 I welcome you all to this Sunday organization at this UN wider conference and this session is on socio-economic effects in South Asia. So the session aims to bring together leading research from South Asia to discuss the effects of the pandemic on lives and livelihoods in their own countries, the policy responses and how effective have they been and how COVID-19 will transform the economy, states and societies of the South Asian nation. So I will actually introduce the panelists as I get to them for the intervention. But before that, let me kind of set out the tone and as well as share the experience from Bangladesh with you all. So looking at the kind of effects of the pandemic on lives and livelihood in Bangladesh. So what I would say that probably this is also applicable to many other countries that we can look at the three, you know, indicators, three major areas. What I call PI, PIE, Poverty, Inequality and Employment. These are the major areas where we have seen the COVID-19 had its impact on the bad impact. In terms of poverty in Bangladesh, Sanim did a lot of surveys. Actually one survey, Sanim did towards the end of last year at a very large scale national represent household survey, where he found that the poverty rate in Bangladesh went up by it was kind of doubled from its pre COVID level. And also there is a kind of serious fallback into the poverty because there are those who are vulnerable poor, but not officially poor, they fall back into the poverty level. We also saw huge jump in inequality and also huge disruption in the labor market, especially job losses, direction, income, and also job switches. We are also, so from Sanim we have done quite a lot of surveys. Actually we have done over the last one and a half years, five rounds of surveys on what we call the business conference index. We tried to look at, we are serving for more than 500 firms and tried to understand how the firms, business firms, they're actually responding to this COVID situation. And we found that, that SMEs are especially badly hit. And I'm quite sure that in many of the solution countries we also have the same kind of experiences. So what have been the policy responses and how effective they have been in Bangladesh? So immediately after the COVID, we saw that long term measures actually came in. We also saw a huge former bit of the health sector to cope up with the crisis, especially the health sector to begin with was in crisis in Bangladesh because of very low spending in health sector, public spending. At the same time, what we observed that there are serious institutional challenges in the health sector. And that continued during the COVID period and that still continue. And with respect to having access to the vaccine, and we saw that not very certainties there because of over reliance on one specific source and then struggling to get vaccine on time. And there's global politics as well. Probably we'll hear from other families, their own country experiences. Government came up with the stimulus packages, number of stimulus packages, also external social protection programs. But I would highlight that there are two major institutional challenges. First one is reaching out to the new core. As I mentioned that there's a jump in the poverty rate and which actually caused that rise in what we call the new core. But the existing social protection programs were not able to reach out to those new codes because they were not designed in that way, they could reach out to the new core. So a large number of new core actually are still left out of any kind of government support during this crisis. And the second institutional challenge, I think, which is very much related to the stimulus package, is reaching out to the micro-small and medium to crisis. And we have found that we have surveyed by Sanim and some other organizations, among others that the SMEs though they are the worst hit during this COVID situation. They are the least recipient of the government support during this crisis. And the stimulus package, the way they were designed, the way they were dispersed, were not very much helpful to actually support the micro-small and medium enterprises. And there's a strong political economy factor as well because those firms, those sectors who have strong lobbying power, strong voices, and strong links with the political and business elites, they were able to grab the major benefits out of the stimulus package and the support so far. So how is actually now they're looking forward at how the things are really going to transform and then what do we see in the coming days? So my point would be that COVID is actually here to stay. We can't expect that COVID will go away very soon. And we are seeing one after another new variant of COVID. And so that means that the health crisis or the virus later crisis is going to stay for long, which means that we have to plan accordingly. We have to devise our development strategies, factoring in the COVID situation. And I have reached and we have our group from Sanim, repeatedly in Bangladesh that we need to come up with some sector-specific and area-specific protocols to cope up with the COVID situation. That means that the protocols in the urban area would not be same as the protocols in the rural area. Also, the protocols for any manufacturing firms would not be the same as the protocol for any service-oriented firm. So we need to come up with these kind of protocols. Unfortunately, over the last one and a half years, we haven't seen this kind of development in terms of developing protocols. And while we need involvement of the major stakeholders, not only the government, but also private sector, different other stakeholders, sector experts as well. We need to, I think this is kind of looking forward, you know, how do we really see in the future and what with respect to our development strategies? We need to revisit our sustainable development goals because by 2030, we aren't quite sure that many of the developing countries will not be able to meet the SDGs, a large part of the SDGs. And then, I think, since it's a South Asian panel, I'm really glad to hear from the distinguished families that how the South Asian cooperation can actually help to get out of these crisis. We should look for new forms of regional cooperation in the health sector, how to address the pandemic, and also the new situation, what we are observing, a rising poverty rate, huge job losses, rising inequality, whether we can extend our cooperation in the social sector as well. With these, I'd like to conclude here my intervention. And I'd like to request Dr. Ganga Tilakaratna, who is the research fellow and is the head of the poverty unit of Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, is a leading think tank in Sri Lanka, and she has done quite a lot of work on poverty and social security. So what do you Dr. Ganga Tilakaratna and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, chair. And good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you from different time zones. Let me first of all thank you and wider and Sanem for inviting me for this session. So we all know that COVID-19 pandemic has led to massive disruptions in lives and livelihoods of people around the world. It has pushed millions of people into poverty in a way leading to a reversal in the global movement towards poverty alleviation. So as a result, many countries today have faced increasing rates of poverty and widening income inequality and Sri Lanka is no exception. As per a recent study by the World Bank over 500,000 people in Sri Lanka had fallen into poverty due to the pandemic, which has led to an increase in the 3.20 dollar a day poverty rate from around 9% to almost 12% in 2020 and even the extreme poverty as shown by the 1.90 dollar a day poverty rate, though small for Sri Lanka, it's kind of less than 1% but has almost doubled during this period. So what these actually imply is that the pandemic has caused in a way a reversal in the progress made towards poverty reduction in Sri Lanka over the past five years or so. The main contributory factors for the rise in poverty and inequality is the employment shocks caused by the pandemic, particularly in the forms of job losses and falling income earnings, etc. So basically the pandemic has affected workers across all employment categories. However, similar to many other countries, the effect has been more severe on the informal sector workers like daily wage journals, casual workers as well as self-employed persons who account for about 60% of the workforce in Sri Lanka. Now adding to this a considerable number of private sector workers to have experienced job losses and wage cuts due to the pandemic and this is partly also a result of the large number of informal workers within the private sector in Sri Lanka in the form of contractual and casual workers. So recently the studies have shown a growing informalization within the formal private sector in Sri Lanka and which is likely to worsen now due to this crisis. The pandemic also has led to an increase in the unemployment rate of the country, particularly among the youth. So as per the labour force survey data, the overall unemployment rate has increased only by around 1% during 2019 to 2020. But the unemployment rate among the youth, especially those between 15 to 24 years, has increased by around 4.5 percentage point from its already high level of 21% in 2019 to around 25.7% in 2020. So basically implying around 20% increase in the youth unemployment rate in Sri Lanka from its 2019 level. So not only the unemployment and poverty, so basically the pandemic has had a significant effect on the Sri Lankan economy. The economy contracted by 3.6% in 2019 compared to 2020 compared to 2019 and several sectors were also affected, particularly hotel and accommodation sector, food and beverages, manufacturing, construction, transportation sector, so on and so forth. In particular, the tourism industry that had already been affected in 2019 due to the Easter Sunday bomb attack in Sri Lanka was further affected by the pandemic, particularly due to the various travel restrictions and restrictions on tourist arrivals, etc. So the government now in order to provide relief to people and businesses affected by the pandemic, the government has taken various measures since March 2020. These include cash transfers and food rations to vulnerable groups and various concessions and credit facilities to affected businesses, including concessory loan schemes for SMEs and firms in selected sectors, say in apparel sector, plantation and IT sectors, and relaxed requirements on loan settlement and leasing facilities and concessions on statutory payments like income taxes and other taxes. So a long list of things. So one of the key measures by the government to support the vulnerable groups was the 5000 rupee cash grant, which was given to low income families and other vulnerable groups such as the senior citizens, persons with disability and especially those whose livelihoods were affected by the pandemic. During the first wave, these 5000 grant was basically given to vulnerable groups of the entire country for two consecutive months, but from the second wave onward, it was confined to just the lockdown areas and just one 5000 chunk for a family. So a rapid survey that was carried out by the Institute of Policy Studies, IPS that I'm attached to this year, revealed that over 70% of the recipients of this cash grant were actually from low income households and of the remaining households who were primarily from lower middle income to middle income groups, the majority had experienced income falls during the pandemic. Now, interestingly, interestingly, almost all the recipients covered in the survey have found these 5000 allowance was useful or if not extremely useful to meet their needs, especially purchasing food during that time. So let me wrap up soon. So going forward, I mean, while the pandemic has posed many challenges and has posed many disadvantages to people's lives and economies, it has also given us an opportunity for the countries to strengthen the existing systems like the social protection system and our health system and also to harness technology, particular digital technologies, I mean, all of which could help build our economies in a way back better, hopefully, in the long run. So thank you and over to you, Sally. Thank you very much. Definitely, we'll come back to you in the second round and I request the participants would like to pose any question to panellists to all of us. So please, you will look at this Q&A, Q&A section and you can actually pose your question and we'll come back to those questions in the second round. Now I will call to next panelist Dr. Vakar Ahmed with the joint executive director, Sustainable Development Policy Institute, SDPR Pakistan. Unfortunately, Vakar could not join us live because of a very sudden meeting of him with the minister. So he sent a video recording of his intervention. So I'd request Trump to play this video, please. Let's just me leave for a second and I'll come back to share. Okay, so I move to the next panelist then. Why don't you move, request Pushpa Sharma, who is the executive director of South Asia Watch and Trade Economics and Environment Nepal. Pushpa, please over to you in six minutes please. Thank you, Salim. First of all, thank you so much for organizing this panel. Thanks to Vida for having a South Asia panel here to discuss the effects of the pandemic on the lives and livelihoods, what have been the policy responses. And the way forward. Certainly, as has been said earlier, things are not different in Nepal as well. There has been 770,000 infections until yesterday with just 2.6% of the population and 10,838 deaths until yesterday. And these are official figures. Certainly, actual numbers could be much higher because many have gone uncounted. When you look at the economy, there was a contraction of 2% in the fiscal year 1920. In the last fiscal year, 2021, which actually ended 15 July of this year, the estimate was a 4% growth. But because of the second wave, perhaps this still might not be the case. It might have gone down. Looking at the poverty, which in the case of Bangladesh in Sri Lanka, also had shown that there was an increase in poverty. It's the same in Nepal as well. A report prepared by the National Planning Commission actually showed that 1.2 million additional people were pushed into poverty because of the pandemic. And which meant that the poverty increased by 4% in the fiscal year 1920. And this is because almost all the economic sectors have been impacted. But some of the sectors actually, they have been impacted more than the others like tourism, hospitality, transportation and others. Because of this impact, this disproportionate impact in some of the sectors, the impact on employment has also been disproportionate. So ILO, it estimated that 3.7 million workers, they earned their livelihoods in sectors that are deemed most at risk due to COVID-19. And out of these, about 1.9 million jobs have been disrupted because of the pandemic. And a monitoring survey by World Bank also found that more than 40% of the economically active workers in Nepal are the reporting incidents of job loss or prolonged work absence. And as is the case in other countries, SMEs and women owned and managed enterprises, they have also been hit very hard by the pandemic. In terms of food security, WFP found through a survey that there was a 23.2% spike in food insecurity in Nepal during the lockdown. And this is almost like obvious when livelihoods of people were at stake. And also in terms of children's education, as is the case I think in almost all the countries that have been impacted. So the impact of the pandemic on the livelihoods have been quite harsh. And how has the government responded to this? In terms of policy responses, certainly in terms of the budget for health before the pandemic, it was very meager. As in the case in other South Asian countries, as Salim also pointed out in the case of Bangladesh. And after the pandemic, in the budget, the government came up with an increased budget for the health sector. Also setting aside money for the purchase of vaccines. Unfortunately, though, vaccines couldn't be purchased on time. There were many different political reasons as well. And if you look at the population that is vaccinated so far, it's just 19% of the total population. When we look at the fully vaccinated population, 16%, this is a bit higher than many countries in South Asia. But only 3% are part of the vaccinated, which is much lower than other countries in South Asia. And until the vaccine is there to cover most of the adult population, things are not going to improve for sure. And in the initial period of the pandemic, when the lockdowns began through the local governments, there were some distribution of food and essentials. But because of the lack of a database in terms of who are the vulnerable and who are the needy, this didn't go as planned. And all of the vulnerable people couldn't get access to these items, to these food and other items. The government came up with a plan in terms of providing employment through the Prime Minister Employment Project and through other local development programs. But this also couldn't go as planned. And we could see queues of Nepali people heading back to India and other countries for work once the pandemic started subsiding after the first wave. One good thing that the government did was contributing to the Social Security Fund. Now, this is a fund recently set up in which 20% of the basic salary is contributed by the employer and 11% from the employee. So in order to provide that relief to the employer and the employee, the government contributed this whole 31% to the SSF for the period of the lockdown months. But what happened was that people who were in the formal sector and those who had been enrolled in the SSF could get this facility. But in the country where 85% of the employment is in the informal sector, this did not help to those workers. Similarly, there were other monetary measures rather than fiscal measures in terms of reduction interest rate and different loan interest payments that the government provided, which was quite a relief. But as in the case of Sri Lanka and other countries, the SMEs have not been able to make the most of these measures. So when we look at how to go forward, there are actually two special things that I would want to highlight here. One is regarding the attainment of the SDGs. Nepal already had an average annual financial deficit of $5 billion to attain the SDGs and now the pandemic has made this even worse. So as Salim said earlier, perhaps there is a need to revisit in terms of how the SDGs are going to be attained. Similarly, Nepal is now going for double graduation. One is that it has already moved from a low income country to a lower middle income country and it's also going to graduate from the LDC in 2026. And already because there are fiscal strains to the country, these developments are going to impact the country more in the days to come. So perhaps in terms of going with the regional cooperation, which we did not see actually happening during the pandemic, there is a need to revisit regional cooperation and also other forms of cooperation in terms of facing the impact of the pandemic. I stop here and will be happy to take questions. Thank you Salim. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much Pushpa. So let me then invite Dr. Prabhidhe. Dr. Prabhidhe is a professor, the research and information system for developing countries, RIS and the coordinator of ASEAN India Center AIC at RIS India. So Dr. Prabhidhe, over to you please. You have to unmute Dr. Prabhidhe. Thank you very much, Dr. Raihan. And I think there is a noise coming in and now it's better yet. And my co-panelists and Sanem and UNU wider for the invitation to come to this panel. And thank you once again for taking the lead, Dr. Raihan, for organizing such an important session. In six minutes, what India did and what South Asia will be doing. It's a really challenging task, but I will only touch upon some of the best practices of the region and on socioeconomic fronts. If you recall the eight countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, almost all of them have met with the second wave. Some countries now having a third wave like Sri Lanka or Nepal in that way. One reason why India successfully contained virus because of its rapid vaccination program. That's actually helped India. Again, I said in bracket temporarily because our festivals are coming, which is a one and a half months from everywhere and we can see a different scenario maybe unfolding. So, so far over half of the Indian total population, statistics indicates that the vaccination has been completed. And this is the best practices that I can present and there are the implications. Now, this is so far vaccination is concerned. You have some, we had some problem initially because supply chain has got disrupted. So we talk about resilient supply chain, etc. But soon after the political interventions, we can see that supply of the important ingredients and parts and components for production of vaccines has been resumed and India. And today has started giving vaccines with several five to six new brands in that way. So in short, since supply has picked up, vaccination has picked up over 500 million people single vaccinated and where I live in Delhi here, almost about 10 million people vaccinated with single dose and about a 5 million with double dose. I am fully vaccinated in that way. So in the end, I can see there's a change in the economy. Indian economy has bounced back, but coming with a low base bouncing with 100% 20% will be misleading. The point I would like to present here that in South Asia that India has given us a scenario which could be having or it can have some implications for the South Asian region as well. But there are, you know, losses, you know, which I say the law since in terms of population in terms of economy in terms of other things. These losses was required in the sense that we need to know what how resilient is our economy is all about. So some kind of testings through this pandemic management has happened. And I think some of the regional products that we in India now present in terms of the software that India is is has introduced open source software called Cohen, you know, which is being used as a regional public goods. Of course, Bangladesh has its own own surveillance management in Bangla, Nepal has its own language arrangement source Sri Lanka. So, so the point here that when you talk about, you know, up coming up with a resilient system to look it in socio economic aspects that one project, which I present for the panel discussion and also the participants. How do we connect this all, you know, surveillance arrangements that individually they have arranged but recall soon after the COVID came in in 2020 South Asian leaders they met. Virtually the first virtual meeting in the world, which actually gave lots of inspiration to other forum like G20 and etc. So, so this is where South Asia took a lead in terms of giving a political direction but that later on it fizzled out or diluted to some extent. So this is one advantage that we received but there's also, you know, there are drawbacks because we couldn't sustain. Another minute left. Yeah, just not coming and within a minute I will conclude that in in case of in India, I mean so far is good. We have India has presented with 100 about 150 billion dollar of infrastructure package in terms of stimulus and etc. This, certainly these are having some implications to them in the down bottom. The India has introduced some structural reforms, logistics sector, financial sector, labor market, those we can go and discuss and to facilitate trade India the first country to allowed kind of a free trade I said a kind of in a vaccine for example in South Asia region in Bangladesh this company Dexinco for example Sri Lanka Nepal or Pakistan this company they come out with a vaccine and if they comply with the local procedure standards. So, so there would be a free flow of the vaccines for the betterment of. So this is what the second recommendations I would like to make to the panel that perhaps South Asia can come out with an innovative idea how to facilitate this kind of a regional package regional vaccine and the other you know health related gifts last point and I close is that that India coming up with its own surveillance system for corporate management, particularly for the poor and people at the bottom which you came out with like, you know, the survey the surveillance system the testing, the drugs and pharmaceuticals, which is a huge repository resources so that can be extended. So, one number three and I conclude that these protocol surveillance and all these kind of resources may be shared in the regions. The South Asia regions and the beyond this sharing of resources brass practices case may not need much investment in that way so itself the Sting tanks universities they can also with that I conclude and thank you very much for inviting me to the panel. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think it was extremely useful points and I wish we could have more time to discuss the laboratory on those points, but I'll come back to you in the after I check with the Trump and Trump can we play now workers with you. And start by thanking the organizers and, of course, Dr Salim Rehan for bringing us all together at this very important session. I want to quickly jump into the three very structured questions provided to us. And in the wake of pandemic public sector service delivery in Pakistan, like any other country has come under severe pressure. A concern of more immediate nature is regarding the livelihoods of those associated with various economic activities. The lockdowns have resulted in a initial negative 0.5% real growth in the previous fiscal year, putting both formal and informal segments of the economy at risk. And due to the delayed medical solutions and vaccination drive, the second and third wave of COVID-19 further exacerbated these challenges. A mid low economic growth result in decline in collections from taxes. They were of course concerns with regards to sustainability of social protection offered by the government. While some tax relief was provided to the SMEs in the fiscal year 2020. It was felt that this relief may need to be continued in the coming months to to prolonged incidents of the pandemic. And to sustain the provision of tax relief and subsidies governments borrowing requirements are bound to increase as well. While the poverty rate had declined by 40% over the past two years pre pandemic. However, we are now going to see a sharp reversal with up to 40% of Pakistanis living below poverty line in the wake of COVID. The situation of multidimensional poverty is also expected to suffer. The unemployment rate, which was around 5% according to 2019 data, could worsen due to the future lockdowns. Job losses currently stand at somewhere around 1.5 million workers. And there are additional implications which include increased food insecurities and additional 2.45 million people beyond the existing 3.9 million now suffer food insecurity. With regards to poverty there is a gender dimension as well where the household data indicates that women led households and rural poor communities are most vulnerable with recurrent challenges including social and occupational mobility. With this background the government did come up with three levels of policy response. First of course at a social protection level where cash grants and food subsidies were provided. Second there was an emphasis on reduction cost of doing business where taxes were rationalized utility rates were rationalized. Then there was a response from the central bank site where refinance facility was available in order to retain the labor force for periods of shutdown and to delay any negative impact which could result in layoffs. A mixture of these three social protection costs of doing business and the central bank response have allowed a V shaped recovery to take place and this year we have seen an almost 4% growth this year. Partly because of the low base effect as well but the real GDP has expanded by 4% at the back of negative 0.5% the previous year. The reasons for this V shaped recovery are of course amnesty allowed in the construction sector, real estate, housing sectors which are also expected to create jobs. The currency devaluation to some extent helped the export sector which has posted gains due to attractive and digital measures for the diaspora the remittances have seen increase. However there are widening inequalities which still remain a concern and many sectors in the manufacturing and services have still not opened up after the pandemic hit. There is a relocation of both human and capital resources across sectors which could also take some time. Finally how will the COVID transform Pakistan's economy, economies in the region. In my view there will be workers who may not be recalled into their past jobs indicating a permanent change in the post pandemic production structures or consumer behavior. And in the services sectors for example strict social distancing measures have already instigated changes in demand for labour and relocation of resources in favour of automation of systems and processes. This aspect is closely related to future productivity of labour force as there will be for example students or pupil and vocational training centres who will drop out and may never come back to their education or skill. And therefore a supply and demand side effort has to be simultaneously mobilized to move people towards new career paradigms. This will include active and passive labour market programs that upscale and reskill for jobs in sectors which are expected to see growth in 2022 and beyond. Pakistan government has started a Kamiab Javan program just to sort of focus on this aspect. At an individual level there are significant costs involved in carrier shift amid pandemic. Pivoting to the future is not a luxury available for many in these times particularly those in areas with low internet penetration. It is therefore important that these sectors are clearly identified by the government bodies and a plan is chalked out to divert resources to individuals who are not in education and not on job at this point. Finally as of course we are starting in a panel being represented by regional speakers, regional cooperation for three things is a must going forward. Healthcare, addressing food insecurities and building back better including bringing a renewed focus on removal of inequalities and respect for environment and natural resources in our part of the world. With this I of course thank the organizers once again for allowing me the opportunity to express my views. Thank you. So we thank a worker for his intervention and also sharing with us his recording video intervention. So we have around five minutes left, we will use that time. So there is a question on India, if you can actually quickly respond to that. On this question especially with respect to how being the largest producer of vaccines you know the spread of virus in India. So if you can quickly respond to that and also very quickly respond to Professor Kunal's question on the recovery project. I will then come back to Pushpa and then Ganga probably on the recovery part if you would like to respond. And there is a question by Ishrath Sharmin too on the deal with the data deficiency in the global south. So I think you now know that you probably have to answer on India as well. Yes, over to you. Yeah, but quickly, you know, to a response to the salam al rabadi's questions. India has success where as I said in my presentation, you know, successfully vaccinated half of total populations over 500 million people. Officially, the vaccinated. Now this has having a very strong effect on the region. So except the few states, India has 29 states and except for one particular southern state, the rest and some states in the north eastern part. Most of it, you know, the virus has been contained as the current variant. That's what I mean. So it is not that we haven't done much. So, so I'm very positive, you know, in and in that way to respond to his questions that it has done pretty well. But if you leave out the kind of a way we first in a few months before, you know, earlier from there today, it's a huge change that I have seen. And to respond to Professor Nelson's questions on on South Asia. The thing is that with the existing variant that we have, you know, the Delta variant you said rightly, India has been able to manage to vaccine it's half of its population and other neighboring countries in the region if they come out quickly. Then only we can see, you know, this region will be able to come out of the current variant. And hopefully by again, it is my purely kind of a guess and not a statistical guess by the way it's purely my own guess that by end of this year or early next year things will be much better. So so this is my response. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I think a very important question by Professor said but I think also a difficult one, because I think we are living in very uncertain times, we don't know how the Delta variant is going to evolve with the news that there's a new variant called new with initial evidence showing that this school, you know, even antibodies, we don't know how it's going to, you know, take recovery is going to take place. But if you compare last year with this year, perhaps things have looked better for many of the economic sectors, except a few. And in Nepal, particularly, there was a seropivalent survey that the Ministry of Health recently conducted, although there are questions on the findings, but that showed that there might have been some development of kind of herd immunity in the country. And perhaps if that is the case in Nepal, it might be similar in the case of India Bangladesh as well. Now, if that is really the case, and if the natural immunity that people have acquired because of these infections is going to work in terms of producing those antibodies and getting the economy moving again, then perhaps we can see a recovery soon. Otherwise, perhaps we don't know until when we have to wait for the recovery because these are uncertain times. I think that this is a very difficult question to answer. Thank you. Thank you. I think, yes, of course, it's a very difficult question as I'm just checking whether I can see she's not connected. So we have only one minute, so I'm going to use that now to wrap up, but I must be thankful to all the panelists. So I think it was an excellent discussion. And I think some of the very important points really came up, especially towards the end, the question on the recovery, question on the management of the event, the health issues, and Walker and some other panelists also mentioned on the education sector as well, especially with respect to too important social sector, educational health, we are seeing completely two different pictures. On the education, many of the, you know, most of the institutions will remain closed for most of these countries for long. And government and management, they are actually struggling, you know, how to reopen these schools or colleges or educational institutions. And also in the health sector, though the government's actually increased allocation, we have seen serious mismanagement in many of the countries and also the government's lack of capacity to even spend the money in the health sector. So I think all these issues need to be kind of taken into account when you talk about the recovery, because recovery is not only the economic recovery. We need to talk about the social recovery as well. And where we can see economic recovery can be a bit faster. Social recovery can take much longer time because of various reasons, which actually we tried to discuss over the last 45 minutes or so. So with this, I'd like to thank again, even wider, and especially Professor Poonalsen and all my distinguished panelists to, you know, have a very rich discussion over the last 45 minutes. And I'd like to conclude this session and thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.