 webinar dedicated to e-commerce of the consultative committee of the Universal Postal Union. My name is Walter Trezegar. I'm the host today and I'm also the moderator. I am here in my capacity as the chair of the consultative committee. This is the second webinar and today our topic is how have e-shopper behaviors changed in the contact of COVID-19? We have good an hour to discuss this topic and I'm very pleased to announce our distinguished panelists and our keynote speaker. The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed online shopping behaviors in both emerging and developed economies. Making e-shoppers online experience a safe journey is an institutional obligation that comes with many responsibilities to ensure that consumers are protected while online. Please, if you have any questions, if you have any comments, use the chat for posting your questions. I will take the opportunity then to give you the floor or pick up your questions accordingly. With that, I would like to come to our speakers and the first one is our keynote speaker. It is Torbjörn Fredriksson. He is the chief of the ICT policy section at the UN conference on trade and development short UNCTAD. Before joining UNCTAD, he held positions at the invest in Sweden agency and the Swedish ministry of industry and commerce. He has a master's in international economics from the Stockholm School of Economics. With that, I would like to start an introduction video and therefore I will share my screen and would like to write into this video. I hope you see my screen now and I will start the video. Welcome to the COVID-19 and e-commerce global review. Discover the key findings from the study conducted by UNCTAD and A trade for all partners on the impacts of COVID-19 on e-commerce and digital trade. E-commerce has been playing a growing role as part of the wider digital economy in global economic activity for the past decade. It also provides new ways of facilitating the sustainable development goals, bringing both new challenges and new opportunities. In fact, despite the global recession, the pandemic has led to a further acceleration of digital transformation. First, let's look more closely at the global economic impact of the pandemic. The global economy shrank in 2020 by an estimated 4.3 percent over two and a half times more than during the 2008 to 2009 global financial crisis. International trade, including intercontinental and intra-regional e-commerce, has been negatively affected by the pandemic. UNCTAD's latest estimates suggest that global trading goods fell by some 9% in 2020 and trading services by 15%. However, as social distancing and restrictions on movement became the new normal, many businesses and consumers went digital, providing and purchasing more goods and services online. As a result, the pandemic has led to a further acceleration of digital transformation. The share of e-commerce in global retail trade is estimated to have surged from 14% in 2019 to about 17% in 2020. Further acceleration of digital transformation was also observed in other sectors such as teleworking, gaming, distance learning, digital entertainment, online conferencing. The pandemic has also benefited the world's leading digital platforms. Most solutions being used for e-commerce, teleworking, and cloud computing are provided by a relatively small number of large companies based mainly in China and the United States. Consumers in emerging economies have made the greatest shift to online shopping. Latin America's online marketplace Merca de Libre, for example, sewed twice as many articles per day in the second quarter of 2020 compared with the same period the previous year. An African e-commerce platform JUMIA reported a 50% jump in transactions during the first month of 2020. In China, the online share of retail sales rose from 19.4 to 24.6% between August 2019 and August 2020. In Kazakhstan, the online share of retail sales increased from 5% in 2019 to 9.4% in 2020. In Thailand, downloads of shopping apps jumped 60% in the week between the imposition of partial lockdown and full emergency measures during March. The accelerated trend towards e-commerce seeing during the pandemic is likely to be sustained during recovery. More than 50% of those interviewed in Octa's consumer survey in nine countries said that they expected to continue shopping more often online after the pandemic. E-commerce platforms are therefore likely to retain many of the new market shares gained during the pandemic vis-a-vis offline markets. However, in many of the world's least developed countries, consumers and businesses aren't able to capitalize on the new e-commerce opportunities due to persistent bottlenecks and weaknesses in their e-trade readiness. Find out more about the impacts of COVID-19 on e-commerce and digital trade. Download the COVID-19 and e-commerce global review here. German Boat, thank you very much for sharing that with us. With that, please let us move right into your presentation. I would like to ask you how safe is it for e-shoppers to shop online and to rely on the internet for more news, health-related information and digital entertainment. So thank you, Walter, and good morning, good afternoon to everyone who is on the call. Yes, I would be happy to participate in this webinar because Anta and the Universal Postal Union go back quite a while in terms of collaborating in the era of e-commerce. It's a great opportunity for us to participate. And you know, we estimate that there are now around 1.5 billion online shoppers in the world. And an increasingly important question for them is how safe is it to engage in online activities? And here the pattern varies considerably around the world. Many countries are yet to establish comprehensive legal and regulatory frameworks for e-commerce or enacted legislation governing the areas listed. Our cyber law tracker monitors the enactment of relevant legislation in four areas, including consumer protection online. And in December 2020, only just over half of Anta's member states had adopted laws to protect consumers online. If you look at the least developed countries, that share was only 40% and among small island developing state, it was as low as 24%. The absence of consumer protection laws, of course, makes customers vulnerable to abuse by unscrupulous traders, particularly in countries where consignment tracking and delivery networks are poorly developed. So it is therefore not surprising that many internet users in developing countries are hesitating to engage in e-commerce. For example, even in the leading digital hubs of Africa, such as Kenya and Nigeria and South Africa, less than 20% of internet users choose to buy something online, but they may be very active on social media. And this can be interpreted as a lack of trust in the online space. We have also seen that confidence in digital payment mechanisms takes time to develop. You know, in most developing countries, people who do engage in e-commerce, they are still mainly paying through cash on delivery. Although during the COVID crisis, we have seen an uptake in the use of mobile money payments and other digital payments. And there is a science about possible fraud that inhibits e-commerce and online payments, particularly in countries with inadequate protection. So new users who are unfamiliar with potential risks, they can be particularly vulnerable. And let me also add a few points to what we were saying here about the risks and so on that countries or consumers are facing. And if you look at the risks attached to digital payments, you would say they include hackers and scammers stealing bank account details, social security numbers and other personal information. Although data theft at the point of transaction is quite difficult, cyber criminals means they look to access databases that contain credit or debit card information. According to one global survey of IT professionals in August 2020, the most common types of cyber attacks experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic were credential theft, fishing or social engineering, account takeovers and general malware. E-commerce fraud was already on the increase when the pandemic hit. Another study by TransUnion found that between 2018 and 2019, there was a 347% increase in account takeovers and a 391% increase in shipping in fishing fraud attempts globally against its online retail customers. The number of fishing sites more than traveled between January and the middle of March 2020 and Google has also reported a surge in fishing sites worldwide reaching a total of more than 2 million by late 2020, more than 19% higher than the year before. So we can also see that the combination of more teleworking, online conferencing and online commerce is raising security concern. People working from home often have fewer security defenses in their home networks than in their workplaces. Online consumers may also be concerned that products ordered are not up-standards. That is what is received does not correspond to what was actually ordered and that additional costs may be added especially if the products are imported from abroad. So in order to boost consumer confidence in e-commerce, countries really need to strengthen the laws and regulations for consumer protection online. And here there is really a great improvement in many parts of the world, scope for great improvement. Maybe I could just add a little bit to what was said in the video that we just watched here. We produced this global review together with the other parts of the UN family, the regional commissions, plus a few other e-trade for all partners. And during the past 12 months or so, we have been engaging in a number of different activities to really try to understand better what it all means for e-commerce, this pandemic that we're all still fighting. As you saw, there has been a significant upsurge in business to consumer e-commerce, which is of course what is the main interest in this discussion that we're having today. And we saw that the online share of retail sales has gone up quite significantly. And this has been observing countries at all levels of development, of course, starting from different levels. Let me share a few more numbers that we will release next Monday actually in our new global estimates for e-commerce. In the United States, the share of online to total retail sales rose from 11 to 14 percent in 2020. I'm sorry about that. In the UK, it's served from 16 to 23 percent. And in Singapore, it doubled from 6 to 12 percent. We did last year a server of consumers in nine countries together with Netcom Swiss e-commerce association. We found that half of the people surveyed shopped online more after the pandemic broke out with a similar increase in their other digital activities. In these nine countries, the range of products that attracted the highest level of online shopping changed over the course of the pandemic. We saw pharmaceutical and COVID related health products that were particularly in high demand in the beginning of the pandemic, while demand for groceries and other products grew later in response to the lockdowns and other movement restrictions. Delivery services have benefited from this, with those focused on food deliveries reported to have more than doubled their business volume in many countries. If we look, for instance, at evidence from Brazil and other countries, it shows that there has been a substantial growth in the enrollment for digital entertainment services, especially for music and video streaming, for distance learning, as well as online game. We have also seen that the use of digital payment methods has become more widespread since the onset of the pandemic. And maybe that can serve as an introduction to the discussion and the debate we will have today. And I thank you so much again for the opportunity, Walter. Back to you. Thank you, Tjernbrok. Thank you very much indeed. And before we will enter into our panel session, just let me ask you one question related to ID theft, data theft, illicit trade, product security. What has been the UPU's role in all this? Obviously, there's a close collaboration. There had been certain initiatives in particular when it came to the network security of the UPU. Can you bring your perspective on that? Well, I must confess that I'm not really an expert in what UPU has done in this area, but I can say that we clearly have a long journey together with UPU in looking at the different aspects of e-commerce and development. And what we have done in the past couple of years is we have engaged in what we call e-trade redness assessments, where we go out to the countries that are trailing the furthest behind in this rapidly evolving digital economy. And for instance, we had a very important collaboration with UPU in certain countries where the governments felt that the postal system has an extremely important role to play on the logistics side, but also in the payments landscape. And I think this is something that we look forward to continuing working with UPU on. And I would say that for many of the weaker economies around the world, the postal system may be the only way to reach out to the rural and remote areas that are starting also to engage in e-commerce, although it's still at the very early stage. Yeah. Well, thank you very much indeed. Please stay on. We have further questions for sure for you, Turnborn. And with that, I'm moving right into our session with our distinguished panelists. And I would like to introduce Uywar Kumar. He is the policy analyst with CUTs. That's the Customer Unity and Trust Society International. He is a law graduate. He has over 20 years of exposure to trading systems, intellectual property competition, and regulation. His current focus is the digital economy. He was earlier a national consultant on trade and health policy at the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Uywar, a few large global platform intermediaries are dominating the e-commerce space. They have helped to drive down costs, increase choice, and streamline services for consumers. Does this mean consumers are fully protected and able to exercise their consumer rights? And what is the cost to national economies in terms of jobs, income, and innovation? Uywar, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you. This is a very pertinent question, Uywar. The high concentration in the platform market is a concern in many economies. While the consumers may be benefitting, at least in shop now, such market concentration can have adverse effects on jobs, income, and also innovation. And we understand that these big platforms are gatekeepers in the market. And hence, they are basically de facto regulators. And in that role as a de facto regulator, the problem becomes more severe when these platforms adopt dual role. Dual role means they also provide platform services, but also compete with the business suppliers on their platform. They also are the business suppliers. And this should be concerned for the postal services as well, since some of the platforms have their own postal services. So whether these platforms can ensure platform neutrality is the crux of the issue. Platform neutrality by platform neutrality, I mean that these platforms need to ensure non-discriminatory treatment for all the suppliers linked to it. And the very dual role model of the very nature chances of the breach of platform neutrality increases. Realizing this, that the equity trust or competition authorities or competition enforcement may not be sufficient to deal with such a problem. Many countries are considering platform to business regulations. In fact, EU is also considering that and its advantages in digital market. The second issue with increasing concentration and market power is its adverse effect on the very effort to make the economy inclusive. And there are many blocks on this. IMF has come out recently that market power can even, increasing market power can even be a hurdle in economically covered. So realising all this initial also in the beginning also this whole issue was flagged to the national government. So the government or even the competition authorities are now considering interpreting consumer welfare widely. We all know that consumer welfare is one of the main goals of this law. So initially, traditionally, there has been an interpretation that consumer welfare, the consumer surplus will no kind of translate to consumer welfare. But looking all the whole effect on the economy and jobs and income, that means shrinking of the consumer base, the wider interpretation of consumer welfare is being considered by many countries. Secondly, also we are seeing some changes in the way market power is being interpreted of the dominance so that the abuse of dominance can be established. Initially, this dominance and market power were generally construed relying solely on market share approach. And we understand that in most e-commerce segment, there are two or three players having some markets, none of them are dominant and then market tips. So there is a tendency to see market power in terms of whether the firm has the ability to work independent of competition. So that is also changing. And since there is no concept of collective dominance in most jurisdictions, the changes in the market power interpretation are most welcoming in that sense. Certain authorities are also taking into account the control over data and the network effect, whether the firm has one of the elements of market power. So we are going beyond market share approach. In some countries, there are calls for some extreme measures like backing up big platforms. But I am not comfortable with the idea at this moment of time. I am not yet satisfied that that would be a better option. But in my opinion, there are certain measures that would be useful in this, particularly related to the data regulation, like having data portability, more interoperability of data. We are seeing in India, it's worked very well in the FinTech center and it may be applied into the retail sector, e-commerce sector. That basically by this new entrant, new platform entrant, we will be able to achieve the critical mass of network effect easily. And if they have access to capital, they can be a competitor and they can challenge this concentration. So I think, but above all, I think the whole of government approach would be needed rather than to solely leave it on comparison of all these of consumer protection. I should have stopped there. Great. Well, thank you very much for your first input here. With that, I would like to move on to Liz Cole. She is a consumer policy analyst and expert on consumer behavior in the digital age, specializing in the impact of connected digital technology on markets, consumers and regulation. She currently leads Consumers International's digital advocacy strategy. And as a world-class expert on consumer tech policy, data protection and online consumer protection, Liz, what have we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic about how consumers can benefit from e-commerce? Liz, please. Thanks, Walter. And thanks to UPU for inviting me to participate. I think the main benefit we've learned about again is access, whether that's to the essentials of health, food, care, equipment, right through to the other things that made lives easier during the lockdown, whether clothes and luxuries like books and leisure, things like that. And it emphasized again the benefits of e-commerce providing this range of products and a range of different suppliers and goods, which also means consumers can get perhaps specialist items or replacement parts, which they wouldn't have been able to get before. We know, obviously, that more people, well over half of the people in the UNCTAD and NetSuite surveys, report is spending more time shopping and looking for information and entertainment online. So that's clear. But these things have always been beneficial. I think what's significant here is that during the various national lockdowns, they became more like lifelines for people. So this is really important, a really important moment for e-commerce, because it's shifting in nature in some ways to almost an essential service. So if predictions play out, and I'm not sure that we'll see this permanent shift, huge shift to online shopping, we don't know yet. People may be reporting that they will carry on online or their intentions may not play out. We don't know yet. But we're certainly likely, particularly in more mature e-commerce markets, but they're just to be less physical shops to visit. So I think inevitably there'll be a rise in online shopping and it will remain essential for goods and services. Or it may be that there are particular types of goods and services like electrical equipment that will become very rare in physical stores and e-commerce will become the core delivery for them. So I think because e-commerce is likely to become more of an essential lifeline service, it does need more attention and protection. We've also seen that more lower income consumers have been accessing online markets. And the UNCTAD report shows that people were buying essentials more frequently, although spending lower amounts. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean it's completely affordable or that people had full trust. It could have been more that it was the only option there. But it does mean it's opened up a market of consumers for people to pay attention to and to look at those vital issues of payments and delivery options that need attention. I think the other benefits is that what we've learned through the lockdown about the benefits is how adaptable online shopping can be. So there was a few delays at the beginning, but I think overall it was able to react well and deliver goods to people safely with minimal contact. So it was able to adapt its services to that contactless environment. And that obviously kept people out of the busy shops and physical contact. So we're seeing its ability to innovate. Obviously the platforms are largely tech-driven, so they've got a culture of continuing to innovate. And I think we'll see more of those innovations in payments and deliveries speeding up as we have done during the pandemic. So we can see that there's lots of benefits which may hopefully be able to be adapted to communities who have so far maybe more financially vulnerable or who have not have access. I suppose the final thing I'd say is a little bit of caution. So even with all these positives and increase in activity, we need to maybe not get carried away. The high use doesn't mean there's been no problems. People had in a way had to use these services as their only options. So we should celebrate that there's been greater access and use, but I think we need to pay attention to some of the long-standing issues that are already there and need solving. Thank you, Liz. This has been very helpful and very insight. Very important for the UPU, of course, because according to recent studies, the UPU is the backbone of e-commerce commercial delivery with about 70% of all e-commerce items in the networks of the designated operator constituting now, of course, the global postal network. And with that, I would like to go back to Tor Björn and ask him another important question, we believe. Policymakers have been discussing the importance of consumer trust in e-commerce for many years, but it is still a factor that inhibits adoption. What is holding countries back from addressing the issues like payment security, data protection, delivery fulfillment that will help reassure trust? What are specific issues for the least developed countries? Tor Björn, please. Thank you, Walter. And so I think for many countries, a key challenge is the lack of a coherent strategy for fostering e-commerce. That really represents a key bottleneck. The challenge that many governments and countries are facing in the area of e-commerce is that it is so cross-cutting in nature, and it involves many different ministries, many agencies of the government. And therefore, it's very important for countries to establish some formal mechanism for approaching e-commerce and the digital economy more broadly in a more holistic way under a whole-of-government approach. It's very difficult just to focus on improving the internet connectivity, for instance, if you don't also address all the other factors that influence whether e-commerce and e-commerce ecosystem will work. We're also seeing a need to establish better mechanisms for facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogue here. Really, it is not just between the private sector and the government, but also finding ways to involve the civil society and the consumer dimension of e-commerce. Most developing countries lack clear structures for engaging with consumer organizations, as well as the ICT sector, possibly beyond the telecom operator. Given the complexity of digitalization, good multi-stakeholder dialogue in this area is really essential to help the government in adopting the right, adapting and adopting the right responses. Finally, I think the international community has a very important role to play. We need to do much more to support especially those countries, and you mentioned the least developed countries here, that are trailing the furthest behind in the digital economy. We must provide more assistance in terms of how to formulate strategies, how to develop better mechanisms for the dialogue that I was referring to, how to develop better legal and regulatory frameworks, strengthening institutions, collecting better statistics, and fostering better infrastructure for ICT, trade logistics, and payment solutions. And that UPU and other international organizations can make very important contributions to this, and also fostering, at our level, good interaction between us and the other stakeholders in the market. Thank you very much. I have the feeling that this is just the beginning of a long road, but I think it is very important to listen to the inputs of our speakers and panelists. So let me turn back to Liz again, asking her what should countries with lower levels of e-commerce readiness focus on as they developed their e-commerce infrastructure? On the other hand, what has not worked so well for customers, and what challenges have been highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic for online consumers? Liz, the floor is yours. Thanks, Walter. So I think that along with the things that Torbjorn has mentioned, I think I feel there's important lessons in what not to do, which we can learn from the more mature e-commerce markets. Because as I said before, some of these problems have been here since e-commerce became mainstream. So whether that's the lack of clear information about terms and about products, about your rights, difficulty in reading all the long terms and conditions, misleading adverts, fake reviews, there's all sorts of things that are there which are not working brilliantly at the moment. So while on the one hand, yes, there's lots about the infrastructure and delivery that you can learn from successful e-commerce environments, I think there's an awful lot about what's not going well, which would be great for countries developing their e-commerce readiness to build in right from the beginning. And some of those things are the sort of systemic things that the other panelists have mentioned, and things around when you have online marketplaces, who is monitoring and policing the sellers. There's always been unsafe goods on sale, poor quality or counterfeit goods, goods that are actually banned in offline markets, you can easily find again online. And throughout the pandemic, we saw again, things like poor practice from the sellers, like price gouging and things like that. So there's some systemic problems which are there, which nobody's really satisfactorily addressing at the moment. So I would also think about how you can build in those issues when you're looking at building up e-commerce readiness, alongside those things, the more well known things around data security, delivery and getting redressed and things like that. I think there's also quite an interesting context at the moment created by the pandemic, but also following other trends. So we've got more people buying more and a bigger range of things online. We've got a lot of inexperienced consumers coming to online shopping for the first time. And this is really important because if you've done it gradually and been an online shopper for a while, you've maybe got wise to some of the risks and the pitfalls, you sort of have some shortcuts to check and to keep yourself, well to minimize your risks to a degree. If you're coming into an online market for the first time, some of them are quite sophisticated. There's lots of different things you need to be looking out for. So there's I think a big skills and capacity building, not just in how you use digital, but how to keep yourself safe and how to use it confidently. And also on the part of the providers to make information easy to digest and understand. So that's one part of the context, a lot more people, some of them inexperienced. We've also got this mix of models and channels. So we've got the marketplace platform models that usual talked about. We've got direct online retailers. We've got offline retailers who are using separate e-commerce platforms to help with delivery and logistics. We've got delivery systems, advertising systems. There's a big mix in there and it's only going to get more complex and blended as we go on. So I think again, in turn, that all of that creates a bit of a lack of clarity about where the different obligations sits and where responsibilities sit, fair amount of it's happening across borders. So I think when you're thinking about what countries of those lower levels should focus on, they need to start from the consumer and look at the world that they're entering into. Consumers aren't necessarily thinking whether they're buying consumer to consumer or business to consumer. Are they using the platform model or directly? They're not policy makers. They don't think in those terms, but that's the market they'll be experiencing. So I think there needs to be a real understanding about how people are buying and what they need to make that secure and risk-free. Thank you. Thank you for this, Liz. I would like to move back to Wewhal and asking him, cross-border e-commerce fell during COVID-19. What are the challenges in rebuilding cross-border e-commerce, in particular of course with a clear focus on your region? But I'm sure you have a clear insight there. Thank you. The floor is yours. Thank you. Again, a very important question. Tobon has discussed the crux of this, why it is not there. As it is, the share of B2C e-commerce in cross-border has been very low and that was basically because of the lack of consumer trust. Lack of consumer trust first and foremost thing is the cross-border dispute settlement of consumer issues. Who should have the jurisdiction if there is a consumer dispute? Where would I go? How it will be implemented? These are the issues that these are still unsettled and I learned that the ongoing WTO negotiations are taking up this issue and perhaps there will be a chapter on e-commerce and cross-border consumer protection. Either there will be a on a coordination model that all the consumer authorities will coordinate or there may be certain minimum standards that every country has to follow as far as consumer protection is concerned. Then again, Tobon says about the lack of data protection regimes, particularly the cybersecurity aspect and consumers in developing countries are largely not much bothered about their personal data, but they are very wary about the bank frauds that are happening and which has increased in a kind of a big cluster. And third issue in the trust, consumer trust, I realize the counterfeiting which also a consumer feels that whether goods will be genuine or not and whether the goods which have been shown in the picture will match when I get the goods. Another hurdle this apart, another hurdle for a lack of V2C cross-border e-commerce has been protectionist tendencies that countries have violated, which has got fueled by this pandemic lockdown when the countries have realized that they are have to be more self-reliant and pandemic has also broken the global supply chain which gave a country to an opportunity to be self-reliant at least in essential goods and services. One aspect of protectionism is also the revelation of data. Most countries are of the view that restricting the cross-border flow of data will help them or you can say data localization, it will help them in creating national champions which will be globally competitive as Tobin has rightly pointed out that and another Rantar study has pointed out that the values the gains from the digital economy is largely going to countries and that is China and USA to the tune of 90 percent goes to the two countries. So and the countries understand that these two countries are the one who are controlling the digital ecosystem. So to control the digital ecosystem one will have to have a national champion or globally competitive national champion will be a kind of conglomerates and this thought process has gotten to a large country like India which are kind of putting restrictions on cross-border flow of data. So these are the protectionist issues that can come in a way of as a hurdle in the B2C cross-border e-commerce. I hope that countries will realize that e-commerce is a very good mode for exports particularly for its small scale businesses because they may not have that sources to like a big exporter so they can use the platform logistic to export without investing much. So I hope that country will realize and we'll have a focus on e-commerce in the trade facilitation policies. India is looking into a new trade policy. It will have a chapter in e-commerce. So I think countries are realizing but there are pros and cons to how to deal with that. Thank you very much indeed. I see that we're starting to be rather lively already in the chat but before I turn to those questions I would like to pick up these comments already and back to you Uriwal. Of course I mean a country like India is very much based on small and medium-sized enterprises. I think it's therefore very important to help those businesses to on board to become digital commercial entities. What would you advise for those companies be in particular to best serve their customers? I think this is now imperative that small businesses digitalize themselves. Even I think to survive in the market they have to do that and how to on board in countries like India is a very big challenge. First challenge is the digital divide. There may be a vast number of small players who are on the other side of the digital divide. Secondly, those who have access to internet and have access to that may not be trained enough to on board and do business. How could do businesses on digital platforms? There are training programs. So even agencies are doing such training programs to focusing on the MSMEs to train them to come on the on board. Thirdly, I would say the trust issue of cyber security also comes with the MSMEs as well. Their impersonation somebody else can impersonate them on the platform and supply certain goods and the lab to be passed on them. So these are the concerns unless we train them beautifully and we have that robust cyber security framework in a country. Things may be difficult but I think the government is also very keen. Government of India is also very keen to on board e-commerce platform. Government of India has a platform, its own platform whereby it's procured through MSMEs which is called as government e-market. They are now thinking to expand it. This is basically at this moment of time it is a business to government, B2G. So they are trying to see if it is feasible to turn that platform to B2C as well. And in that process the India Post, the Post Office, the Postal Department of India is very much into that. They want to develop an ecosystem where India Post also plays a role because it has reached every new corner of the India. So but it is a difficult task but it is happening. It is happening slowly and slowly. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I also see a question in the chat coming from Singapore asking that with the shift in cross-border postal volumes to more commercial B2B channels instead to B2C channels, is that just an effect on the collapse of air freight or is that a tendency to stay or will B2C be the most dominant channel there? Perhaps a question to you, Liz. Could you give us your insight there? Sorry, on the B2B question, yeah it is interesting isn't it? I wonder whether with bit premature and talking about the collapse of cross-border business to consumer e-commerce, I think with lots of these patterns that we are seeing through the pandemic it is not entirely clear yet which ones are there to stay. If you look positively at the local economy, local business story, there certainly does seem to be a sense that people want to be supporting their local businesses and services or national services and can very clearly see the link between the local community and the job creation and income creation. But it is difficult to say how long that will last if we are heading into large recessions and drops in income, whether that local national picture will continue or whether actually people will just be going back to look for the most economic option. So in terms of the postal volumes, it may possibly be a bit too early to say, I don't know if any other panellists had an opinion on that as well. Paul Bjorn, yes I'm counting on you. Well I mean frankly, I mean UPU is probably the best place to respond to the postal volume but maybe just to get a perspective on what we're talking about here. When we estimate the amount of business to consumer e-commerce that is taking place around the world, we see that only about 10% of global B2C e-commerce is cross-border and most of the cross-border e-commerce is still in the neighboring region. So like within the EU or in Canada it'll be with the US and so on. But I think I agree with Liz that it's too early to tell exactly how this will play out after the pandemic but it's clear that most of the people that we consulted with think that they did shift in behavior that we have seen during the pandemic will have lasting effects but of course not, you don't know exactly how that will play out in the coming years. But the fact that we are still in the middle of the pandemic and that people have had even more time to adapt to this new situation speaks in favor of longer lasting impacts. I think also that when it comes to the cross-border dimension when trade in general picks up and starts growing again, which has already started in some respects, it will also have a favorable effect on cross-border e-commerce. I think one of the interesting findings that we saw in Latin America for instance was that the postal deliveries cross-border were more badly affected than cross-border deliveries that were relying on the private courier companies which often had their own air fleets whereas the postal system was relying more on the passenger aircraft system for their deliveries. So I think this is something that has played out very strongly in some parts of the world at least and I would actually be very interested to hear the UPU perspective on these issues as well. Yeah, Tom, I'm checking online the current dates as you speak. Unfortunately I can report a little bit on the tracked parcel network where the UPU of course has real-time information and this is very well reflected in the online data. The UPU network has suffered around 25 to 30% of the volume compared to the year without COVID is missing in the global network cross-border. So there has been quite a strong impact on the global postal network and you're absolutely right. The UPU has undertaken severe action to re-establish in particular the necessary backbone when it came to air transport. Of course we all know that air traffic in particular passenger planes were hit the most and most of the postal items were onboarded onto those planes. However the UPU and in particular of course the International Bureau and we have to give credit to the UPU here did their utmost to re-establish a highly secure and functioning network there. So a lot of work has been done. You know of course that the negotiations with IATA and also the newly established air freight association here has been very instrumental in bringing this secure network back into action. So let me look into the chat any further questions from our audience currently I see none. So yes we are coming to the end of this trilogy and I would very much like to thank our speakers, our distinguished keynotes, presenter of course our panelists and also thank you for the questions in the chat. If there are any further questions not answered or coming in later we of course will share that with the panelists so that we can provide the necessary answers to all of your questions. Please kindly then share your email address so that we can answer them. Thank you very much for your highly insightful presentations today and contributions to this webinar. This has been the second of three webinars hosted by the consultative committee of the Universal Postal Union on the various aspects of e-commerce. The third webinar is scheduled for the 19th of May and will be focusing on redefining the universal service obligation in the changing digital postal environment. As we heard today already several times that delivery is an essential service for the execution of e-commerce but any other postal service. It is very close to our ongoing universal service obligation refinement that needs to happen during this time of digitalization. It again will be hosted between 11 and 12 o'clock and with that I would very much like to thank you for participating and I'm looking forward to your participation at the upcoming third webinar. Thank you very much indeed and all the best to you. Please stay healthy in this very difficult times. Thank you. Bye bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.