 Ladies and gentlemen, we will start our work and I hope that you have had an excellent lunch. I was told that some heads of delegation still wanted to take the floor on what the Swiss delegates said earlier. In fact, I suggest that we do this at the end of the session, given that we're already running rather late. So now we're going to start our third session, which is Financial Inclusion and Postal Financial Services Challenges and Opportunities. This afternoon's session will look at the challenges, economic and social challenges that the Member States of the UPU will have to deal with. Stress will be laid on the essential role that has to be played by governments in order to ensure that posts are able to come up with innovative, integrated and inclusive development solutions in order to respond to the needs and expectations of their customers and the other stakeholders that are interested, that is to say, of the sectors and the state. The role of the postal sectors, a driver for economic growth and its poverty reduction, the role it can play in order to ensure social, financial and economic inclusion will also be mentioned. The speakers will look at the way that governments can be involved more closely in the postal sector and will see how it may be possible to attract more investment in the postal sector. And I think that we will also have to see how we can reconcile profitability with sustainable development. These are often things that seem to be mutually exclusive. Moderator will be Mr Cheruti. Mr Cheruti is a journalist of TV5 Monde in Switzerland. He is going to be the moderator for our panel. Thank you, Mr President. Thank you, Chairman. As you've noticed, we're rather behind our timetables, so let's press on. So this morning we talked about financial inclusion and postal financial services, which were both challenges and opportunities, the posts after banks, posts in their major financial agencies of the world, second biggest contributors to financial illusion. And the point is to see how they can do better and increase their presence in this area. One billion people already benefit from basic transactional services through the post, holding more than 1.5 billion postal services or deposit accounts. This would make any traditional bank envious. In India alone, 30 million new postal savings accounts were opened in 2012. And remittances are a key gateway to the formal financial system for the unbanked. At the worldwide level, migrants transfers through formal challenges accounted for 404 billion US dollars in 2013. Panelists this afternoon will address the challenges and opportunities that the sector faces in leveraging the potential of postal financial services. And we'll be examining the role that posts with the full support of their governments and international organizations. I think this is essential, can play in increasing financial inclusion generally. Distorted this afternoon will be Ambassador William Lacey Swing, who 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 8,500 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. He also had a long diplomatic career at the US Department of State and was a sixth on Ambassador. Ambassador Swing, please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. 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 Burundi 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. Comparatively, 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'a in Yemen to take out the first of 16,000 third-country nationals that 38 governments have asked us to bring to safety. The other driving forces, of course, are the Digital Revolution, 3 billion people today connected to the Internet compared to 300 million in the year 2000. The distant 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 a year, a total that's supposed to rise next year to much more than 500, 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 was built on the backs of migrants that's 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, creates jobs, and adds to countries' credit ratings. So all of this 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. Cost of transferring money home now is exorbitant. It is too high. According to the World Bank, migrants sent $60 billion back to Africa in 2012, but they were overcharged $4 billion by money transfer companies, which averaged 12.4% in finance charges. This is unfair. Migrants work hard. They're highly motivated. They contribute, but to have to pay 12.4% 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 as my third point. In Burundi, where we are collaborating in this joint project, the diaspora sends home $50 million a year, of which more than 10% is lost in remittance transfers. If you say the figure is $450 billion a year and you're paying 10% or above, that means you're losing between $40 and $50 billion, 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 5%. 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 Burundi 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. Burundi is affected by a range of issues. First of all, they have prohibitive remittance costs that I mentioned, at least 10%. More than twice the international target of 5% 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 accessing international markets. So the UPU and IOM, we're leveraging the multifaceted strengths of our respective organizations and the postal network in Burundi 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 Burundi. Kirima ya kirima, ayi kutanake, lakini watu na watu, wanakutanaka. That means simply, as 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. And to speak about the other part of the project, we're of course going to ask the Director-General of Burundi Post, Mr Salvatore Nizigi Manna, who has many responsibilities in both the private and public sector. He was Director-General of the Telecommunications Union of Burundi. I'm sure you're going to speak about this project that Ambassador Swing mentioned just now. Oui, Monsieur les ministres. Ministers, Ambassador Hussain Bichard, Ambassador Swing, dear colleagues, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure for me and also a great honor to be side by side with these eminent people in order to tell you about Burundi's experiences in the financial area and in financial inclusion. I'm very grateful for being invited, and I should be very modest in my presentation because Ambassador Swing has just set out the main points. He's prepared the way, so my contribution will be to go into details of the project that we're working on, the project we're working on with his organization and the UPU, to which we belong. May I give you the warmest greetings from the Burundian postal family? Before I start, I'll make five points very briefly. First of all, the overview and general context of Burundi. It's a small country, less than 28,000 square kilometers. It belongs to two communities in Africa, Eastern Africa and Central Africa, 10 million inhabitants. It's a mainly rural country. The level of urbanization is very low. Very few people have bank accounts, about 2.5% of the population. And it's a country where this 2.8% population growth rate. We only have 10 banks in the whole of the country, and these banks are confined to towns or urban settlements. It's a country where poverty is fairly widespread. Burundi is one of the last six countries on the list of rich countries, according to the 2014 UNDP report. So in view of all that, the government, which is my second point, has identified the post as one of the pillars of financial inclusion and a way of combating poverty. There are numerous proofs of this. First of all, by transforming the legal framework relating to the post, giving it financial autonomy and operational autonomy. This took place in 1991. It was also a decree in that same year, which meant that apart from being the designated postal operator, it was given a particular mandate to provide local services to people far from the urban centres, who are generally the unbanked. They're excluded from the traditional banking system. So to come to my third point, the government is determined to combat poverty. And it mentions in their strategy, it mentions the post as one of the main pillars of financial inclusion, and particularly for the implementation of the strategic framework, which is closely connected with the growth of the economy and sustainable growth in jobs. And another proof of that is that the post has been entrusted by the government with paying the salaries of all the policemen, of all paying all pensions. It pays family allowances and allowances for vulnerable families. And at the same time, in the national subsidies campaign, the post has been identified by the government to be in charge of the distribution of fertilizers. And as I was saying, the Burundian economy is mainly based on agriculture. So it's through post offices that farmers have access to their fertilizers and inputs, other inputs for the agriculture. And another important aspect has to do with the role played by financial services in the development of the post in Burundi. And I want to talk about all the operations and income of the post. Financial services account for 15% of all that. That is, postal check accounts and postal financial system contributes to about 75% of the income of the post in Burundi. Whereas postal services and other associated services contribute to less than 25% of its income. In other words, postal financial services are an important sector for Burundi post and I think for other posts as well. And I'd like to go into details of the project that was introduced by Ambassador Swing. I have some slides that I'd like to see. It is a project, a tripartite project, which involves two UN organizations, the IOM and UPU and the RNP, which is the Burundi post. There is innovation, integration and also inclusion, all of which I will talk about. It has five components in one single project. The aim is to reduce costs of money transfers. It aims at financial education, financial inclusion, access to export markets and the facilitation of communications. We're now going to show you a diagram and which describes this project. It is based on the contribution of migration to development. This is why Ambassador Swing, my great friend and brother, has emphasized that. It is a project that aims to reduce the costs of remittance services. The rate of transfer is between 10 and 12%. And through this project, we are going to find new corridors for the transfer of funds so as to reduce these rates, to reduce these costs. It's a project that's going to contribute to the financial education of migrants and of their families as part of financial inclusion. Just to give you a simple example, a migrant and many of us have been migrants or are migrants. And if someone has someone who he wants to transfer money to, you transfer it to them for a particular need, why not put money onto an account of your family member so as to get the members of your family open an account or accounts. This is something we're going to deal with in our project. It will have a strong influence on financial inclusion. I do stress that. And it's a project that will facilitate exports. It will facilitate access to small producers and local producers to markets. We are members of the diaspora. We are emigres, we have emigrated, but we still have links with our home country for family or nostalgic reasons. And local producers can send us traditional projects, sorry, traditional products to us migrants abroad. And before concluding, I would like to stress this because it's going to revitalise the posts. It's going to give them more activity, more work. Passes and packages are our profession. It's our profession. I'm sure everyone here can understand that. And finally, the project will contribute to improving communication between migrants and their families. In my country, for example, where mobile phones are only used by about 25% of the population, not only the rural population financially excluded but also excluded from communication. And there's difficulties of communication between migrants throughout the world and the members of their families in Burundi. So we think that a postal mobile network virtual operator is something feasible. And we're going to set up this platform where we can carry out transfers of money, not just to facilitate communication but to open up a new corridor for the transfer of money. And before concluding, I would like to say that we all have opportunities. We have opportunities as the national postal operator so as to improve or at least alleviate the money transfer market and the financial market in Burundi. The postal network in Burundi is much more extensive than the bank network. In almost all villages and towns, we have a post office. At least somebody is there representing the post and we have 140 post offices. So this physical presence is an advantage as compared to the other operators. First of all, because we are close to people, we are local. And then again, people's trust in us is very great because we pay salaries, we pay pensions and through post offices, we provide the fertilizers. So everybody knows about the post and puts their trust in it. We pay social welfare payments. But apart from this trust, which is based on the services we provide, I would say that what's more important is that we're a public body. We have a certain cache as a government agency because the other private micro-financial institutions have a role to play, but they don't have the population's trust. And one final word, since this is the UPU strategy conference, I would say that the post involves many players. Mobile telephone operators, for example, give us an agent's contract. But why not imagine that the post itself could set up a service for transfer of money via mobile phone? Platforms do exist. We've looked at them in Burundi Post. So this is a challenge. But as we're talking about strategy, we should think about the UNCIDF Mobile Money Initiative and see how we can do the same or even better. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Nizigomana, Director General Burundi Post. And I think we weren't talking about trust. Our next speaker comes from Hungary. His name is Chaba Ponasek. 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 that both the 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 Etush, Credit Anstalt, Credit Group, and CIB Securities. 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. Hungarian post, Magyar Pushta, is one of the largest companies in the country. We have 2,700 post offices, 30,000 employees, over $800 million of revenues in 2014. And we do not have banking network. We do not have banking license. We don't 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'd 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 disbursements. There are a large number of pensioners who do not have bank accounts or would 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, the 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, on the 1st of January, we introduced QR codes on each and every yellow check. Before that, we started it a year and a half ago, and it was introduced to only a limited number of issuers. And 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 also 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 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 it 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 yellow check tower 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 tower 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 EBPP electronic bill presentation and payment systems. If you register with our EBPP 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 small amounts on their behalf. We are also active in other financial services, and I have to address that what we provide are basic financial services, mass services. But with our network of 2,700 postal outlets, we can access a large segment of the population. We have bank accounts with debit card. It's a wide-level 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 wide-label product. We are provided by a professional partner. Also, we are selling deposits. It's a wide-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, by Tallangs. We have one-third share in post-insurance company, 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 company. We also provide investment services to our customers. We have a joint venture, 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 account and they can get dematerialized government securities. And we also offer other financial products. So we are agents 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 in small villages or smaller towns, and we have our royalty cards that is available to our clients, and the points can be redeemed in post offices. And 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, 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 capacity 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. Cheers. Thank you. Well, thank you. Mr. Traber-Polisher, that was a good example of a lot of partnerships between companies and the post. Our next speaker now works for another enterprise, which, well, in fact, he works for the supervisory committee, the member of the Postal Bank. So that is a post to what was said by Hungary. Mr. Forseville took up many different posts. He was also director of external relations dealing with international affairs and European affairs. He's also president of post-Europe. Many of you know this. It brings together very many post-off operators and is in charge of the universal service. So you have the floor. So thank you very much. Minister, Mr. Kuné, Director General, Deputy Director General of the UPU, Ministers, Ambassadors, President, Director-General, dear friends. So yesterday, we were told how grateful we said how grateful we were to Côte d'Ivoire for organizing this meeting. I certainly will do no less than our president, who is also the president of the Postal Bank. And I would like to add a few words of my own behalf. You have heard me say how much we praised Côte d'Ivoire for trying to organize a conference in Ambassadors, but I hope that this will happen one day eventually. So I came here this afternoon to tell you about an example of a Postal Bank. There are many. It's not a matter of giving lessons on how this should be done, but just to tell you where we're at today. And in order to understand this, I think that we need to go back a bit. We're not going to go back to the Stone Age, of course, but we just want to remind you that the French Post carries out money transfers and has done since the 19th century. In 1920, it was a savings bank that was set up. And after the First World War, the CCPs, the Postal Check Accounts, started little by little to work in ensuring financial inclusion, bringing in people who maybe were not very wealthy to open their own bank accounts and to use them. And in the 60s and 70s in France, banks discovered this idea of a network bank, branch bank. The populations became more urban. And after a while, the question arose to find out whether the Post still had a future in the banking sector. Should it continue its activity? And in order to do this, what it needed to do was to adapt. In order to adapt, the Post needed to offer a complete package. But in order to do that, they had to be able to come up with a banking activity, showing that there was no conflict between its banking activity, its postal activity, and to draw up a balance sheet. And that's how we made progress. But we did it very slowly. It took us a long time to get there. And why? Well, first of all, the banks really lobbied hard to stop us, to prevent us from becoming a fully-fledged bank. And just to demonstrate this, I can tell you about how hard the lobbying was. In 1994, there were three of us launching together with the very powerful Monsieur Pébro, who's the president of the BMP, who is a very influential figure. Mr. Pébro told us that as far as I'm alive, there will be no postal bank in France. But in fact, there is a postal bank in France, and Mr. Pébro is still alive, at least I hope so. But this was a very nasty surprise for him. Also, we had to convince the government and parliament. Now, why did they back us? Well, because they wanted that in France, we still had a substantial, developed postal network. And everyone knows that if the own activity is letters and parcels, it's impossible to keep going a fully-fledged postal network of 17,000 centres. This is what happens in France at any rate. And everyone knows that part of the population is not reached by the traditional banking sector and that what is required is a very special partner for those people. I was particularly surprised by the figures that were given yesterday by friends from Brazil. They are absolutely remarkable figures, given also the success of Kiwi Bank in New Zealand. The bank, the post in New Zealand closed its activities and then reopened them. And we can see that even a very banking-based sector, there is a place for postal operators there. Also, this was a very difficult choice because we have to admit, I am very sorry, I'm of course a big fan of the international, the World Bank and the IMF, but those institutions explained to governments for a long time saying that posts should not work in the banking sector and they even tried to prevent the financial activities of the postal sector that today find themselves in a very difficult situation. So in 2006, we set up our own bank on the 1st of January 2006. It was set up through a law, an amendment through Senate, which meant that, in fact, the draft law, the bill was not intended for that, it was intended to duplicate a European directive. But through a very long amendment, we managed to set up the postal bank in France and today it is a bank for everyone. It is intended to help the weakest sector of our population, of course, but we do insist that it has to be a bank for everyone. It should be also accessible for those who are more wealthy. We have special offers for those who have very little to invest and for others who have much more substantial amounts. I'm just looking at money transfers and we have talked about that. Of course, we work together with a major operator, which I will not mention here, but many of you know here that we had a battle on our hands for over 10 years now in order to assist the EU together with the EU to develop the bank and also for the EMS. And this, too, is part and parcel of our vision of a bank for everyone, a bank for all. Now, this is useful for the real economy, too. In 2014, we gave 70,000 mortgage loans, 200,000 loans for consumer goods and we opened up loans for consumer loans to populations who up till now had no access to the banking sector. We also are involved in microcredits, microloans with other partners and also we have also started to finance territorial groups. In 2009, these groups found themselves facing a credit crunch. They didn't have enough money to finance themselves and the state asked the postal bank, which was still cash-rich, to finance territorial activities and those communes who needed investment and wanted to investment in public services were able to do this and now 25% of our capital is involved in this kind of financing. So it's a matter of trust. We have mentioned trust before. Posts are, of course, characterized historically by the trust that citizens have in them. This is a case in France at any rate and we're trying to ensure that this trust continues to be deserved and we work as responsibly as possible as well when it comes to the social commitment of enterprises. We were cited first out of over 370 banks throughout the world. We were rated first. We have 600 million euros available and this net result is above the consolidated post to what is available to that. So for a long time it was the letter post that was financing the post. Now the growth of the post is a determinant for our future and it depends on our financial sector activity. Now, another specific aspect of our development is that we did not want to go into this alone. We were very modest here and we tried to look at activities to try to look for partners in those sectors that we were not specialists in. So we set up partnerships with those who were able to promote our activities in the postal sector. So for instance in individual loans we got together with Société Générale when it comes to vehicle and house insurances. We got together with AMA and the same thing when it came to the health sector and when it comes to financial management sector we got together with Egon who is a major operator from the Netherlands. So I don't want to suggest that everything is rosy by no means. This is not easy and this because we are financing the whole weight of the network and this network in France costs a great deal to maintain. It is a challenge that we take on board but nevertheless we have to be aware that when it comes to profitability the profitability of the postal bank is certainly less than the other banks in France. Nevertheless we are subject to banking regulations and this has become a much more weighty affair. We are now being examined by the European Central Bank. The size of our postal bank means that we are under their jurisdiction and it is very wary when it comes to the prudential aspect whether we have managed to recapitalise our bank on a number of occasions I know for other operators and for us as well. Of course these are postal operators who have banks who suffer in their activity when it comes to the letter post aspect so sometimes it's a bit difficult to be able to follow the prudential ratios that are required by the regulatory authorities but nevertheless we think that the postal bank for us is a fantastic opportunity and I cannot urge the governments and postal operators enough to keep this in mind for the future. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Well this demonstrates the real weight of political will when it comes to setting up this kind of postal bank. Spain, his name is Mario Garces San Agustín is the Vice Minister of Public Works and Transport in Spain. Previously he's 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 Callous Tres de Madrid. Sir, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Good afternoon. First of all, I'd like to thank all the authorities here and greet everyone, ministers, Deputy Ministers, Directors-General and also the moderator. Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. Who has volunteered to chair this afternoon's session and I'm very sorry I can't speak Swahili but next time I come I will because Spanish are very gifted at Swahili. And first of all, I'd like to thank you all for this opportunity for Spain to participate in such an important forum where we can describe our country's experience in practice, in postal practices and in the transfer of remittances. This is a process where Spain is not on its own. We work in coordination with UPU and I'd like to thank all the UPU authorities here for their magnificent cooperation for their discipline and their commitment to our country to continue cooperating with us and also with PUASP. We're also part of a collective comprehensive project together with 10 Latin American countries and Portugal and Morocco in opening up certain corridors to ensure that remittances reach their final receivers. Ambassador Lacy was saying that the world is characterized by migration flows and by social flows. We have a completely globalised population where we have to find channels for relationships that are not only family or emotional but also financial. Throughout the 20th century, we were an emigrant country. Switzerland, for example, saw many Spaniards arrive here in the 60s, 70s and 80s. But now Spain, in turn, is receiving very large numbers of migrants from other countries. I'm going to give you some data so that you can see the size of this population explosion, of this flow, this migratory flow that has happened in our country. 3.5% of the population of Ecuador lives in Spain at the moment. 2.6% of the original population of Bolivia lives in Spain. Or 2.3% of the original population of Morocco lives in Spain at the moment. And here, I would like to thank all those people and all those countries for their immense contribution to the Spanish economy. And therefore, reciprocally, and through international cooperation, we would like to ensure that the remittances sent by those citizens to their own countries flow through secure channels to their own countries because they bring added value to Spain but also to their own countries from which they've emigrated. So in a globalized world, public operators, other institutions, and international obligations have an obligation to do this because otherwise we wouldn't be proper public servants. So we're going to be providing resources and ideas to any international organization involved in this. We took part in the Nairobi Strategic Conference. And that's when we first put forward our Correos Jiro project. We reached agreements with international organizations. And we wanted to show that posts can operate on the same competitive basis and providing the same financial services as the traditional financial institutions. And we're now in a position to say that thanks to the cooperation of all, thanks to the cooperation of the countries of destination and of international organizations. And thanks, of course, thanks to the Spanish Post Office. This is now a reality. And you can see the results of this work in many families throughout the world. We've also supported the DOHA strategy. And we'll go to the Istanbul Congress next year and where the project we believe should continue to consolidate but become stronger. In Latin America and Caribbean, that's about 19% income from remittances. So this is a big issue. It's a question of defining what is financial inclusion. This expression, financial inclusion, means providing basic financial services to everyone in an integrated system. Where might there be major problems? Well, logically, where people are living in remote areas or in poor areas or sparsely settled areas. So all these factors together with migrations have to be taken into account. And this is why we have called it postal financial inclusion. Data is eloquent, not only in Spain but in the rest of the world. In 2013, remittances in the world accounted for $414,000 million. And I think we might be $515,000. In other words, in three years this year, in other words, there's been an increase in about 33% in remittances. But for many countries, remittances are almost a third of their GDP. So this is very important. It is not just a question of maintaining family ties. It also affects this society and economy of a country. There are more than 600,000 post offices throughout the world. And about 5.5 million are employed by the post offices of the world. In other words, they post office their customers permanent services in competition with the most advanced financial agents. But in order to provide that service, obviously we have to provide a quality service that's guaranteed, that's profitable, and that's more economical. And obviously we have to be more competitive. Because if we weren't so cooperative, then obviously we would have problems. I'm going to give you some idea of what happens in Spain. So you can see how the immigrant population of Spain is responding to this demand for public service. 11.5 of the population, as I was saying, are immigrants. And out of these 5.5 million immigrants in Spain, 1.7 million are from Latin America and the Caribbean. In fact, with a third European Union country, in terms of the remittances and the amount of remittances sent, 19% of outgoing EU remittances come from Spain present. Remittances from Europe, particularly from Spain, are the 10% of GDP. These type of remittances have a dynamising effect on the economy and on society. Many studies have been made on this, many of them connected to what our country has been done. Transfers of money have effects on children, on the social development of children. They reduce infection or psychological upsets. Because this growth benefits all our areas of activity, not only the social area, but also health. We're going to support this project. We consider it to be a good one, a safe one. And it's good for our country, but not only for our country, but for the whole of the international community and obviously for all the receiving countries. In 2007, we signed the first memorandum with the Secretary General of the International Bureau of the UPU. And on the 28th of July, 2008, we signed an agreement for the introduction of the Correos Hero System with Chile and Uruguay. And then in 2010, we enlarged the territorial scope to other important countries in Latin America, such as Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. Apart from Latin America, we also signed agreements with Portugal and Morocco. The current situation, I've got to give you some data here, because I think we can be very proud. It's not just national pride. It's pride in doing things well and being of service to our citizens and international organizations. So in 2014, from Spain, remittances reached about 17 million euros in value. Sustained growth, which has been continuing over the last few years, double-digit growth. And I'm sure it will be kept up in the next few years. Second, if we examine the number of transfers, look at the exponential growth that's happened in 2011. There were 32,500 in 2014, 85,300. It has to be an economical, attractive service that's attractive to citizens. Because apart from asking for secure and attractive services, they want ones that are not too expensive. And the costs are under 3%, which means that postal transfers are very competitive with the other remittance sending agencies. And I'd like to conclude by repeating Spain's commitment. I'd like to repeat that we are committed to this whole process. We will come to the next strategy conference if we can. And our commitment to develop markets based on three principles which we believe are three essential, very important principles. First of all, the system set up should be competitive. If we're not competitive, we're not going to win in an integrated market, such as the international financial market. Second, it should be a top quality service. Third, it should be a reliable and secure service. If the projects receive these guarantees, then we're quite certain that we'll continue to cooperate here because success will be guaranteed. Thank you. That's wonderful. That's fine. That was very interesting. Thank you very much. Cheers. As you probably all noticed, time is flying by very, very, very rapidly. So I'm just going to have, I don't know, we'll see how many questions I can ask or how many answers we'll have. Given the time schedule. As an outsider, what strikes me, and 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. Senegustin 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. Well, thank you. I'm not sure if I'm the best person to ask to respond to this question, but what I can say is that we have advised recently in the past a number of countries in this field, postal, postal systems, and each time we felt that in order to make progress, we needed to make a political choice here. So maybe the government is already convinced of this for a number of reasons. But sometimes you have to put this to the central banks and that can be a difficult moment because the central banks often have people working for them who are bankers and sometimes this vision of this idea of the professional qualities of the postal workers is sometimes placed under doubt, quite unwarranted, as we feel at any rate. But we need to convince them. We need to convince key people in government, in the state level to overcome this obstacle. And I can give you a number of examples of this in many countries. I won't do this now, but yes, in a certain number of countries, it was very difficult to make progress along those lines. If any, in Hungary, for example, to come up with a postal bank, there's not such a will to have a postal bank, that 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 between the two institutions since the Post has 2,700 outlets and the same 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. In Burundi, however, you explained that there is a real political will to support and make the Post available to the population. Yes, I can confirm that. As I said in my introduction, it is part of government policy. We have a national framework for growth and combating poverty and the Post was identified as one of the pillars for implementing one of the most important parts of this strategy, that is the transformation of the economy into a sustainable economy and to lead to the creation of more jobs. It could only be done like this in Burundi. It is an essentially rural country which is sparsely populated. It is very little urbanized. 10 to 12% of the population live in towns or villages or towns or cities. So the Post is the most extensive local network. It is close to people. Geographically, if we want to get away from poverty, I don't think we can do that without people becoming banked, opening bank accounts. And I think we should offer the Post, which has the public network, this opportunity. It has its autonomy as regards financial operation, but it is a government body. And the political will is there to do this. And another aspect to return to your question, at a time when we're talking about convergence, banks in our country are very limited. They're confined to towns and urban centers. I don't think there is really any alternative to the Post, at least under present circumstances, than for the government to give the Post this mandate to ensure financial inclusion. In March 2011, there was a decree that organized the Post and it set up in the Post a financial department. And one of its missions was to mobilize savings. Another is to provide micro-insurance services, or to provide credit to production units in the countryside. I'll get to you, Ambassador Swing, just to speak about remittances. But one last question to you, Mr Sonagustin. Do you have the impression that maybe governments, at least here in Western countries, it's fully understandable what was explained for Burundu, but we have the feeling in Western countries 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? Well, in the case of Spain, first of all, the actual situation of Spain, where we have a very consolidated financial sector with the many national and foreign banks, obviously the Post can't compete on the financial market with these great entities in Spain. Correos is not a national bank, from the point of view of the Spanish financial system. However, we do have the certainty that Correos can provide great service in particular countries, particularly where these migratory flows take place. And to be able to position the financial resources obtained in Spain and send them to their destination. What is provided by the banks? What is provided by the Post? What's the value I did? That's what we have to identify, because citizens in a market economy choose what they think is the best and most efficient service. What does the Post Office offer? First of all, a far-flung network of Post Offices, which accepts those remittances, and it's much more extensive and much more stable than the financial institutions strictly speaking. And from the point of view of price, the Post is very competitive, so it can compete with other possible agents and competitors on the market. And then there's a plus, very important, the brand. It offers this brand of trust, security. It's very odd, but citizens and the public sphere still think that the Post is going to guarantee delivery of their remittance in the right time and in the right conditions. Now, there are some other operators in competition with the Post, but once we consolidate our brand, then that's half the battle. There is one service where people tend to privilege a private operator rather than postal bank. It's remittances. What would you ask? We both are clients today. What would you ask in order to... What solutions do you have maybe to use more of the Post and maybe to cut down the costs, which are exorbitants, as you were saying, for remittances? Look, to be very frank and to give you more of a global perspective on this, I think that we're 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 along with 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've got to begin to change the narrative about migration. I'm 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. They're not negative. But we're dealing with a lot of stereotypes. Charlie Hebdo, you've got the whole question, every tourist is a possible terrorist. So you've got to deal with that. You have to deal, maybe they're coming to take our jobs, maybe they're bringing in disease. You know, 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're 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're dealing with a situation where there's 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'm sorry to put it in such global context, but I think that's 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's a good idea to start with you, but let's start with Mr. Sonninglustin. Do you think? Or Mr. Forsvill either? Okay, let's start with Mr. Forsvill. I missed it, sorry. Oh, you didn't listen to it. No, I was saying, now Mr. Lace was saying, Ambassador Lace was saying that maybe we should get down to 5% cost for remittances, for example. What kind of solutions do you have? Do you think it's realistic to go down to that level of cost? I don't know. What I do know is that it's expensive. And what is expensive is the actual handling part of the cash, the cash handling part. And there has to be cash handling because there's a security part, there's a transportation part. This is all very expensive. And if the zone is far away, which is inevitable, it's where the post offices are possibly far away. Of course we would like it to be as inexpensive as possible, but if we go beyond the cash imperative, we then are dealing with electronic money. That is, monetary exchanges that are done by telephone, payments done by telephone, because it's fine to get the money on your telephone, but you still need to be able to spend it. And all this requires much more substantial development in the IT field. Of course it's true that we would all like to reach this level, you're talking about morally today. Well, just to ask, what is the percentage at the moment as it stands? Well, it depends which product you choose to send money abroad. Well, it can go up to 10 or 12%, yes. For the international express mandate, that's the most expensive, but we're trying to promote that, and we have tried to bring the cost down for that. But in a market that is highly competitive, we can't sell at a loss. And so we have to be very aware, we have to try to do as much as possible. And it's true that larger volumes will help us because the more transfer takes place, the more the cost will come down. This is normal. This is the same for a letter post as well. So we have some hopes that we make progress, but we must remain realistic. If it becomes a universal service with subsidies, that's a possible choice, but nevertheless at the moment, the costs are quite high. So you've shared my point of view here. Pallaudier. As I see it, as he's just said, the solution is to be found in technology. Today, the posts that were traditionally not really interested in technology now have to get into ICT. And I can confirm that this solution is to be found in making all this paperless, in other words, transferring money by mobile means. And posts can offer that service. Then you have to be able to use it on the spot, says the moderator. There are many posts including my own in Burundi who are transferring money by mobile. We are agents for mobile telephone companies or for the banks, but as I was saying, I think this is a challenge to the whole of the postal community. And why shouldn't we designated postal operators ourselves become autonomous operators for the transfer of money by mobile means? It's feasible, the technology is there, or possibly we could do research into this. I'm convinced this is the right way, and I'm sure the others agree. Do you think it's that 10, 12% barrier? It's unbreakable as long as we use cash? Well, in the case of Spain, the commissions taken by the post haven't in recent years gone above 3%. So it's a good idea to fix goals. But in any case, we in a competitive market can provide very reasonable prices. Thank you very much for the discussion. I'll quickly have a look to see if the audience wants to add anything. I think we had the organisation of the Francophonie. Organisation de la Francophonie. I don't know whether they want to take the floor. My site is not that good. I can't really see whether Ambassador Buhabid is in the room. He did say he wanted to speak, and I've also had a note to say that India would like to take the floor. Where is the Indian representative? Hello, yeah, thank you. Okay, please, 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 especially thank Kothidawar and Sudzalan, besides the Director General of the IBUPU and the DPT-DG for organising this excellent conference. I would also like to thank the Director General of International Organisation for Migrations for his excellent presentation and recognising 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 3.7% of our $2 trillion economy. The cost of remittances with MTOs, the money transfer organisations 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 emphasise, 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, India would 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 all the 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 two 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. Thank you very much. Five minutes break and then we go on with the next panel. Thank you. Thank you. It was brilliant. Thank you very much. Kuchas. I think we'll pick up, I think we'll pick up a lot of time in the last session actually because we've got an hour and a half, but we've got four physical people. So it's been a long time. So it's going to be difficult since we're still with four or five minutes later. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, no, it's hard. Not at all. It's just that we can go over 50 minutes and... We're doing it. We're doing it. There is something else that just... So, everybody in the room. 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 with the next panel. So, please have a seat so that everybody can work in a comfortable way. Alright, so this afternoon we're going to continue with panel 8, discussion 8. So, this is a very important problem, tenured scene from the outside and I am on the outside. I'm a user of the post office, I'm not an employee of the post office. That is how to translate the trust that exists in the physical world to the digital economy. Well, digitalization is not new, the digital economy is entering a new age that features unprecedented challenges for postal leaders. Digital tools are flooding the business environment, provoking significant changes in how people work, communicate and sell. This of course can apply to your professional lives or in the private sector. This of course gives rise to new opportunities and challenges and pushes companies around the world to undergo a digital transformation. Postal stakeholders, as you can imagine, should not be left behind. We've been talking about this for two days now. Panelists will talk precisely about what governments and posts can do to shift the trust normally associated with the physical products and services of the post. It can be translated at least as well, if not better, into the digital world and make that trust a stronger or stronger. I will ask the Vice Minister for Policy Coordination and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication in Japan, Mr Yasuo Sakamoto, to come upstage and take the floor. He has previously held numerous responsibilities 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. Coordinator. Good afternoon. And I'd like to express my sincere gratitude 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 a 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 communities, including rural areas of the member countries. It is an undisputed fact that the postal sector has been gaining 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 methods 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 socioeconomic activities has also expanded the amount of close border commercial trade. In terms of social aspect, nations around the world have been continuing their efforts 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 arisen, such as global warming and disaster prevention. These changes could be a challenge for the postal sector, but at the same time, we should take them as 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 the Internet, is evolving at the 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 its 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 and disadvantage of 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 will be more and more expected to play the following roles. First, to increase the reliability of its delivery services, which is 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 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 various services for disaster victims. Post offices, which have been built upon the direct communication between people, can be a great asset 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 law, 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 is also another topic that we should consider. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Mr. Sakamoto, thank you very much. And since Mr. Sakamoto talked about this, we're going to give the floor to Mr. Sanu, director of the Telecommunications Development Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union. And he has worked for over 30 years in this field and he has concentrated on facilitating the growth of mobile telephones on the continent. Mr. Sanu, you have the floor. 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 for me to be here today at the UPU World Strategic Conference to discuss with our sister organization, UPU, I repeat our sister organizations, 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 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. Once 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 post 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 an universal tool with benefits far beyond the voice and the text communication originally envisaged. It 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 cyber crime statistics are alarming. The likely annual cost of cyber crime to the global economy is estimated at more than 455 billion. And there were, 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. Building confidence and security in the user ICT therefore remain one of our top priorities. ITU launched in 2007 the global cybersecurity 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 program which we are implementing to facilitate international cooperation and improve cybersecurity 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 cybersecurity initiative aimed at facilitating the deployment of computer incident response team. With the increase in usage of search 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 cybersecurity. The third point I want to talk to you about today is that customers 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. This is a new landscape where the assurances of yesterday could become the threats 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 e-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, mailbox, parcel, whatever you want with smart sensor, 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 will 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, there are a 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 part. 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 that we call in ITU the digital native and propose services to cope with the need. This is where the clients are now. I am 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. I thank you. We are now going to continue this discussion with the presentation of the director general of the Côte d'Ivoire Post, Mr. Mamedou Konate, his length experience of over 30 years in the postal sector. He was previously director of the internal relations of Côte d'Ivoire Post. He occupied a number of posts at regional and national levels. He has also worked within the UPU and together with Papu. You have the floor, sir. Minister of the Post, your Excellencies, ambassadors, director general of the International Bureau, ladies and gentlemen, delegates. First of all, I would like to join my modest voice to the authorities of my country and Côte d'Ivoire to thank Switzerland and the International Bureau for the great care that we have been surrounded by since our arrival. Yesterday in his statement, the Prime Minister stressed the importance of the post and the postal sector and the governmental vision up to 2020 for the recovery of Côte d'Ivoire. This has been reflected by our minister being renamed Minister of Post and the minister was present here. So I would also like to thank Mr. Bruno Connais for the time and energy that he has granted the post in order to share his vision. In Côte d'Ivoire, we have often said that the post goes back a long way with in mind the crisis that we have just undergone. But we also say that it is aiming far as well when it comes to our ambitions. Having said that, the subject that is bringing us together here today specifically is what the government and what the post can do in order to ensure that the trust that is associated to the physical services and product can be transferred and at least as well if not better to the digital economy. But I prefer to say what should the post and the governments do because we don't really have a choice here, we need to do something. In order to make progress, it is a good idea if we can come to an agreement on the concept of the digital economy so that it can act as a guideline to the electronic business and all these components, the services, the infrastructure and the underlying technology. In order to be fully understood, we need to take into account the audiovisual technology and audio services and others. And so very clearly, we can see that digital brings together ICTs as well as all the technology used in processing and transferring of information such as through the internet and IT services. The digital sector means that we're talking about the sector specifically linked to ICTs, the sale of digital services. And so it is clear that the government under posts have enough material so as not to be left marginalised given this new paradigm. So each and every one within its purviews needs to play the role of a catalyst and to ensure development in a world that is in full change. Now when it comes to governments, we need to build policies, build guidelines which would enable the benefits of the digital age to be felt by all citizens and how do we achieve that? To take the example of my country, a law dealing with postal codes was adopted which involved setting up a regulatory body, a regulatory authority which reviews the sector. The law on data protection, individual data protection and the law on e-commerce strengthens the actions on the fight against cybercrime and other scourges of the digital economy. The implementation of a vast programme of electronic governance, e-administration, e-health, e-learning and the programme to fight against a digital divide. And the Minister mentioned this recently yesterday when he came to the press conference. We're talking about one citizen, one computer and this corresponds to internet access. Now also in my country, the sector was freed up and the deregulation authority had their role to regulate that aspect in such a way that every part of it is able to play its role and the historic operator would be the designated operator to play its role. In the universal sector, when it comes to this historical operator, it is up to the operator to apply the postal strategy of the UPU and that of the ministry while being full in line with the developments underway and in line with market expectations. Now how can this be done? First of all, when it comes to the management of our post offices and digitalising them, we need to have available the necessary tools and these were made available to all our post offices. We also needed gradually to introduce ICTs in service development and here we were talking about digital posts more and more. We also needed to set up business units and today we have created a centre for hybrid post, hybrid mail. We're setting up and making available to our customers new franking machines, new generation ones. We have a postal express service which is both international and domestic. We have put online an e-commerce portal which is called Sandley Shop so that whoever is interested they can go to www.sandleyshop.ci We're also developing partnerships and alliances with administrations what we call the state post and the post therefore makes itself available to the administration in order to be its messenger and we are also setting up partnership with the tax sector in order to distribute tax notifications. We're also making the post available to citizens who want to have available various parts of administrative acts and the statutes remotely this way the customer does not need to move in order to, for instance, come to their birthplace in order to obtain an unnecessary birth certificate. The post also historically is a repository of trust within the framework of everything that we have noted when it comes to digitalisation the post needs to be a digital pillar and this is a pillar that will come into force only when the necessary tools, applications and services are made available around the electronic services and products States are making available various programmes that I mentioned earlier we're also talking more about big data a concept which is not something new for posts since they have always handled and generated information flows for instance when it comes to services to citizens for our citizens' counters and all this constitutes an important database we also talk about the cloud internet in our postal offices as a response to the digital divide emailing, joint work all the diversity of services are a lever for integrating integration between the various postal services when it comes to the post and e-commerce the post or the logistic platform for distribution is a very important element it enables the post to cover this last mile aspect and for this the extent of our network was something that was a plus for us that is all, thank you very much and this envelope tells you that the post is still centred on letter posts in spite of the developments that have taken place we will write to you thank you very much we'll go on now with our next speaker she's Deputy Inspector General of the United States Postal Service Tammy Whitcomb 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 was 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 forego 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 was it rated the 10th among all companies and organizations in the entire country unsure 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 US 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 and 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 and if you want to show who knows what it might be could post also be stronger logistics support centers for citizens that are temporarily permanently home bound 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 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 the 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. Buenos dias. Thank you very much to UPU for having invited me to take part in this panel. I'd like to thank all of the previous panelists, and I'd like to thank all of you for your patience in listening to me over the next few minutes. I think it's important to look a little bit at the context before and after. Now what does this say? What do these photos tell us? This I think represents what the postal sector used to look like a few years ago. It was just coasting down a very smooth river. Probably some were doing better than others, going faster than others, but basically there weren't many waves. Now look at the situation today. It's the complete opposite. There are waves everywhere. We're in a very difficult context. There are very aggressive telecommunications companies and competitors. There are higher expectations from consumers. There is also unfair competition and a complete deregulation of the sector. So we have to do a lot more with a lot less. What is the current context? There is no money to invest. We have a number of problems because we need to be innovative. I think we've been talking about this over the last two days. We need to be innovative. We need to meet targets. We have monthly targets. We heard about someone who didn't meet their targets in November and I think the fact is month after month we are being asked to sell and do business. So what are we doing? Well, Roberto Gorsueta said that any right implies duty and responsibility and any opportunity implies obligation and any possession duty. Now what this means is in my view is that clients are entitled to expect a very high quality of service and we have the responsibility to deliver that service. We also have the responsibility to innovate and to change the situation in the postal sector. We're forced to find new solutions and look for better commitment and skill in order to provide a better service. We have important tools such as postal reform, e-commerce, financial services and a whole set of tools at our disposal in the postal sector. But how are we going about postal sector reform? Here it is. Well, we need to look very carefully at the context and say that we're not just looking for new laws and new regulations, we're looking for a reform of the postal sector and that means a comprehensive and structured reform in which governments participate actively in the reform process whereby postal reform is a question of ownership among all of the stakeholders in the postal sector. If we try and do everything by ourselves we're not going to get anywhere. Obviously the postal sector is a key element, a key driver of social and economic development in countries. The statistics show that we're the biggest job creator in the world with 5.1 million jobs. We generate wealth, 345 billion US dollars and we have more than 660,000 post offices around the world. We've been talking about e-commerce over the past couple of days and obviously we need to increase the volume of parcel posts. We need to work on parcels in order to take advantage of e-commerce because we are seeing fewer and fewer letters and this has been said on a number of occasions. We don't know when letters are going to disappear altogether. In one year, 50 years, we just don't know. So what we need to focus on is quality of service in all of the service that we provide, including letter mail. But when our letters are going to disappear we simply don't know. But I say when someone asks me, I might look like a fortune teller or a witch of some kind but I'm not. I simply don't know. I can't look into the future, I can't read the tea leaves and I just know when letters are going to disappear. But we need to focus on our key strengths, logistics, parcels. We talked so much about e-commerce, about Brazil and Peru, where e-commerce has been discussed lengthily. We've got to export a facile, for example. We've talked about the importance of e-commerce, about how it promotes social inclusion. An inclusive government programme that we need to take advantage of. Deepak Chopra, our dear friend, talked about cross-border post. And he talked about the need to have excellent, strong cross-border post. And in order to achieve that we need to have technology, good accessibility and we need a sustainable service. We've got two financial services, well we've heard a great deal about that. But what's important for us are remittances for migrants. We heard about that in the previous panel. Postal bank, there are posts that already have these services such as Brazil, France and Italy and Portugal in November I believe we'll be setting one up. And we can learn from them. We shouldn't be afraid to learn from the successes and from the failures of countries who have set up this type of service. So we need to look at this frankly and talk about the capacity of mail, of posts to get involved in this type of business activity. Talking about postal payment services it's very important to look at the fact that there are traditional services but we can also be very innovative. Postal packaging envelopes were launched by one post in the region and this made it possible to put advertising on all of these envelopes and these envelopes were just distributed to people who didn't have an envelope available when they wanted to send something. And this is free and this is advertising and we shouldn't be afraid of these type of innovative strategies as well as looking at working with airlines and public transport cooperatives. The capacity is moving very fast and we need to keep up with it. We need to be at the cutting edge. We've talked about changing our image a great deal in the region and we've worked very hard to try to change the image of posts as cheaply as possible by getting involved in interviews, free publicity wherever possible, press releases and looking for advertising possibilities in postal parcels. For the future what we need is good governance of the sector. We need to enhance the quality of service in all of our products and diversify. We need to incorporate new technologies. We need to work with all of the restricted unions and regions as key elements of postal development. What are we doing in PUASP? Well what we have done is try to support governments in reform processes. They are key processes for us. We cannot work in silos, we need to work hand in hand with governments. We've also launched a programme called the EMS Cement Project in order to enhance quality of service in EMS and we've reviewed progress after a year of implementing that project and we've seen that some posts have made great strides forward thanks to this programme in the last year. We've been raising awareness of governments, of the importance of the postal sector, trying to explain our role and try to explain how we can support them. We've been working on regional projects such as developing the logistics chain, working on a regional postal security certificate, looking at relations between posts and customs. For me there is no successful post without security. We've been working along the lines of this export a facile programme which is a very inclusive programme and such a vital one for the region and indeed for the world and we'll be looking at the issue of remittances and we're looking for new sources of financing so that we can promote our projects. So just to conclude, I think we need to do post business in a very flexible and forward-looking fashion. We're not just in the business of selling products, we're in the business of developing the postal sector and we have tremendous synergies. When mail is sent from a developed country to a developing country and that developing country doesn't have the technology or the capacity to deliver that mail, then the quality of the post in general will be described as poor. So we have no time to lose. There is no time to waste. The time for change is now and it depends on all of us. It depends on the decisions that we take at this conference and in the Istanbul Congress. Therefore, I invite you to lead together a crusade for this new postal sector with new services, innovation and extremely high quality. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. That was brilliant. Thank you. So, I think before I ask anything, I think I'll go to the floor this time and if I recall correctly, Burkina Faso wanted to speak earlier, but didn't have the opportunity. Is Burkina Faso in the room? Do they wish to speak now? No. No, Burkina Faso. Ah. Any questions from the floor? Anyone wishing to add anything? Do you want to join the Dominican Republic, please, sir? Mr. Cavana Marchand, we'd like to know what is the main challenge that you faced as Secretary-General of the Postal Union of these Americas, Spain and Portugal? What is the biggest challenge that you've had to face in developing the postal networks in Latin America? Yes, please. I'm sorry. I think I was addressed to you. Yes, sir. Thank you very much for your question. One of the challenges that we've had to face as Secretary-General is trying to work more closely with governments and trying to get governments to work with posts to try to move forward in each of the projects that we need to implement, to try to make the posts more dynamic in relation to new technologies in particular. Sometimes we've had projects that we wanted to implement before they were actually mature, such as projects relating to e-commerce. And so what's important to begin with is to start to implement them. But if you don't have the right technological platform for some of these services, the whole thing is going to collapse. So that's why you need to work a lot upstream and to ensure that your projects are successful when they are eventually launched. And this was a difficult thing, because the governments in the region are not always aware of the role of the postal sector. But we've been working more closely with them. I give the floor to Kurt Divoy. You have one minute for the question and statement as you are blooding this conference. But I wish I'd ask you to be very brief, one minute to ask a question and one minute to respond. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, moderator. We will be brief as you've requested, I'd like to thank all the speakers for the excellent quality of their presentations, particularly the gentleman who asked. I noted in all the presentations that this significant list of innovations and solutions that we should all be looking at. But I think also we need to think about the issue of client expectations. We have customers and governments, all the players in the ecosystem, we know that innovation is evident for the market and we need to do this and we need to respect what our promises to the customer and we need to improve the quality of our services with all our stakeholders and respect what we have promised to our clients. Thank you very much for your comment, says the moderator. I think it's an excellent comment. Thank you for taking the floor. Thank you very much for participating in this panel. Unfortunately, time is really, really, really running fast and we have another panel and some guys I think have catch your 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, Monsieur 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. Oh yeah, yeah, that'd be perfect. I will, yeah, I will try, I will, thank you. She's never been there to the uni, you guys speak to me. Yes, you're right. Yes, you are. I'm making an announcement, but... Okay. So I'll wait for him to come back. Okay. I'll wait for him. So he's on the case. Okay, you give me the go? Okay, I'll wait for you. Hello? 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. Voilà, troisième... So our third panel. Last one. And we're going to be talking about une composante essentielle essential component for the global economy and sustainable development. La contribution du secteur postale et l'économie intérieure régionale. Contribution of the personal sector, the internal region and the global economy is more recognised by governments and international actors, international context of globalisation. The universal postal network, resilient network, is a major benefit and important tool to support the objectives of sustainable development on a national level, a global level of three dimensions. The economy, social aspect and the environment. The speakers in this panel will review how the U.P.U.'s members and the postal sector in a broader sense contribute to the programme for sustainable development of the United Nations to benefit the economies, societies and all citizens worldwide. Speaker, and one of the speaker 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 over the period of six years. In 2005, she was charged with the coordination of the debt relief funds of 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 Millennium 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 U.P.U. 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 a 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. 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 own, 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're looking for are in the social agenda and on the environmental agenda an integrated whole environmental, economic and social. This really does bring in many more stakeholders it brings in the 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 that 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're also looking for investments in sustainable ways that are irreversible and I think that we've 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 the means 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 on the country level we are making commitments to greening and having a much more 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 1 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 those that have been involved with this but for which we have the greater challenge of going to scale universal agenda meaning just that and I think that here the nature of the multi stakeholders involved and of the experiences that you have 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 the importance 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 in 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 in 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 but it is quite clear that inclusion is going to be a big part of this new agenda, financial 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 and how can we then lend from your toolkit improve it, deepen it, 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 to finish really fashioning out the means of implementation which as I heard in the session before the digital divide really being closed but the role of technologies in all of this is 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 on climate change and we bridge the conversation that 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 and more integrated agenda bringing the role of 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 Ms. Mohamed for this presentation I'll ask you a quick question now if you have other meetings to attend according to you in what ways do you think that UPU could engage or 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 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 and 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 as we would say yesterday what are the implications of this new agenda and can you begin to speak 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 Mr. Mohamed and 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 well we are now going to continue this discussion with the Minister of Posts and Information Communication Technologies of Côte d'Ivoire Mr. Bruno Cabani Coney who has a wealth of experience in the area of posts and telecommunications because before becoming Minister he was the Regulatory Affairs Director of the Africa, Middle East and Asia region for France telecom telecommunication sector the Audit and Finance the delegate director of France telecom and the director general of the telecom sector and communications in Côte d'Ivoire and he is also the President of this conference thank you well hello again everybody sustainable development has become a vital part of business for the postal sector and something we've been hearing since this morning it's something that has helped us to improve relations with partners, create new markets respond to clients' expectations better develop our activities more effectively and ensure that our employees are more fulfilled raise awareness of environmental and social issues among the public sustainable development is also seen as an economic lever for the development of our posts since the Doha Congress in 2012 a number of activities have been launched in the foreign areas the environment the UPU's activities such as exchange of good practices with regard to reducing greenhouse emissions in the postal sector efforts to achieve climate neutrality in the international view of the UPU strengthened cooperation with the United Nations agencies including the United Nations Environmental Programme and the International Civilization Authority need to be strengthened the second issue connected with social affairs now we need to continue with awareness raising activities with regard to infection of HIV AIDS and now Ebola of course we need to extend those procedures to non-communicable diseases and we also need to continue implementing the action plan that was drawn up by the International Labour Organization in collaboration with the UPU on employment and decent work we also need to ensure that our posts are responsible in promoting a social dialogue and enabling their employees and enabling even more numerous clients to achieve a better standard of health and that's something that all socially responsible enterprises need to be involved with and I think that posts need to be socially responsible and what I'd like to focus on in particular is the third pillar the economy and there I think this must be at the forefront of posts agendas posts need to become effective businesses we need to be viable we need to ensure that our activities are profitable and we need to promote the economic development of our countries and create jobs with regard to the environment of course we need to be responsible purchasing policy, develop socially responsible products such as microcredits microloans and financial services which are both affordable and accessible but we also need to ensure that each of these activities whoever is benefiting from them remains profitable and continue to generate wealth for our posts and this I'm sure will help to ensure that posts are key economic operators and socially responsible ones in terms of awareness of their environment so these are our good intentions but we need to ensure that they are translated into action and many of the posts in our countries are trying to ensure that that is the case in particular in the countries of the north but we need to wonder how relevant these activities are for poorer countries in the south we have different priorities which tend to be focused on economic objectives I want to be frank with you and I want to be constructive I'm trying to be pragmatic and frank about these issues that sometimes dealt with in a very philosophical manner with regard to the environment and sustainable development of course we all think that we're all in the same boat and it's a matter for all of us and I believe in the issue of general responsibility but I think as I said earlier we need to focus on economic targets in the context of posts and we've been adopting this approach in terms of ITCs, the development of the internet we need to ensure that our posts are in the service of society and other economic operators so that we can create value and wealth and help to create jobs that's why we have very pragmatic proposals some would say some of our proposals are too down to earth but what we're trying to do is to ensure that we use post offices to have community cyber cafes to help our social networks to the benefit of SMEs and indeed to help individuals such as farmers and people involved in handicrafts post offices can also be used to create financial inclusion and this is an issue that's been dealt with by a previous panel earlier most of our countries less than 10% of people have access to banking services and in Côte d'Ivoire today there are about 8 billion CFA worth of transactions a day on our electronic networks that's about 2 million euros a day that's about 4 billion euros a year and those were services that were only launched about 2 or 3 years ago but now only about a quarter of our customers use these services so you see that there is tremendous potential if you look at the 22 million mobile phone users in Côte d'Ivoire today and when they start to use those services that's 22 million mobile phone users which means that there is tremendous potential so the use of post offices for providing administrative services and I think the director general of our posts has also talked about this earlier we're also trying to ensure that we digitize our services 300 of our information services where we provide information on behalf of the government and the state to our people are now digitized and we are trying to have a more interactive dialogue with our customers over the internet so we use the post in order to carry out awareness raising campaigns with regard to the prevention of HIV AIDS spread and now Ebola so to conclude I would like to say that obviously we welcome the setting up of the carbon fund which is designed to promote the development of more environmentally friendly services and we do hope that that fund will help to go further than the efforts already made by countries. China Post is today providing basic commodities free of charge to poor women in China that have been given by donors and Chile are now handing out Christmas presents to the young children so these are very small aspects in terms of cost but they're very important in terms of the social impact and I'd like to welcome as well the efforts of some developed country posts to help to support developing countries such as the Austria post which has financed projects in Mali and Ghana for ovens which are 50% more efficient than old ovens and they help to reduce the amount of wood and timber which is used by women for cooking in these countries. A lot of different countries on a daily basis actually do follow good practices today that they've taken from the lessons learned from developed countries and our post offices for instance don't use a lot of energy in fact some post offices don't even like electricity and a lot is done through post offices for post boxes as well this has been said by a number of speakers the post box is a key aspect of the service and some countries are now going back to delivery in post office boxes in order to reduce the energy consumption because delivery of physical mail uses up a lot of energy so in Cote d'Ivoire the business model the logistic platform that we are implementing in the Cote d'Ivoire post includes our determination to ensure that this platform is made available to other e-commerce operators so we're pooling our efforts if you like and making our equipment available even to our competitors we rent out some of our premises if we believe that our premises are too large for the activities that we're involved with and we've tried to outsource our postal sorting offices to the port area instead of the airport in order to ensure that some of that is done more effectively so these are pragmatic measures that we've taken of course they're not huge in scale and they may not be philosophically particularly interesting but we are sure that with these small steps we are helping to protect the environment and ensuring that we are socially responsible and we are profitable, viable in terms of a going concern and then just to complete my intervention I would like to say that we're trying to make sure that our posts are economic operators creating jobs and creating opportunities and help to improve the lives of our people ensuring as far as possible that we protect the environment in which our activities are deployed and I have to say to finish that there is a link between posts and ITCs and the development policy that we are pursuing in our post is very much dependent on the strategy that we are pursuing in ITCs because we want to ensure that our effective postal network provides inclusive services and so we need to take into account the development of the digital economy and that's absolutely vital because a lot has been said about that here which are true for the post but which don't necessarily take into account that beyond the postal sector we need to have an effective ITC infrastructure to help us in the posts achieve our objectives in a lot of developing countries that's not yet the case and this is a very fertile area we need to have an effective regulatory structure for these new ITCs this is something that is helping inclusion accessibility to services is facilitated we hope to create 300 new cyber cafes in Cote d'Ivoire we need to attract people to the use of ITCs in particular in rural areas because they'll come back to use postal services if they are connected and so these are steps that we are taking to pursue our ITC and postal objectives commonly so there's a long way to go there's a long and winding road and but we are determined to get there because we think that this will help our peoples and we think this will help our states and we really don't have any other choice but to pursue this strategy thank you thank you thank you and I do hope that these are initiatives that you are taking deliberately not just because you don't have electricity in your post office Minister, now we're going to be listening to a union representative to balance the speeches Mr. Philip Jennings, he's the secretary general of Uni Global Union he's 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 organisation 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 termed 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 their dependents we are the beating heart, the public face if you have a strong brand as postal services 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 will take credit 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 with the climate change talks, 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 bought financial calamity the question to all of us is what responsibility will we take will we be up to the challenge can we unions your cells, 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 but 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 7 and we will get up 8 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 that this binds people together and above all 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 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 am so pleased to see that in Asia and Africa you have been launching new initiatives in terms of remittances the message is being listened to at the G20 in Brisbane I was there and it is now got a priority at a global level where it did not have it before I also think that in this process some 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 and in government goals they talk about people and democracy this has to be a sector where no human rights are questioned in the postal services that every worker if they desire should be a member of a union and should be able to join a union freeing from fear and intimidation and victimization that we are now in a new era within the United Nations system the principles of business and human rights and that sense of the due diligence you will now be obliged as employers 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 saying Philip my right 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 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 richest 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 and to ensure 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 yourself 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 we welcome the continuation with your director general Bisha 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 thank you Bisha Hussain 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 who has a pre-recorded message is Ahim Steiner the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, the UNEP and under Secretary General of the United Nations they couldn't make it to Geneva so he sent us a video Ahim 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 Director 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 Postal Union's 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 postal 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 to build on both the successes that we have had in the past in working together but more importantly in guiding our collaboration for the future I'm 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 then 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 to sustainable development and addressing climate change an opportunity for an even more effective, efficient and responsible universal post-union 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 in terms of getting 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 technologies and I am very grateful and also commend UPU for having been part of this effort I also want to congratulate many of your postal services 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 proudly 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 whether it is in the context of our travel policy whether it is in the encouragement of video conferencing whether it is also in the context of managing our infrastructure, our buildings, offices and electricity supplies across the world the net impact of trying to make united a climate neutral organization has been that we have 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 of postal organizations I think you would be surprised if you have already 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 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 that we cannot 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 UNED 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 and 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 Achim 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 extensive 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 Dear colleagues, I'd like to begin by thanking the Director General of the UPU Mr. Hussain and the Government of Côte d'Ivoire represented by the Prime Minister Mr. Bruno Nabany-Cone the Minister who have allowed me to come here from a far off island in the Caribbean bringing with me the Caribbean Sun I've been very impressed here I saw the photo of an elderly gentleman who was being helped to write a letter and I think it's very symbolic because that represents inclusion because I think inclusion is a very important keyword for the Posts today we have something that we would like to say about inclusion in the Dominican Republic No, you don't have that You don't have the video Are you chatting again? No, I'm not chatting I'm buying on the internet the Dominican Postal Institute presents a postmark which is the best way to make purchases over the internet with official guarantees we are the only official way of buying products over the internet in the country the Posts getting closer to you so I hope you like the video financial inclusion is a vital issue and that's something that I wanted to mention now the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has lowered economic growth forecast for the region but it's said that the Central American Caribbean region will lead economic growth and the Dominican Republic has economic growth at an average of 5% over the past few decades the Dominican Republic has been one of the strongest economies in Latin America reaching an average of 5.5% growth between 1991 and 2013 the Dominican Republic has excellent geography, political flexibility secure democracy and is a tourist destination for the region and for the world one of the main challenges that we have as Posts in the short term is the need to adapt postal infrastructure to new realities and to the new role that Posts must play and our sustainability will depend on our skill in using the strength of the postal network in ensuring that it becomes a more effective logistics network trends show that there will continue to be a strong demand for financial services and Tamara Cook from the Bill and Millenia Gates Foundation said that the UPU will need to work so that Posts can be included within the financial sector in trying to improve and indeed provide new postal services providing postal infrastructure that supports economic and political objectives set by governments in that regard we need to see changes in the region we need to clarify the concept of universal service universal postal service and indeed the conditions of meeting that service because the needs have changed in relation to universal postal services our view our vision is that our Dominican Postal Institute can help support a building a more committed society and we believe that we will be able to help achieve the strategic objectives set by governments the development of the Dominican Post was getting the postal sector included in developing the national development strategy 2030 law including the sector as a whole and supporting the implementation of national development initiatives towards a better country we've just been playing our part in helping to achieve the sustainable development goals of our country Dominican Post has made great gains modernisation greater efficiency and becoming more competitive meeting the right for expectations of our clients and users thanks to this strategic leadership we have been able to achieve a strong position and a strong position in particular related to our economic activities the range of products that we provide is adapted to the needs of our people two experiences that we've had have been in developing e-commerce through the in-post-back project and export of facile in-post-backed is the premium courier service of the Dominican Republic with international transport of mail and parcels and a service for e-commerce and it's 40% cheaper than services provided by competitors export of facile is a simplified tool for exporting commercial parcels and which is designed for small and medium-sized enterprises who want to link up to international markets and there is guaranteed delivery of goods to all countries around the world and this is a tool which is designed to help the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises and in particular from the handicraft sector so that they can sell those products in foreign markets it's an initiative service and it's a very direct simple, cheap and secure system and obviously it overcomes logistical and bureaucratical burdens our view is that we need to ensure that all of our services help to improve the lives of our people and promote social inclusion which is a key aspect for national development I'd like to point out in stress that sustainable development has become a key aspect of postal development ensuring relations with customers developing new markets meeting expectations of consumers throughout the territory promoting personal development of human resources and raising awareness of social and environmental use among our people we need to ensure that productivity and growth go hand in hand with promoting more flexible and flexible work arrangements for our employees and maximizing benefits of automatic and digital systems however, to be successful we need to ensure that this is fair and attractive to our workforce what we've been doing is reducing the use of motor bikes by encouraging the use of motorcycles and the French post has helped us with that as well we have non-communicable diseases in our country which is a great problem and we're trying to encourage people to use bikes and these health projects have been sponsored by the First Lady I'd also like to take this opportunity to say that I am the Director General with I think most experience in the postal sector today and I've heard a lot of speakers over the past couple of days talking about new ideas and when I received the invitation from the Director General he said that this strategic context conference would be taking place in the context of permanent evolution of the postal sector and that we need to look together at the difficulties and opportunities faced by the postal sector and that's why we're here but there's a vital thing that we need to do to achieve all of these objectives and that is faith we need to have faith in the sustainability of the postal sector faith to continue with our tasks and jobs faith in the concept of meeting customers expectations faith that we can do more with less and I'm sending this message out to developed countries from a developing country mine Solanio Moreira talked a lot about this and that's someone I'd like to remember today faith is a key concept and that's why we're here at this conference through our faith in the post we've come from all of the different parts in the world to be here today because we all have faith in the system and I think that's a vital aspect the Director General has faith in the postal sector because Mr Hussain has faith deep within him and he has demonstrated that he believes strongly in the postal sector Ladies and Gentlemen this strategy conference is a demonstration of that faith and it's a clear demonstration that all of us are committed to the postal sector and we all need to work together in this because the postal sector will remain sustainable if we all have that faith and keep that flame alive so after this I will ask you now to listen to the Deputy Director General of the University of Pasadena Pasadena is very well began his career as a scientific councillor with Swiss Post he took responsibility of relationship with the UPU and many times he was head of delegation of Switzerland at the Council of Administration and the Post Operations Council as well and on behalf of Switzerland he took on the presidency of the drafting committee at the 23rd UPU Congress Mr Cleaver you have the floor Ladies and Gentlemen, colleagues, friends, minister, panellists Ladies and Gentlemen and Director General of the colleague I always thought that a post was one of the most beautiful women in the world but given the number of people who have been seeking our fortune in the recent years we have a lot of hope before us and I was indeed right this is an essential opponent of the global economy everyone recognised this mission through the vision that we had set in place four years ago what we said eight years ago as well in this organisation it's a vision that we are sticking to we are called more and more to react to this vision we've included this sustainable development component within this and this is obviously natural and it's a privilege of the final panellists to be able to react to what colleagues have already said so I will try to do this a few minutes ago to listen to Amina Mohammed so the United Nations big family we belong to in a few months time we will discuss the Millennium Goals and called all of us to be at the heart of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals Post and the UPU are already actors in the area of sustainable development we've heard this many times and I will take up a few examples to illustrate this so in the area of posts we've had a clear interest in sustainable development in riding the wave of sustainable development around these three pillars the environment the economy and the social aspect of course this is the way we will guarantee our future for example in the area of the environment as Einstein mentioned a short while ago the environmental management system will help us to reduce cost it's not just a statement we have clear examples of this for example Australia Post has saved 16 million dollars between 2012 and 2015 through responsible management of its buildings and its vehicles we also have the example of Samar Post a small post but it has managed to reduce its fuel expenditure by 54% Minister Kone mentioned the economic models that we could use we can bring in the environment and the economy together Philip Jennings mentioned the social pillar he made an excellent demonstration and showed that taking into account social dialogue diversity minorities long term training this can only be of benefit to posts here again we have examples and I'll take examples of small posts for example Salvador Post in the area of access for persons with disabilities to access to jobs and access to post offices it's not just up to the large posts to deliver on these goals everyone can do it in the area of sustainable economic development things are even clearer in the example of financial inclusion is a clear example here we spoke about this this afternoon so the strengths of posts in the area of financial inclusion of those who have previously been excluded from the banking system this is a real asset the point of view of economic development of countries and the policies of inclusion as well as the point of view of postal revenue and income another recent example we have produced a study together with UN women and this was published shortly and it will show clearly that posts include women financially and economically much more than any other economic sector for example the banking sector I listened to Jean-Paul Fosserville with the capacity for posts to include people in the financial sector posts have been and will remain area for public power we have been partners with the governments in many general policies whether it be the area of social transfers administrative aspects helping to organise elections urban planning through addressing systems and others on a national level have already shown that they are actors in the area of sustainable economic development or even sometimes leaders as has been shown through the example of the French post has taken the role of leader in the procurement platform for electric vehicles which brings together many companies from different areas this is also the case of Mauritius Post which was chosen as the main partner for the government's overall development strategy of course posts can do more and posts can do it better the UPU is there to guide them and support them in their endeavours so the UPU now this area of contribution to sustainable development UPU is of course ambitious yes we are ambitious however we must also be pragmatic we are not taking anyone's place or the place of any other organisation in this area we are not the UNDP we are not a large development agency but we are taking on our responsibilities our social economic societal responsibilities but of course environmental responsibilities come along with this we know that working together we can bring global solutions our strength is our global network this famous single post-war territory just set up over 100 years ago we don't necessarily have the financial means or the resources alone so that's why we need to set up partnerships and work together we've seen these the last two days working with the special organisation Migration I've found UNEP UN Women the Gates Foundation and others I can mention we have continued to take significant efforts to convince our partners to work with us today for the benefit of tomorrow so we need to highlight our strategy for partnership further and that is vital the strength of UPU is also that it's a global organisation that can help the postal community in its role at the heart of sustainable economic development within the famous list of 17 sustainable development goals that are currently being discussed in the United Nations I can say with certainty that alone or more often with partners that we have in the UPU we are active in 13 of these goals whether they be in the area of financial inclusion training friendships growth and development of SMEs and access to international markets also promotion of investment and sustainable infrastructure fighting climate change and affecting the economy and others as well we are already working in all these areas but of course we need to do more to show that the postal sector is an important infrastructure for sustainable development and social and economic cohesion one of the benefits and assets of the postal family and of the UPU is also solidarity and the effective work we're carrying out in this area I'd like to highlight the role of Modesto Guzman who worked hard with the moment when Haiti was severely affected several years ago the was the first to assist as well as with the US Postal Service as well we worked in times of crisis in Indonesia Japan for example during the Fukushima disaster we have assisted not only when crisis have hit but in the reconstruction phase as well with US Post and others we've been in Sendai the Global Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and we have shown the role that the postal sector can play in times of crisis times of disaster post as a structural element to assist post can also be an element that can highlight problems we have a project that is being brought together with the World Meteorological Organization that we can use to warn populations when crisis are about to hit and natural disasters are about to hit so all these points to bring together in our activities and our famous strategy for action to ensure that we can be effective so that the postal sector and economic development in the broader sense can be delivered this is a contribution to the development of post but also through a contribution to the sustainable development goals of member states this is how the UPU will be relevant and effective this is at the heart of our action the global strategy that includes elements and context of our changing times this is why we are not and will never work in isolation we need to come together to bring our benefits to our members to support development our strength is in delivery in specifics our objectives can be seen on a daily basis in economic and social life we will continue to work in this vein for everyone thank you thank you thank you very much I have one quick question to all for you a very quick one 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 that the post will be confronted 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 Monsieur President perhaps well that's a really difficult question and I'm going to try to reply to it I was saying a moment ago that our posts have to be socially responsible and in that context they need to go beyond considerations restricted to profitability it would be very difficult to envisage a post office that did not focus on issues of profitability because it would be dependent on the state if it wasn't profitable or viable as a going concern so you need to try to sort of square the circle I mean it's a conundrum in trying to promote social responsibility and going towards the poorest sections of the society so promoting inclusion while remaining profitable and that is the question most businesses today are faced by these new issues connected with sustainable development most businesses today are accepting responsibilities which involve costs I'm talking about banks, insurance companies a whole number of sectors who are now taking measures to avoid being accused of undermining sustainable development and creating problems related to climate change and ozone depletion of those responsibilities we're all on the same boat and if there's a hole in the boat and it's leaking then it's a problem for all of us and we need to ensure that this boat remains afloat we all have our duties and responsibilities if someone starts trying to make holes in that boat and I believe that postal sector that goes for the postal sector too 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 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 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 it's a question for your administration but surely there must be a place to 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 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 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 Zittel in Australia and therefore this is going to 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 you do have to face this already yes we are different we do focus on the human being a lot of businesses only focus on figures we focus as well on society and that's our strength because the human being is central to our activities we have always been sustainable because our main objective isn't just to make money but it's to have a universal postal service you managed to achieve that on a daily basis we do manage to do that and the more efforts we make at every level we can do that and that's our strength that's our difference that's why we are different to businesses because of the belief and passion that we have for our sector others look at statistics figures cold numbers that's not us is it up to UPU to try to fight this unfair competition well UPU is an intergovernmental organisation and its aim is to ensure that there is a global network that is operational and even though Philippe Philippe has been talking about talking to some of the members of our family and taking them to one side the fact is everybody together decides on the rules of the game and UPU needs to ensure that provides opportunities to discuss the rules of the game we have a congress now in 17 months time and that might be a wonderful opportunity to talk about the rules of the game and to get things off our chest we all need to take responsibility for this we can't substitute member states but together we can put pressure on those who might avoid their social responsibility thank you 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 the USPS is that correct no Japan also asked for yes ok please go ahead there you go thank you as you said my name is from the US Postal Service and speaking in my role is the chair of the UPU working group on disaster risk management a 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 deal with in order to accomplish their mission on a daily basis maintain trust and as a result the disaster risk 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 disaster risk reduction is an integral part of the sustainable development agenda as Pascal mentioned our objectives for disaster risk 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 disaster risk 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 disaster risk 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. Thank you. 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. previous mentioned in his panel such as 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 reduction which are being implemented in the United States. There are many 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 reduction in Sendai, Japan. 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 transmit 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 will be reflected to the next Istanbul strategy in the next UPU congress. Thank you. Next speaker actually next would you like to react? Yes, I know friends as well but in the list I have the WMO also wanted to speak the World Meteorological Organization. Please open your mic. Yes, please go ahead. Turn on your microphone please. Thank you. Distinguished minister, director general, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates. I'd like to thank all of the panellists who've spoken about such interesting issues and I'd like to come back to what Amina Mohammed said and what Mr Steiner said about the contribution to the WMO and UPU can make for their members to support the sustainable development goals and combat poverty and disaster reduction. WMO and UPU are two of the oldest members of the UN family and we're lucky enough to collaborate, work together and have been doing for some time. In the future there will be more disasters in relation to climate change and postal services and hydrological and meteorological services in our member states will have a great contribution to make to try to make states more resilient and strong and ensure that our systems are more effective even in the context of disasters and helping local and national governments to become more efficient and resilient in the face of disasters. So in that with that in mind I can reiterate the solidarity of WMO and UPU to try to help members pursue those objectives. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'd like to give the floor to the Delegation of France now. Thank you. I'd like to come back to the Carbon Fund. I'd like to point out that it has two objectives the low carbon emissions target of the postal sector which needs to be financed by posts in developed countries that need to finance projects on electrification and the move towards renewable energies or financing alternative vehicles in developing countries posts. Thanks to those projects the developed world can demonstrate their carbon neutrality so that's beneficial for both. The second aim is climatic solidarity so the idea isn't just to transfer green technologies but to transfer know-how. The Carbon Fund is the first sectoral carbon fund in the world which pursues these two objectives. It's a win-win situation which is designed to help all of the 192 member countries to come to Istanbul and try to support the implementation of this fund perhaps it could be incorporated into the UPU and its strategy but in any case the postal sector by adopting this fund will be able to demonstrate at COP2121 the next conference on climate change that it becomes the first official proposal. It's something that's been announced by Ban Ki-moon and that's something that we have anticipated and tried to move ahead with. We need to associate quality of service with quality of air. Thank you. And I think a country willing to air something with Costa Rica is it the case still? Hi, how are you? Hello to everybody. Costa Rica is in a region that for many years has been struck by earthquakes and eruptions and that's why for Costa Rica it's vital to see the role played by posts along with local efforts to combat disasters and their impacts. In 2008, Costa Rica was struck by a terrible earthquake and thanks to the postal sector we managed to achieve a tremendously strong response in the effective areas and what we're asking from other posts as the United States has pointed out and other countries have said is to understand the importance of the post's active role in responding to disasters with national disaster response committees and posts can play that social role that they really have to play. Do you want to add something Mr. Guzman? I can say that in the experience of Haiti I saw that the Haiti experience was useful in creating synergies between activating a mechanism in which the United States played a very active role and other countries from Europe in fact as well showing quick solidarity in the context of that disaster and that strengthened or raised the awareness of all of us that we need to show solidarity in responding quickly to support countries that have suffered from the impacts of such disasters. Mr. Prime Minister, I speak under President Minister we have gone over time do we have time to take a few more questions or do we need to wrap up now? I had over to you I think we need to stop there so I'd like to thank you very much for your attention and we've looked at issues which are very sensitive and important for future posts and we are all customers and we're all customers of posts so we have Benefits and Universal Service and we need to look at aspects of development of respecting the environment and respecting staff and employees and also the economic realities and profitability of the posts these are all the different aspects of the same problem I think through the different presentations and different speakers today we see the need to move forward and also the trust you have in your institutions in how the customer views you and the trust they have in you I'd like to thank you very much for your attention wish you an excellent evening and I will give the floor to the Minister and President for the continuation of this conference thank you very much Well, I'd like to begin by thanking of course Mr. the moderator the excellent way in which he's moderated this panel I'd like to thank the panelists of course for the wealth of the experience they've shared with us today in an excellent fashion I would also like now ladies and gentlemen we invite the Director General Mr. Bishah Hussein to take the floor for some overall concluding remarks and I will continue after he's taken the floor so you have the floor Honorable Minister distinguished delegates ladies and gentlemen well after two days of very intense discussions covering the main issues I would like to thank Mr. Mr. I've 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 what kind of stress 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 a quick 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 the 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 members of Universal Postal Union here I want to convey to you and to your Government and the 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. McFerre, 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 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 Excellency 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 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 have 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 because really to wrap this up we must come down to really what is the 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 and 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 we 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 the three eyes innovation integration and inclusion to me this are the fundamental three issues that really was underlined here by this conference during the last three days Your Excellencies just allow me to then at this point to highlight what really the great 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 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 the 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 panellists in the third session I am even more confident and convinced that the UPU e-commerce programme 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 panellist 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 the international e-commerce however we need to go further to answer some of the concerns expressed reliability of the postal network adopted remunerations 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 posts to transform that's what we have been told yesterday and to offer and create new added values 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 they develop a 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 facilitation 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 then your efficiency is all lost and here we say that the second theme that we can draw from our debate 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 and post is of paramount importance in facilitating cross border e-commerce your excellence is 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 innovations yesterday and today postal operators operations are increasing in complexity integrated technological solution based on common standards are necessary to facilitate global exchanges your excellence here again the UPU is bringing concrete answers and solutions to the postal community by providing standard IT infrastructures solutions and services to designated operators with UPU track and trace services which covers nearly 94% of the world's post messaging through the post net networks financial payment services and with IFS we provide a full and affordable infrastructure to all regardless of their level of service 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 excellence is this brings me to my third pillar here which is inclusion and sustainable development without any doubt the postal sector's 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 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 this is a role of governments and posts but also other 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 at length on how the postal sector can become a very important infrastructure and a 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 are drivers for digital inclusion the information society needs to be 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 had today inclusion through posts represent a fundamental contribution to the sustainable development goals of the international community protecting our environment is a major component of 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 emphasized by several countries particularly in the last panel discussion that have and this is one of the most important issues those who have suffered from such events here again the UPU acts to help its members to respond to these difficult situations but also to serve their communities your excellence is 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 the support of the international community ladies and gentlemen in conclusion innovation integration and inclusion 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 there is 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's also my vision that a postal world in which our sector unique ability to include populations economic actors and territories fully recognized and exploited by governments, development partners and international organizations however for us to achieve these objectives your excellence is 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 these 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 emphasize here that your 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 organization and this has to go to the council 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 excellence 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 more relevant postal sector and a UPU that is more efficient transformed and fit for purpose your excellence 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 very optimistic person and together myself and the entire team of international bureau are determined your excellency on a final note again I must say that I and the deputy director general were greatly humbled really 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 we will move the world thank you very much for your attention thank you congratulations to the director general of the UPU and I would like to thank him very much for his excellent engagement statement I would like to congratulate him and all of his team for the boost they give us on a daily basis the assistance they give us as the universal postal union so ladies and gentlemen I don't want to take up any more of your time but I must that there were two requests for the floor that we have not followed up on we so we with your permission of course to give the floor to two countries who did not have the opportunity to speak Iraq and China if the representatives are still in the room if they're not here I think our work is done and we can continue so before moving to close I would like to following the director general to state that of course we're going to follow up the strategy conference regional conferences that will lead up to Istanbul congress in 2016 so of course we must take the opportunity now to give the floor to Turkey now the host of the conference 2016 so Turkey Turkey you have the floor if he's not in the room Turkey Turkey you have the floor Hello everyone Turkey 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 we the regulation and the administration and the regulation has changed we determined as the regulator of the sector and we will try to in 2016 to arrange the all the things about the meeting we look forward to seeing you in Istanbul Thank you Thank you Turkey for those words I hope we'll all see you in Istanbul in 2016 I'd like to give the floor to China now and I do apologize for taking us back Thank you for giving me the floor we'd like to take this opportunity to say how much we appreciate the work of the international bureau directed by the director general Mr Bishar Hussein and the deputy director general Mr Kliwaz since they took on their role a strong management team indeed a stable one at the UPU international bureau is absolutely necessary and we're convinced that the director general Mr Hussein and the deputy director general Mr Kliwaz are capable of continuing to lead the organization and help the member states meet all of the challenges that we are currently facing and promote the development of the postal sector worldwide Thank you Thank you China for those very kind words so ladies and gentlemen this brings us to the final straight of this strategy conference after that engaging speech by the director general I don't think I need to make a speech but I'd like to just say a few words if you allow me and beg your indulgence we've come to the end of this 2015 world strategy conference on the issue of innovative strategies integrated and inclusive strategies and to deal with that issue the UPU developed a program with nine panels dealing with very very interesting and instructive issues having noted that globalization led to increasingly fast changes in the world we heard that the postal sector was part of those changes and needed to actually respond to those changes by extending their networks posts have a fundamental role to play in the development policies of our countries in particular in relation to inclusion and poverty reduction strategies in our countries ladies and gentlemen I heard often that the postal sector was a postal family and the fact that there are so many and high level delegations here at this conference and at this closing ceremony I believe is clear proof of that solidarity let's ensure that we work together to help our respective posts take further steps forward and rise to the challenges that we all face ladies and gentlemen over two days we've talked about change transformation and I think it's quite obvious the change itself isn't really a choice but it's an obligation the director general has repeated that and has said that it's an obligation for all of us our peoples have legitimate expectations that our institutions, governments multilateral organisations have a duty to respond to we have that obligation to provide innovative solutions integrated and inclusive solutions to our peoples the good news is that we can do it we are capable of rising to that challenge and I'm sure that we can do that if we work together the world will continue to evolve and so the postal sector needs to evolve along with that and continually adapt so far we've always managed to do that and I'm sure that we'll be able to do that in the future so let's remain actors and drivers of change in this world ladies and gentlemen distinguished delegates I'd like to finish on behalf of His Excellency Alassan Watara President of Côte d'Ivoire and on behalf of the Prime Minister I'd like to express our thanks the sincere thanks of Côte d'Ivoire to the Director-General Mr Bishah Hussein to the Deputy Director-General Mr Vassal Clivas and indeed to all of the staff of the International Bureau for the quality of the way in which they have welcomed us here and the way in which they have treated my delegation since we arrived here in Geneva I'd also like to congratulate all of the panellists the experts for their various contributions to the discussion and for the brilliant comments that we've heard over the past two days and I'd like to thank all of you delegates and I'd like to congratulate you all for your respective contributions to the success of our work so can I have a round of applause please for everybody when we leave Switzerland who has welcomed us so well I would like to reiterate the thanks of Côte d'Ivoire to the whole of the postal community and to this country which is so close to our hearts I assure you that your hopes I think have been met by coming here and I really hope that we've done this event justice so by way of conclusion I'd just like to say that Côte d'Ivoire would like to reiterate its determination to support UPU and the international postal community in rising to all of the challenges faced by our countries currently and in the future and could I wish you all a safe journey home to your countries I declare this conference closed to this 2015 world strategy conference thank you very much for your attention