 Welcome to the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today. I'm Ms Ariwan Haranghti who is Secretary-General of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity APT. Welcome to the studio. Good morning and thank you for inviting me. I'm very pleased to be here with you today. I'd like to start off by talking about the fact that there's considerable attention being placed on harlasing the power of information and communication technologies or ICTs as an enabler for good for the benefit of the development for people, nations, communities and I wanted to find out what is your perspective on this? Yes, actually ICT itself has been involved and in turn is help development in other sectors you can see like education, trade or business, finance, transportation, energy etc. So this development of ICT has also tools and applications that will help and it will it make change the way of life of people and it helps people to be able to communicate with each other and make life easier. Some people may work at home so they can have more time with the family and then I can say that young entrepreneurs can use ICT to start their business and for the government the government use ICT to provide service to the citizens. For example for the education for the government service and all every kind of service that they can apply the ICT and we need the affordable, resilient and I can say the stability of the broadband connectivity. But at the same time we have to be to consider the impact of the other side of the internet so stakeholders have to take care of this. Now this Plenipotentiary Conference is the first since the world agreed on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. I wanted to ask you perhaps you could provide some examples of how ICTs are helping to drive sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. Yes actually the SDG there are 17 goals that for the development that I can say that ICT can help in every to achieve all the goals. But I have to pick up some goals I cannot talk about 17 goals like no property and then education and inequality and then you can I mentioned already the use of ICT for helping the other sector for education and also other sector but I would like to focus on the the last goal about the partnership. In that goal they talk about the role of international support to the developing of the country. It means that there are many many issues for that international support for the partnership exclusively the capacity building. In the Asia-Pacific especially from APT we provide a program for capacity building to the member country. Each year there will be around 20 programs for the training course in each issue related to ICT. So the government and the private we have member country and also we have the member like because in the ITU contact is sector member to be trained and then they will bring the knowledge back to their country to improve their or to share the knowledge on this. We also increase now in this recent year we call it local training. It means that each country will have their telemed. They propose the issue that they would like to have the training and we contact our partner to their country same instructor. Apart from this APT has the program to help like pilot project to help the our member as well. We cannot provide a financial support all but we can create each country can create the pilot project. For example the ICT program for empowering people empowering home worker so they can use internet for this. So this is just few example. Now about half of the world's population are connected to the internet and the other half is not. I wanted to find out how do you think it would be the best way to get everyone connected? This has been mentioned for quite long. For the context of APT we provide the platform for the policymaker and regulator industry to come together to discuss how to provide this and we have every five years we have a ministerial meeting to discuss to provide vision. I remember 2009 minister came together in Bali Indonesia and talking about to encourage to have the broadband connectivity because they think that this is the way that to provide a fundamental infrastructure and then after that 2014 the move a little bit further to use ICT to building digital economy and then next year there will be another ministerial meeting but anyway what I try to say is that we all stakeholders have to come together and APT provide a platform to discuss and share best practice and knowledge. So the model in one country might not be 100% being used in other country but can be example of private partnership that have been used in many countries. Then for example the universal service fund. Some countries may be able to use efficient effectively but some may not. That's what APT can provide a platform so a member can learn and then share and then we also invite speaker to help. So that's the way APT can help together our member. Finally is there a message that you would like to share to both the participants here at the ITA Plenary Potential Conference but also to our wider audience as well? As Secretary-General of the APT which is one of the regional, considered by ITU as a regional telecommunication organization or RTO. I can say that we have been working together with a partner organization but especially ITU I can call that. ITU is not just a partner but we call ITU and UNS cap as our parent organization because in 1976 it was discussed to set up APT and ITU also support that idea so later in 1979 APT was established so we consider UNS cap and ITU our parent organization. So every from the beginning we have been work closely but I hope that I also congratulate the new elected official then we have been working together for many years and then I am sure that we our cooperation will continue. Sure it will and we look forward to catching up with you again at some stage in the future but thank you very much for joining us in the studio today. Thank you very much also. Thank you.