than a thousand words. First of all, let's have a quick reflection and see what has been going on for the last two days in pictures form. Well, I want to apologize that we are not able to add voice to it but hopefully we are going to have that. Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I know it's late and I have a serious task ahead of me just to let you know that nearly 800 delegates from 136 countries, this is a record strategy conference that we have seen in the history of Universal Postal Union. First of all, may I take this opportunity, your Excellencies, to thank our hosts, Government Côte d'Ivoire for really taking leadership and organizing this great conference. Mr. Minister, on behalf of the entire members of the Universal Postal Union here, I want to convey to you and to your Government Prime Minister who is with us here, our most sincere thanks for really leading this very important conference. Your Excellencies, allow me also to thank the eminent speakers, the great men and women who have spoken here who have made this very, very interesting session for us. I also want to thank our great panelist the moderators who have facilitated our work. This by name Mr. Côte d'Ivoire, Mr. Peter Somers and Mr. Michael Suriti. I want to say, can you please give them a big round of applause, please. These men have skillfully led our debates with great professionalism and dynamism and efficiency. I want to say also that I want to extend my sincere thanks to the great team from the Universal Postal Union the International Bureau who are here who have been working behind the scene and who have made this conference a success. Your Excellencies, first of all let me just make a short comment about this conference. This is very unique in its format, in its structure and the way we have planned it and I'm very glad that it has come together the way it has. Your Excellencies, this is complete departure from what we have in Universal Postal Union our normal meetings. Our meetings are very long and sometimes very tedious and very boring speeches but I can tell you that the purpose of this conference the last two days was to make it very interactive very very engaging very stimulating thought provoking and this is what I had promised you when I opened up the stage yesterday. This is our new approach to running business in the Universal Postal Union and I want to thank all those who are involved in making this a success. Your Excellencies I have to say again that if there is one message I really want to wrap this up we must come down to really what is the thing one thing that you want to take out of this place and the one message which comes out quite clearly in my mind is that the environment of the Post on UPU we have been used to for many decades and probably about a century has changed and is changing very dramatically. We must all adapt to this new realities for the Posts and UPU to remain relevant. The big question is which has been asked over and over again directly or indirectly is how do we do this what do we need to change when do we change and by what means do you want to change your Excellencies this question may not have been asked directly but this is what we have discerned from the discussions that we have the view that has come over and over again is that we need to change UPU and the Post and we need to change it now and not tomorrow the question is how do we do it to us what has come out here is something we have thought about it in Universal in the IB and we have trained this idea through our councils we have also consulted our member countries and when we came up with three eyes innovation integration and inclusion to me these are the fundamental three issues that really was unaligned here by this conference during the last three days. Your Excellencies allow me to then at this point to highlight what really the good speakers have spoken about this certainly this may not cover everything that has been said I want to assure you that within a very short time the entire report of this conference will be able to be available on our website for all of you to access and that you will have it very shortly. However let me say this that from the technical team that has supported me really in preparing this report the fundamental issues that come to us is that innovation this is a prerequisite for the future of the postal sector integration of networks products and services is key to building a seamless postal network in line with the changing global environment the postal services are driven are drivers for inclusive and sustainable development these are the themes that have been coming to us Your Excellencies let me expand on this a little bit the first message that clearly emerged from our strategy conference is that we must innovate to adapt and indeed anticipate a changing global economic and technological business and social environment with male volumes declining we must shift the postal paradigm and put innovation at the top of our agenda in order to take advantage of the new opportunities that are emerging around us consumer behaviour is changing postal operators regulators, governments and the UPU need to think outside the box and design new business models we have had several examples of posts that have transformed the way they conduct business in order to respond to the new demands from customers and to the requirements of the E-commerce Your Excellencies the last two days we have had a great deal about E-commerce E-commerce is one of the key strategic areas of focus for the UPU innovation in E-commerce area also calls for appropriate global response from UPU having had many interventions since yesterday and the affirmations of the panelists in the third session I am even more confident and convinced that the UPU E-commerce program offers the right solutions and response to the market UPU E-commerce provides a tailored framework for the development of international E-commerce through the postal network the postal sector holds key and with ECOMPRO UPU has focused on the right things this was said by Ebay yesterday an eminent speaker or panelist who has spoken here Mr Chopra of Canada post said we can't be the network of the left of us I quite agree with him we must be not be the network of only providing those left of us we have the network we have the rich, we have got the potentials and we have faith that the post office can be able to deliver the best in the market Your Excellencies these are clear and strong messages and therefore it was urgent to act and ECOMPRO presents a first step in responding to the needs of international E-commerce however we need to go further to answer some of the concerns expressed reliability of the postal network adopted remuneration predictability and clarity in the product mix and achieving a win-win situation for the customers and the post among those challenges we have to tackle as we move forward we got the message and we shall act on that Your Excellencies communication technologies represents a tool and opportunity for to transform that's what we have been told yesterday and to offer and create new added value services we had many examples from countries around the world of the capacity of posts to innovate and embrace new technologies and enter the digital space however while the posts are often ranked as the most trusted agency they will face challenges in transferring this trust to the digital economy unless digital competence and ensure that they are able to demonstrate this competence with so many examples of how the traditional postal business is transforming itself through innovation and market evolutions all of this must be supported by enabling regulations and here again we are talking to our regulators our debates have shown that there is a need for a renewed regulatory approach to the postal sector in all its dimensions mobile, financial services logistics, e-commerce trade facilitations etc the UPU will remain a partner for the postal community in this endeavours Your Excellencies the next theme that came out quite well after innovation what simply in a simple words what we are told innovation is that we must innovate in our the way we do business we must innovate in our technologies we must come up with new products and services that meet the customer demands of today the next thing that's one pillar the next one is integration unless we are integrated your innovations are useless if you have a very efficient postal network and your next country which is next to you here doesn't have the network then your efficiency is all lost and here we say that the second theme that we can draw is that integration of the network products and services is critical in building both seamless global postal networks and business development opportunities at the international level what is needed is full integration between various stakeholders of the supply chain posts, the transport sector and customs and border securities are all very important in our business developing interconnections between customs post is of paramount importance in facilitating cross border e-commerce your excellences the UPU and world customs organization have been working very closely together to develop joint programs and processes needed to facilitate the circulation of items across our borders interoperability of international postal network is one of the main goals of the Doha postal strategy as we have had in many countries yesterday and today postal operators operations are increasing in complexity integrated technological solution based on common standards are necessary to facilitate global exchanges your excellences here again the UPU is bringing concrete answers and solutions to the postal community by providing standard IT infrastructures solutions and services to designated people with UPU track and trace services which covers nearly 94% of the world's posts messaging through the postnet networks financial payment services and with IFS we provide a full and affordable infrastructure to all regardless of their level of development this integrated UPU approach is vital to ensuring both the development of e-commerce and postal trade facilitation at world wide level it must continue to be strong component in our next strategy roadmap your excellences this brings me to my third pillar here which is inclusion and sustainable development without any doubt our conference has shown the postal success role as a driver for inclusive and sustainable development inclusion has been a keyword in almost all our panels the capacity of the postal sector to foster inclusion in all its dimensions social, economic and financial has been underlined throughout our conference this message is clear if it is not us then no one else can do it I can tell you that so we have just to do that first of all economic inclusion is very critical and has been underlined by many speakers inclusion of micro small and medium size enterprise in the world market is one example of how the postal network can contribute to offering economic opportunities this was said yesterday secondly the topic of financial inclusion of unbanked and excluded population is now high on the agenda of governments and posts but also at the international organizations level the postal financial inclusion is becoming a strategic priority in many countries around the world from Africa to Europe and from Asia to Latin America this afternoon you have had Madam Amina speaking greatly at length on how the postal sector can become a very important infrastructure for providing this inclusivity agenda of the sustainable development which is now going to be adopted this is nothing new for us the post has been delivering financial service for many decades the UPU is very active in the financial inclusion field and working with strong partners such as IOM who are convinced that the post have a major role to play in financial inclusion thirdly your experiences through innovative e-services postal networks are drivers for digital inclusion it is accessible to all and the postal sector can help to achieve these objectives the importance of the universal service in delivering inclusion was underlined the universal service serves as an infrastructure that helps support the inclusion objectives we have today inclusion through posts represent a fundamental contribution to the sustainable development goals of the international community protecting our environment and supporting the sustainable development goals and the post must be prepared to participate and provide solution in this area the resilience of the post to natural disasters as well as contribution to post disaster response was emphasised by several countries particularly in the last panel discussion and these countries those who have suffered from such problems they have to respond to these difficult situations but also to serve their communities your excellencies ladies and gentlemen through integration innovation the postal sector will help deliver inclusion and foster sustainable economic development each element is dependent on the other and therefore we must all act together in all these dimensions ladies and gentlemen in conclusion innovation are for me the main drivers that should ship our strategic framework for 2017 to 2020 my ambition is for all of us to deliver together by 2020 a postal world where innovation is shared, promoted and driven not a luxury but as a reality for all of us it is my vision that a postal world we should be able to create a postal world where full integration of network at national, regional and global level is no longer an objective but a reality for all of us it is also my vision that a postal world in which our sector unique ability to include populations economic actors and territories is fully recognised and exploited by governments, development partners and international organisations however for us to achieve these objectives we need to transform the universal postal union the universal postal union needs to undergo a profound and fundamental transformation by 2020 we need quicker and more efficient decision making processes we need to transform our regulations and practices and the way we deal with this development issues we also need to have a clear and adaptable mandates which we can be able to implement we must come up with quick and concrete proposals for reforms I want to emphasise here that the excellence is the change that we have all asked for here we have only very short window between now and October we must all act together very very fast to come up with real proposals which can change this organisation and this has to go to the Council of Administration in October from there then it can be able to meet the deadline for us to change these things in 2016 Congress if we miss that train I can assure you we have to wait until 2020 before we can take a decision and I can tell you the market is not going to wait for us Your Excellency I would like to say that our strategy conference has paved the way to our next roadmap the ideas flowing from this conference will be further refined through seven regional roundtables over the next couple of months before a final examination by our Councils and a final approval by Congress as a global postal family let us not miss this opportunity to build an even an even more relevant postal sector and a UPU that is more efficient transformed and fit for purpose Your Excellency I want to conclude with final remark the last speaker here who spoke Mr. Guzman said that we must have faith in the UPU I am a very optimistic person and together myself and the entire team of the International Bureau are determined Your Excellency on a final note again I must say that I and the Deputy Director General were greatly humbled for the expression of support and the confidence with which you have expressed to us this really touched us for us it was just a normal course of duty when you elected us in 2012 we took the promise to be able to deliver to you a UPU UPU and the post must change for us UPU and the post will change and together will move the world thank you very much for your attention Your Excellency Congratulations again to the Deputy Director General of the UPU congratulations for this brilliant speech for this engaging speech congratulations to him and to his entire team for the impulse that he gives daily the Universal Postal Union Ladies and gentlemen I do not wish to abuse your time but we I remember with insistence that there were earlier two questions of speech to which we did not give to not give the impression that we are making ostracism here I would like with your permission to give the word to two countries which have been recorded and which were not intervened that is Iraq I think for problems of translation and China if the representatives are still there if they are not there I think we have done our duty so we can go to the next before arriving to the word of closure earlier I would like to to the next Deputy Director General to indicate that there will be the continuation of this strategic conference so this regional strategic conference which will take place on the Congress of Istanbul in 2016 in Turkey it is so natural that we give the word to our other 2016 I pass the word to Turkey to the delegated of Turkey Chief of Delegation of Turkey he is not there Yes you have the word Turkey here if you are there Hello everyone Turkey China we will host the European meeting in 2016 in Istanbul the things the law has been changed in 2013 and we adopted new law by this law the regulation and the operation site operation site and the regulation site has changed we determined as the regulator of the sector and we will try to do our best in 2016 to arrange all the things about the meeting we look to seeing you in Istanbul thank you in the international office directed by the Director General Mr. Houssin and the Vice Director General Mr. Clivaz after their entry into the operation China has a strong and stable international office in the EU We are convinced that the Director-General, Mr. Roussin, and the Vice-Director-General, Mr. Knébas, are able to continue to direct and coordinate the union's members' payments to raise the challenge of all members' payments, to raise the challenges that we are facing at the moment, and to promote the development of the entire world. Thank you again, Mr. President. Thank you to China for this very nice word. We are going to, ladies and gentlemen, now I think to go to the last board of this strategic conference. After the brilliant speech, the engaging speech that was made earlier by the Director-General, I would like to make a speech. I would like to say a few words if you allow me to. After two days of intense work, here we are at the end of this strategic conference in 2015, on the theme of bringing innovative, integrated and inclusive solutions. To address this theme, the International Bureau of the EU has developed a programme that is composed of nine panels that have treated subjects as relevant to each other. After having noted only by the phenomenon of globalization, globalization, the economic and technological environment is constantly changing. You have just raised the title that the postal world is not at the brink of these changes and that it needs to accompany these changes. With the spread of the network, the posts have a fundamental role to play in the development policy of our countries, especially in financial inclusion policies, and the reduction of poverty in our states. Ladies and gentlemen, I have often heard that the posts of the world form a postal family. Your massive presence and distinction at this conference, as well as at this closing ceremony, constitutes, in my eyes, a patent proof of this solidarity. Let us act collectively to allow our respective posts to cross new paths and to raise the challenges they are all facing. Ladies and gentlemen, for two days, we have talked about changes, transformations. Everyone has understood that the change as such is not truly an option today. The DEG has said it, but I allow myself to repeat it. This change has become an obligation for all of us. Our people have legitimate expectations that we, governments, institutions, or multilateral organizations, have the duty to meet. We have the obligation to bring to our populations innovative, integrated, inclusive solutions. The good news is that we can do it. And we will certainly be able to do it if we work collectively. The world will continue to change. It will therefore return to the post of change as well, and above all to adapt permanently. The post will succeed until now. I believe it will succeed in the future. Let us remain the actors of change in this world. Ladies and gentlemen, we will have to invite you. I would not have finished my speech without addressing the name of this necromancer, Mr Alassane Wattera, President of the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire. In the name of Prime Minister Duncan, who was here with us yesterday, I would like to thank him very much for the Côte d'Ivoire. First of all, to the General Director of the UPU, Mr Bichard Hussain, to the Vice General Director Pascal Cliveuse, and to all of the personnel of the International Bureau for the quality and reception of all the attention given to my delegation and myself have been the subject since our arrival here in Geneva. I would then like to congratulate all the panelists and all the experts for their participation in the different debates, as well as for the brilliant contributions to which we have had the right during these two days. Finally, to all of you, I should say congratulations and congratulations for your respective contributions to the success of this work. I would like to thank you each and every one of you. When we leave Switzerland and welcome you, I would like to thank the Côte d'Ivoire, the whole of the Côte d'Ivoire, but also this country so dear to many of us. I would like to finally say or say to you that your hopes have been achieved, that your hopes have been achieved by coming here, and I hope that we have been at the height of this event. I would therefore like, ladies and gentlemen, to conclude by saying that the Côte d'Ivoire has marked its availability on the side of the European Union and the international postal community to raise all the challenges that our countries are facing in the coming years. I wish you all a good return in your respective countries. To sacrifice the tradition, I declare on this, close the 2015 Strategic Conference of the Universal Postal Union. I would like to thank you for your kind attention.