 Welcome to this session on macroeconomic policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis, and by macroeconomic policies I refer to the full range of fiscal, monetary and trade policies. My name is Dirk Wilhelm Tevelde and I'm my director for international economic development at ODI and I'm also a professor of practice at SOAS University of London. At ODI I've been leading a project on macroeconomic policy responses to COVID-19 and this work has been funded by Grant from the IDRC and we're working with Southern Voice and five Southern think tanks in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Peru, Cantonia and Kenya. I will pass on to my co-chair Estevania in a minute, but let me just point to sort of three salient features of this particular crisis. First of all whilst we knew that this crisis was going to have a major impact on poorer countries, I hadn't realized how big an impact it was going to have, but also that it was going to have a bigger impact on poorer countries at least taking over two to three years and that's where we are now so we definitely are seeing a larger impact on average, on average, so there's a huge heterogeneity. Also there will be irreversibilities and also certain vulnerable groups are completely left out of the policy responses and that is different I think from the global financial crisis as well. Of course there are positive elements at the moment as well that faster sort of responds in the digital economy for example. The second salient feature is that macroeconomic policies have been fairly broad-ranging, that's the good news, but clearly there's a huge divergence in terms of fiscal space where poorer countries have had much less fiscal space compared to developed countries in terms of being able to master a financial or fiscal response so they've been constrained. And thirdly I think there's a lot of untapped potential so yes the macroeconomic policy responses have been wide-ranging particularly in the monetary front and there's much more that can be done and that's across a range of countries in terms of targeting the fiscal policies thinking about the monetary policies and targeting them and also better linking trade and production policies and so we think there's lots of untapped potential to target what we call a rainbow recovery, a recovery that is more transformative, it's more inclusive including of women and it's greener and we are actually sort of providing the evidence, the simulations, the assessments that can sort of help to inform policy responses going forward. So on this journey we will be sort of hearing from a range of think tanks but let me just now pass on to my co-chair Estefania Scherfe from Southern Voice over to you Estefania. Thank you. Good morning to this parallel session. Today I'll have the pleasure to co-chair this session together with Derrick. My name is Estefania Scherfe and I'm at the program of the Southern Post where a network of things is on the global staff and Derrick was with me. Estefania would you kindly take the microphone closer to your amount. It's breaking up. Thank you from the Global South. Some of our member organizations have been taken part in this research initiative. I would like to first invite Sheridan to briefly present some of the findings. Sheridan is a senior researcher of the National Economic Development Group. After presenting some of the lessons to the researchers, I will discuss them in detail in the final round of the session, and I want to remind you that this is just the first five minutes of the session, so I would like to allow for five minutes of the session to kind of be able to hear from the audience, so if you're kind of under stress or are welcome, you can use the chat to see what's going on in your mind. And also, you can try to have your speakers keep an attention, and I'm going to give you the microphone. I think I'm just breaking a bit. In the meantime, I'll talk a little more about the emerging findings regarding the long-lasting effects of COVID-19 in the Global South. Good morning, everyone. I'm Sheridan Raga, a senior research officer at ODI. We started monitoring the impact and policy responses to COVID-19 since February 2020. And since then, what we observe is the great divide between high and low-income countries, depending on their access to vaccine and fiscal resources. For example, G20 economies were able to deploy 22% of GDP's worth of fiscal stimulus packages, but in low-income countries, they were only able to afford 3% of GDP's worth of fiscal support. The latest analysis from the IMF all on this long-term divide is actually very alarming. Advanced economies are expected to have short-lived but deep recession and without any permanent losses, but in developing countries, they are expected to have protracted economic downturns combined with scarring effects. Since the pandemic is expected to shrink, some of the contact-intensive sectors permanently and have adverse effects on schooling, which are not prepared to shift to virtual learning immediately. Under the IDRC project, we saw that even among the five southern countries, the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 varied widely. Peru was expected to grow by 3.6% in 2020, based on pre-COVID forecast, but it actually contracted by 11% in 2020, revealing that Peruvian economy actually lost a total of 15 percentage points of growth to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Tanzania was able to grow by 4.7% in 2020, and this is just one percentage point below a free COVID forecast. These southern country case studies reveal to us rich information on the channels of this pandemic impact, but today, I wanted to highlight four key factors that explain the growth differences among these southern countries. So the first one is the timing and stringency of the mobility restrictions imposed. So Peru was one of the first countries worldwide to impose a very strict national lockdown, almost halting its activities and mining, construction, and services sector. Meanwhile, Tanzania did not impose any national lockdown, enabling its actors to continue their economic activities business as usual. The second factor is the structure of these economies, which revealed to us the heterogeneity on the main channels of COVID impact in these countries, be it on export in the Bangladesh and Sri Lankan cases, or through services and tourism in Kenya and Tanzania, or large unemployment effects in Peru. Common among these countries is that there is a disproportionate impact on women, youth, and those employed in the informal sector in terms of unemployment and reduced wages. There are also some nuances around these structural issues. So what is the upsetting impact that we observe from Kenya's record high demand for tea during the pandemic? And Tanzania also benefited from rising global cold prices during the crisis. Second is the hunter cyclical role of remittances in southern countries defying earlier downside forecasts. Unfortunately, we are also seeing an emergence of the new poor and an observed reversal of structural transformation. This is very evident in Bangladesh and we'll have permanent losses in terms of human capital, income, and productivity, and all this will have negative implications in long term growth. The third factor is of course the magnitude of policy responses during the pandemic. In all southern countries, it is evident that central banks have been swift and generally were successful in increasing the lending in their economies, but on the government side, fiscal responses have been heavily shaped by the initial fiscal conditions among these countries. So for example, Kenya entered this pandemic with pre-existing debt sustainability issues, which constrained the government to deploy just 2.4 percent of GDP's worth of fiscal stimulus, and this is lower than what was deployed in sub-Saharan African countries or low-income countries on average. The final point that I want to highlight is that the implementation and the quality and type of policy instruments matter. Country case studies are in consensus that there are challenges in terms of inefficiencies and implementation of fiscal stimulus, and there are also limited distributional impact in terms of on the side of monetary policy measures implemented during the crisis. But generally, we assess that these economic responses have been helpful, but they are not targeted enough to put or incorporate rainbow stimulus elements, which are needed for countries to build back better from the pandemic. Currently, the packages have been heavily tilted on rent stimulus or those short-term interventions intended to stimulate demand, for example, temporary capital loans or cash transfers. There are also very muted responses in terms of green recovery efforts and blue stimulus, which are supposed to support markets and trade diversification. We also serve very little evidence in terms of targeting improvement in quality of economic participation of women and youth, or what we call yellow stimulus. We also wanted to flag the Sri Lankan case, which adopted a restrictive trade regime policy during the pandemic. While this has helped Sri Lanka's trade deficit to narrow down, at least for now, this may have negative repercussions that is long-term and might be irreversible. And this will have implications on Sri Lanka's trade, competitiveness, and diversification. And this is actually an opposite of what a blue stimulus should look like. Moving forward, we encourage southern countries to look into more balanced rainbow stimulus, combining red and yellow ones to ensure that no one gets left behind, green spending to ensure that future growth are disaster-proof, and of course blue stimulus to support upscaling, diversification, and transformation of sectors that will increase the quality of growth in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sherri Ling, for sharing these insights. I would like to now move on to and invite Deb and Tausi to join some of their particular findings. So I would like to start with you, Tausi. Can you please tell us a little more of how have the macro-nomic impacts in Tanzania, how they've been in Tanzania, how these impacts have affected the country, and how have the country have been responding to them? Please, Tausi. Lina, can we please play Tausi's video? Good morning, everyone. My name is Dr. Tausi Pagakida. I'm the Executive Director of Economic and Social Research Foundation based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. ESLF has been grateful for this opportunity to be a member of this very important study on shaping the macro-economic in response to COVID-19, and I'll be providing the experience from Tanzania. Tanzania has experienced its first case of COVID-19 in March 2020, and so far we have been having about three waves of this pandemic. The pandemic has had a very severe impact on our social and economic performance, and as we can see that our GDP growth went down to 4.7% last year, where in Tanzania we have been experiencing an average growth of about 8% and above for the last 10 years or so. Several sectors have been affected due to this pandemic, and this includes the agriculture sector, and especially the performance on the horticulture sector. Tourism sector has been severely affected, transport and logistics, industry and trade, but also the social, the burden of the provision of social sector has also been severely also affected. This includes the health sector. As you know, already the health sector is stretched. Now with the pandemic was a bit even more stretched. Education sector, as last year we had to close schools for about three months so that to protect our kids from this pandemic. Although the country has not unveiled any stimulus packages, but several measures have been undertaken to counter the effect of this pandemic. These include short-term measures, but also medium and long-term physical policy options. I'll start with the short-term measures that have been undertaken so far, and I will dwell on three of them. The first one including we had to reprioritize the 2021 budget expenditure through allocating more funding to the health system to enable the sector to cope with the pandemic. Secondly, to mobilize funding from development partners, non-state actors soliciting concessional loans from the World Bank and FDB, as well as obtaining COVID-related debt relief from IMF. And lastly, budgeting substantial funding for implementation of social protection and social safety next measures to avet an estimated 500,000 Tanzanians from falling back into poverty. Medium and long-term physical policy options include we developed and adopted the third five-year development plan 2021-2022 to 2025-2026 with COVID mitigation measures in mind. And this plan provides strategies and plans backed by adequate financing to help the economy bounce back and build better. Secondly, supporting private sector-led industrialization to manufacture process and add value to the country's large natural resources and products that are currently exported without adding much value. Third, financing and implementing many physical infrastructure investment in the construction of new tarmac roads, improvement of our airports, we are heavily investing in our SGR, railway line, and so forth. And then another one is on advocating and mainstreaming gender in all country strategies and plans in order to create an inclusive and equitable society where men and women have equal rights in all matters including addressing traditional stereotypes in order to bounce back better and leave no one behind in the pandemic recovery strategy. And lastly, I want to mention directing government agencies, business actors to harness the potential of digitalization e-commerce for the country to be better placed to benefit the global markets for its goods and services in digitalizing world trade era amidst the clear, deadly pandemic and global interaction of international trade. As I can say that the future now is hopeful as the access of vaccination is improving both at the global level, even here in Tanzania we have just, we have received the first batch of vaccination and now vaccination is accessible to all Tanzania age 18 and above. So I can say this is really very positive and the future now looks brighter. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Tauci. Maybe before doing some follow-up questions I would like to move on to our next speaker and then we can go back to to do some get your earful up inside. So now I would like to invite Debapriya Vatacharyas. So Deb is a distinguished fellow at CPD, well-known, well-established think tank in Bangladesh and among others he's also chair of Southern Voice. So Deb please can you tell us a little bit more about the differences or the changes that you have seen in the macroeconomic sector regarding let's say business as usual and also what are the long-lasting impacts of the pandemic that you see in Bangladesh? Thank you very much. Hello colleagues, good morning, good afternoon, good evening whatever is suitable. Pleased to be here. Let me concentrate on a couple of points which may be a bit distinct from what my predecessors have been talking about. First of all you need to understand the country itself. It's important the contextual realities are very important the benchmark conditions are important. So Bangladesh is got the first infection was detected back in March 2019. Bangladesh ranks 26th in the world in terms of infection and 8th in Asia. So it's a moderately affected country by the pandemic. It's going through its second wave is receding, third wave is anticipated. So the macroeconomic impact on the growth is that the economy did not contract but it came down to its lowest growth rate at 3.2% which is the lowest in the last decade and there had been impact on various areas as may be expected but there is a k-shaped recovery going on at this moment both in exports, remittances, revenue collection, public expenditure and etc etc. So the response on the part of the government had been a set of measures which essentially included direct food transfer and direct fiscal support, more liquidity into the system through monetary easing, then more private sector support through various kinds of hybrid interest rate decrease and support to the workers payments through loan special credit lines and there had been also various kinds of budgetary tweaking with the tariff rates and the tax rates so that the domestic market oriented industry can pick up a bit. So but essentially it was more focused and so the as a share of GDP it ranged from 2.2% to 1.7% in two years but these are all allocation. The real disbursement had been much less so and and and there had been targeted policy here and there but essentially it was monetary policy dominated package and at the same time a bit of a hybrid where you have fiscal under subsidization of the interest rate in certain ways. So the point which I'm going to make here today is this is my every point I have in this morning is that the the stimulus packages had been pretty skewed in favor of the monetary policies whereas the the impact of direct fiscal transfer and food support would have had much better impact particularly from the point of view of the disproportionately affected left behind people. So the macro intervention with a much more inclusive and balanced micro results that is my whole point today. For that matter we what we have done is we have run a set of simulation and two major scenarios have been conceived. One if we would have increased the public expenditure two times doubling the public expenditure what effect would have got in the recovery process. The other is given the importance of human development inputs if we have increased by 50% the public expenditure on health and education sorry what would have been the impact. So these are the two scenarios if we want to improve upon the the monetary policy impact on the left behind people who are disproportionately affected due to the pandemic. So let me share with you the results. The results are quite interesting in the sense that in both cases we find the impact on the left behind categories and we have five groups of five segments of population starting from marginal farmers to landless farmers people with education people workers without education. So we see that in both cases what is happening is in in in these cases that the impact on the relatively marginalized communities whether in the rural or in the urban area there have been much more effective or improvement in terms of their intake whether it's wage or income is much more higher in these cases. What is important to note is that in both cases we see it is not that it is not the GDP growth rate which really records higher level or even although exports also increases but it is the income and the consumption of the marginalized people which in comes increases much more. In in both cases what we all observe that those who are educated they seem to gain a bit more and skilled labor seems to gain a bit more. This has serious important policy in the conclusion implication in terms of designing other collateral measures in order for these people to so that they can maximize their benefit in these cases. As you know in all these cases the consideration had been do we have the fiscal space do we have the money to run this kind of relatively expansionary fiscal policies in these in poorer economies whether the revenue collection is around 10 to 12 percent at the 15 percent of the GDP. So our study shows that whilst fiscal concern fiscal space concern is an important thing but it is not necessarily the most important thing. It is the ability to spend even if you have the money is a much more challenging case over here given the nature of the institutions the policies and the ability to directly touch the households level information and and access them and engage them through an whole of the society approach that is no less an important part. So the the existing wisdom globally is that it is the fiscal space we should be concerned about. I am contending here fiscal space may be important but no less important is the institutional capacity or the capability or its information base to reach out those left behind and create a synergistic approach in terms of remounding with a much more broader base not a k-shaped recovery but in in in in fact a reverse pyramid type of recovery or type of with or pyramid type of recovery which we can think of and this will also have implication in terms of blending other policies along with it whether it is green financing whether it is gender sensitive policies whether it is trying to reach out to the child you know labor which may have increased in during the pandemic and also in terms of the other health related issues which we are seeing as spending because the public health service and the education service it has to be improved upon that is one of the you know most major message which is coming through colleagues that was essentially my point that the the recovery package in the future this has to be blended along with the transformative changes which we are talking about and within that the fiscal policy particularly public expenditure its quality and its impact will pay the key role thank you thank you very much uh Deb without going any further I want to invite um any members of the audience who would like to ask any questions or or make a comment please make a request to share your video and camera we would be uh more than happy to hear also from you and in the meantime while you will get your questions ready I just want to make a follow-up question to you Deb and Tausi if let us know if your microphone is working well but to you Deb I wanted to ask how reversible do you think are these changes that you have seen so far mostly regarding vulnerable populations and those who are normally left behind uh thank you thank you for the question Stephanie no we we we are now looking into these changes what we have seen in the economy and the society and in the governance the the first is that their manifestation two is their duration and of course their irreversibility or how do you take it forward or how do you really get a synergistic trade-offs in these cases over there so let me give you a concrete example the schools particularly the secondary school and primary schools have been closed for the last 14 months now they are going to open as the vaccination has come to a certain critical level coverage and we are going to open up the schools now what we see in during this period what has happened number one a big digital divide has emerged because many people do not have smartphone young people they cannot afford gigabytes in order to access online accessing assignments and teaching so there is a digital divide to be dealt with number two we have seen there had been dropouts early marriages of young girls getting married due to number of circumstances not only because the school is closed but also because of the income poverty has increased in the family marginalized family so we have a lot of girls drop out from the school and third during this period we have seen because of lack of income in the family many young children or young boys have gone out and become child labor so the the important part of the recovery package is that in order to make this to bring back to the new normal we will have to have much more targeted policies supported by those fiscal policy I have just mentioned in order to have much more you know that kind of to catch up with the earlier stage and to bring back to the normal these are possible and all these things have in have reflected upon an increasing social discrimination of the existing of the existing structural flaws and have also created a new layer of structural discrimination over there so we have a double whammy over here to deal with and it is every policies in the country in the each of the sector I have just given the education sector this could have been in the health it could have been also in other areas of decent jobs and everything would have to think through this kind of policies and I see the think tanks have a big role to play in the south and not only in the south but also in the north and maybe collaborative approach is much more useful in these cases for blending of experiences to give the perfect solution for each of the countries as we do not believe one size fits all that's is important part of it you may have a general idea but each of the countries have to work it through I think that's a task we have in hand thank you thank you very much that there's one question one question one more question for you but before that I wanted to double check with how see if you can unmute yourself right now so is your microphone working right now or not pretty yeah I think we still have a problem over there so I think I'm gonna just move on to to the next question that is for you that so joseph alivia asks can you explain more about the transformative actions that must be included in recovery packages the one of the transmobility there there may be many one from the supply side another from the demand side on the supply side we think the quality of the institutions its information base is very critical there are countries which wanted to reach out to the poor people to the disadvantage to the left behind to the push behind people but they didn't have an adequate database to deal with it so having the quality of institution the database and the local government performances will be critical but let me come to the supply demand side the demand side part is very what is important what we see the returns to skeet labor returns to education is going to increase tremendously in the coming days particularly with the digital divide out there so it is very important on in our build back strategy a build back better strategy and the better would be not only about greening not only about gender sensitivity but also about skill intensity about the upgraded skills which will be necessary in the coming days so that they can respond to the new market demands I won't go as far as the fourth industrial revolution looming large I will just say how the global supply value chain is going to increase and the skill intensity is going to take place so even in sectors like the garments apparel sector one of the major sectors in most of the exporting developing countries the demand on artificial intelligence on the robotization and upgraded skills will be very important and and this is where you blend your skill transformation policy with the greening policy and the gender policy together so that when this skill transformation takes place the demand on skills in takes place and women are linked to that and do have a sustainable green policy along attached to that that is that the the triangulation I would think will make the difference in the transformation the skills the gender and the and the green these are the three triangulation I would say is a short thing in the future will we get money for that will the private investment get returns for that that is for the for us to see whether there are no market distortions so that these investments really gets credited for that and I also see international support measures coming from the development partners international development partners putting in their good resources case resources in this area thank you thank you very much that in the meantime I have a type of question for you tells would be to learn a little more about why the economic impacts that seem to be very good helping the case we would like to understand a little bit better so in case you can up and mute yourself you can always type your editor and we're happy to share here I don't have any other questions and in the queue Q&A I would like to really encourage you to also make any any comments in the meantime I want to invite also direct key reflections based on these first two presentations thank you Stefania I mean I think the presentation are very interesting and also so wide-ranging experiences that we've encountered in the sort of the five countries and we've now heard from Bangladesh and also Tanzania initially and also the sort of the policy responses are a different quite a fair bit sort of in Tanzania from understanding is that quite in the beginning in the first year it was all business as usual and it's only now actually that it's a new government that there's a bit more of a change and there's more active engagement it's there's now a generally sort of approach towards more openness as I see it of the economy and but the main response was business as usual a five-year development plan and and that was the case in Bangladesh there has been a response and there has been a fiscal response as well but I think what we hear from from from Depp and perhaps that's also a question perhaps to him is that there has been a response and the magnitude of the response matters and I think that's something that's shared and is highlighted as one of the four factors of why the impact of COVID has been different across countries and so to structure the economy the health responses the size of the responses whether it's fiscal or monetary and most of the countries have actually they were physically restrained were focusing much more on monetary policies and they've been quite flexible across the range of countries they've been able to step in and we still don't know the full sort of inclusivity impacts of those sort of non-traditionally monetary policies but the fiscal responses have been sort of important but what Depp is putting on the table as well is that it's implementation capacity and it's the targeting that also matters and I think that's something that Sharon has highlighted and that's where we have played we are playing a huge important role as think tanks as the community around policy makers is to basically say it's not just whether or not you have responded it's also how you respond matters for the type of recovery for the transformation effects and so we need to make sure that we continue to monitor the impacts but also the policy responses and we want to understand whether governments are learning are they changing their policy responses as we go along are they actually becoming more targeted we now know a bit more about the crisis initially it was it was a complete crisis response now we know a bit more so unfortunately we can't hear from Taoshi but I'm just interested to see to hear more of them what what is going on in countries are they actually saying well now crisis is done and we're back to are we actually taking seriously the irreversibilities the impacts that we've seen and we're down to targeted our policy responses and we learn and now we're ready to think more about transformation impacts do you see any space their depth and I'm very interested about this sort of short term first sort of longer long-term impacts and perhaps now whilst we know that the four countries have had a larger impact on average they can't close on back by thinking about sort of appropriate policies to their circumstances is there space to think about more inclusive and a greener recovery in Bangladesh for example shall I come in yes thank you thank you I think that's a good reflection and let me make up for my you know missed point shared indeed a fantastic summary of all the points over there we in and obviously the four five points how do you explain the diversity of responses and their size magnitude and the nature and their effectiveness in terms of delivery that's a that was very well taken and you have taken it one step forward let me say first thing first in that way once we have publicized bit of our survey our study results we did see some response on the part of the government the in the post budget that is met in July last July the government has come up in Bangladesh with another set of stimulus packages as they call it although it's a misnomer in certain way it's a public assistance policy packages and because incentives are only for those who are where where you have the some kind of hybrid commercial loan mechanism not necessarily on the transfers so and very incident very curiously the whole package has been dominated by the fiscal intervention so I think that the government when they were responding to the second wave of the pandemic they did realize that they need to not only improve upon the size the magnitude of the fiscal and food transfer to to to protect the consumption level of the depth behind people and and and by implication you know withhold the deepening of inequality but they also understood that they will have to complement it the the the excess the the liquidity channeled into the private sector for reinvestment or opening up the sectors or or saving them from bankruptcy has to be complemented by the labor market interventions through consumption protection and other things I and that's as a result you will see that we see that there had been greater emphasis on fiscal transfers and etc you're you're muted you're muted sorry I have been left behind somebody has intervened so the issue is that the the information deficit is a critical area I think it's for most of the countries although in most countries the digitization has progressed very fast during the last one year use of various kinds of apps in the public services and also in both in education and other areas but nonetheless the data deficit is severe so this is all of a sudden even when case of vaccination we are seeing those kind of things and also how to really do that so how do you really improve upon the data gap without intervening into the private policy of privacy or undermining the privacy of individual citizens in a less than democratic country is again a bigger moral challenge which we have in in front of us at this moment as well so my general point to Dirk William that yes it we we we see that there are changes in the packages but and also there are also attempts to link the pandemic related measures to the other policy frameworks which are there in the country for example in Bangladesh we are preparing for the LDC graduation so the LDC graduation trajectory is now being linked to those kind of things that because of the LDC graduation we are going to lose some preferential market access measures in those in that in response to that what kind of diversification we want to do within our export sector but also within the productive capacity building as a whole so it is being linked with one with the other along with that on the on those we are also linking it to the SDG policies because SDG policies talks about leave no one behind and we are seeing how they are going to be impacting upon the SDGs and for example one issue is coming out very strongly that is the intergenerational equity issue because of the pandemic and one particular area which has come out in our research is the nutrition area because the one of the adjustment process or coping process of the poor households had been cut back on the meals cut back on your protein intake cut back on your food you know child food children's food in that way so if that be the case how the intergenerational equity will show up which may not immediately come in our radar given our assessment framework so as I say that we see the recovery issues now being linked to the LDC graduation issues along with your five year plans and others and also your SDG trajectory as it goes this is how the informed policymaking is happening and we have a big role to play to alert the policymakers to these pitfalls thank you you're breaking Stefania you're breaking up as Stefania and now we can't hear you maybe we could directly go to Tausi unfortunately Stefania we can't hear you and Tausi we can't hear you either I suppose maybe we also need we're finishing towards the end of the session if you type in Stefania could you just one final reflection maybe Sherlyn from you on the importance of the type and quality of this customers maybe you can say a little bit more on that and so how important that is and I think that's something where the focus of our sort of policy outreach should be should be on yes so I wanted to highlight of course the magnitude you're still muted hello the type of fiscal stimulus instrument matters of course and we have first I want to highlight the short-term and long-term objectives so dev and tausi and every southern countries under the IDRC projects have been very proactive in terms of small cash transfer payments but this our short-term in nature of course we can never go wrong with this because the vulnerable are directly affected but we have to move and look forward how do we sustain this how would the government sustain the continuous social protection programs so we need to incorporate as early as now some long-term objectives and that is how you is stimulate the private side private land side of the recovery so that's how you should put like blue stimulus that should support trade diversification it's very interesting what has happened to Kenya that has experienced a very minimal impact on growth because of the compensating impact of tourism on one side and then they have a diverse set of export that actually grew in the pandemic so it highlights to us the importance of diversification and if you are investing now for example in red stimulus but is starting targeted there are already multiple existing empirical evidence that you can achieve multiple objectives at the same time for instance if you spend like environmentally environmentally friendly on safe water and sanitation it's targeted to women it can improve their welfare it also stimulates the infrastructure development in the local area that can stimulate investment so it has it can achieve multiple investment at the same time so we have to start looking at the diversification of mobilization of resources maybe just find a final thought on the green stimulus all southern countries have been very low on this area but I think this is where the international donor community could check could be more proactive because the technicalities of course and the demonstration effects we have fiscal governments in the southern country are already constrained with the red stimulus supporting their most vulnerable one and so there are limited resources for other investments so this is where the collaboration should step in at this juncture so we can prevent the great divide that Deb is talking about and the IMF is talking about there has to be complementarities and maximization of synergies around these instruments thank you all right I don't know whether yes Stefania you can William can I get half a minute yeah before Stefania speaks I think we also need to finalize but why don't you have half a minute no no no my general point is about green financing the incidence is low is because there are market distortions still and then the markets do not really reward the investment that is what we have seen till now in the so we'll have to do some market reforms there my other point on the on the long-term objective and on this there is a growing consensus that we need to invest more in public health services and as a share of GDP this is abysmally low it is two to three percent in most cases but I think the biggest achievement now in the developing countries is that there is a overwhelming consensus on the need to have a universal social protection scheme a universal pension scheme at the least and that is the new consensus which we have generated thanks to all the bad things which has happened to us over the last one and a half year thank you thank you very much indeed Deb and and and also Cherlyn and also and Tausi for the video and Estefania for moderating maybe I should I should now close the meeting and just thank you for for these reflections this study is something is in progress and we'll publish the studies and emerging findings soon and I think one thing that is that is really important I think is to sort of now move away from only thinking about what were the short-term responses to really try and integrate the policy responses with sort of the longer-term goals and where we're going to and thinking about this sort of a really a better recovery and and and and sort of thinking about how we sort of reach out to policy makers in in future around the different types of stimulus packages the different types of minority policies and also trade policies that we have simulated and so looking forward to to do more of that thank you very much Deb for for explanations on the Bangladesh economy and Estefania for moderating the panel and and Cherlyn and Tausi also for your contributions thank you very much indeed thank you