 Could I ask the speakers, please, of panel four, Mr Shiajun Yi, Mr Friberg Wiesbegracheda, Mrs Arancia Gonzalez, Mr Guajang Xu, and Representative of Santa Lucia and the Caribbean Post-Lunion. Thank you, to come down here because we started in five minutes. This is to advance, right? Yeah. I don't think I need a microphone here because I'll have to speak here. Oh no, if I'm there, I need one. Yes, because there is no mic. So I will be either here or there. So I think I need a microphone. Yeah, but I don't have a mic yet. So who starts it? Who starts it? Not me, it's for me. I appreciate myself because there will be no introduction for me. And one has to improvise. Thank you. Okay. Yes, I'm the moderator, right? Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seats and we will give the floor to the chairman of the conference, the minister, Mr Cornet. Thank you. Thank you, Pascal. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, honorable delegates. I'd like to begin by thanking you for your presence at this conference. I hope you have rested well and that everybody is ready to commence the second day of our work. I wasn't able to do so yesterday, so I'd like to thank the panelists of yesterday and the moderator for quality and relevance of their interventions. This first panel is intended to clearly show the challenges the sector faces. It's all about profitability and the survival of the post, globalization, the trust which is required from customers, and we need to provide them with affordable services, quality services, and we need to deal with problems associated with the final mile, the last mile, and the specific nature of online trade in Africa, etc. There are numerous responses. The first mentioned is predictability in terms of customer confidence, involving states at regulatory level and making things more effective, strengthening proximity to build trust with customers at the financial level and organization. And the integration of technologies, communication technologies, ICTs is very important. States need to be involved at this level, accessibility, interconnectivity, and the regulatory framework which needs to be implemented in order to build trust with customers is very important. Topics such as innovation and ongoing adaptation were also mentioned. Our posts have managed to resist thus far because they have succeeded in taking up the challenges they've faced. They've managed to innovate and they've managed to adapt. Today, we will begin this first panel in looking at the area of effectiveness and our aim is to provide regulatory responses which are required for integration in order to provide for physical and digital dimension of postal network. The experts are here with us and they will examine the regulatory responses which are required in order to promote the inclusive postal solution while guaranteeing the provision of a universal service which is effective and sustainable. I would like to say a word about the moderator of today's meeting. This will be Mark Fuhrer. He is sitting to my right. He is the president of the Swiss Federal Communication Commission COM COM. Prior to becoming president of that commission, Mr Fuhrer held post between 2008 and 2012 as head of the Swiss Regulatory Authority Post Reg and the head of the Swiss delegation to the Universal Postal Congress in Doha in 2012 as Secretary of State. This was a brief presentation so I'd like to give you the maximum time to continue the meeting. Mr Fuhrer, you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Deputy General. Ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, it's a pleasure to see you this morning, all fresh with the more committed on, as we say in Bern, and it will be great to discuss with you and I thank you that you're all here already though it's a beautiful day today in Geneva but I think we'll have an interesting morning. Yesterday we heard a lot about innovation, a lot about e-commerce and all these things, of course, are important. It was, I must say, the first time I didn't hear the moaning that post-mail does decline. You know, before I always said, oh well, what can we do to stop declining the volume of the mail? I think it's just a fact and it speaks for this postal sector that they accept this fact that people send less letters, at least in most of the countries send less letters and go to other ways of communications like email or like as we heard e-commerce and the point is to find alternatives for the designated posts but also for all the others who work in this sector to find alternatives to compensate obviously the commercial losses you have by the declining of the traditional postal mail. So we will discuss this kind of alternatives this morning as well, the role of regulators and so on and so discussed yesterday, who makes the profit of e-commerce? Is it the integrators mainly and the platforms like eBay, like Amazon or can the designated posts or generally the post firms, can they also have their bit? Where is the beef for the posts? Is the question or was the question yesterday? Or is the designated post just the network of the leftovers as the Canadian colleague said it so basically you have the service universe and all these things and the cherries get picked by the others. That is very much obviously up to the postal firms themselves how they are entrepreneur, how they tackle these challenges. So the other question is of course what to do so we have a level playing field and we have the same discussion in telecommunication, some are making the infrastructure and the other use it to make the profit out of it and of course that is in our field the discussion of net neutrality and here it's a discussion of level playing field. What can the governments with their laws but also the regulators do that we have a level playing field that not the integrators can profit of the investment of for example the designated posts who do the infrastructure for it. So what's the role of the regulators we have to discuss? Is it more regulation or is it more free market to use the role of the UPU as well? I think UPU is in front of bigger challenges, they tackle these challenges we all know that and this discussion is part of tackling these challenges by UPU. We will have this strategy in Istanbul and our discussion is preparing this strategy. We have substantial projects like eCompro and so on we discussed also that yesterday. The key question is of course who will do the innovations and you know innovations you can't rule. The innovations come from the spirit and from the brain of the people and that's difficult to regulate, that's difficult to direct. That is a question of creativity and of entrepreneurship and the big question for the future will be do the designated posts and the others do they have enough entrepreneurial kick and entrepreneurial engagement to take this challenge which is brought by Amazon, by eBay and so on and can they do that? Do they have also the structures to do that? I think that's the big thing which we will have to discuss. I was yesterday quite surprised because Peter did at the end I think he did a question to the panellists you know and asks the very I think crucial question who will be the winners of eCommerce, will be the integrators like eBay or will it be the designated posts or the private postals and I was surprised that half of the panellists said now it will be the integrators the newcomers, the new entrants in the sense who will bring new models and I think that should be to the larmus and say what to do that the others can as I say like in fencing like take the attack in the commercial sense and also bring alternatives, new products and new services so they can survive well in this competition. So I'm coming to the discussion of today. Today clients will be in the center even more than yesterday in the center of our discussion and it's the small and medium enterprises because in all economy we all know that if the small and medium enterprises are not living well and they have enough possibility to do their business an economy like that has big problems. So it is important and it's crucial for our economies to see how the small and the medium enterprises can profit of this new world of eCommerce and this is how they can take the opportunities, how they see the opportunities and utilize the opportunities of eCommerce. But for all that we need an eCommerce without obstacles. We heard yesterday again from the Canadian colleague who said crossover eCommerce is still very very difficult and if we don't bring down these obstacles we will have big problems with eCommerce and we will have a distortion of competition. So especially in the first panel we will discuss how can we bring down these obstacles. There's still a lot of red tape with customs and so on, this bureaucracy and so on. The next panels will discuss the role of the regulators in these things. Regulators of course shouldn't make the obstacles higher, it's the opposite. Regulators should be facilitators, at least me as an old regulator I've always seen my job like that whether it's a postal regulation, the financial regulation or the telecom regulation. We should be facilitators and not like the Moroccan colleague said yesterday I never heard it so blatantly but it's having been many many years in Morocco I understand this picture, we're having worked with horses. But of course the question is how can we be facilitator and we have many regulators on the podium to discuss that. And of course the role again of the UPU what is the role? I mean President Valle of the France Post said it very clearly the UPU should be the socket of the eCommerce system so that should be the rule should be done by the UPU for all of us that would be the ideal thing and that was very encouraging for us all but of course especially also for the UPU. And then also in the last panel we talked about the service public, service universel we probably didn't talk that much yesterday about that this is important a national service universel because we all know politically it doesn't go without that if in Switzerland you don't sense the letters properly to the least Valle in the Gantan Valle or Gantan Grison you have a tremendous political problem. My colleagues from the regulatory authority of Switzerland know that closing a post office there is very very difficult and that is the case everywhere but there's also a service universel globally internationally I've just been at the honour to be two weeks ago in Ivory Coast and I've seen the challenges I've discussed there with all East and West African colleagues of the governments and of the regulators and the challenges you have there so I think sometimes we discuss eCommerce just from industrialised countries but of course they have completely different situations a different framework and also that we would like to discuss this morning because it was yesterday interesting the lady from the UNCTAD showed us a figure which showed very clearly the growth of eCommerce is in Asia, West Europe and North America but not in South America, not in Africa and not in Eastern Europe so what happens there? We talk about eCommerce, we should also see this problem Anyway, so that's my introduction to the day now I would like to go immediately to the first panel and the first panel is trade facilitation and the development of micro, small and medium enterprises through the postal networks or with other words to bring down all the obstacles we have and I welcome the panellists here and I would like to just start with the first one it's Mr. Yi Zhiyun he's Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization WTO I already apologise for my Chinese pronunciation which is undoubtedly wrong but I'll go next week to China to practise Anyway, Mr. Yi was China's ambassador to the WTO he represented China as a key negotiator in China's WTO accession process a very crucial process as we know he is basically a big specialist in trade negotiations he was also China's Vice Minister of Commerce and he negotiated numerous free trade agreements including the China-Asian agreement he was also after becoming China's ambassador to the WTO Mr. Yi was elected as the Chair of the Working Party of the Accession of Laos PDR and showed effective leadership in process leading to WTO membership for Laos so Mr. Yi also knows obviously the problems of China but also of the neighbouring countries of China but now as Deputy Director General of WTO he knows the global problem of the world trade Mr. Yi, you have the floor Thank you very much Mark for giving me the floor and good morning ladies and gentlemen it is a pleasure for me to be here at the UPU World Strategy Conference and in particular my thanks also for inviting me to this panel discussion I would like to focus my remarks on e-commerce and as you all know that e-commerce is one of the most important developments in the past decade and then I would like to talk a little bit about the role played by postal sector as we all see that the rapid ICT advances have a direct and profound effect on the way people communicate and do business in this context the e-commerce has expanded significantly in the past decade and will continue to grow according to the latest information economy report of ANTAT in 2013 the value of global B2B e-commerce exceeded 15 trillion US dollars and B2C 1.2 trillion dollars here postal services played a very important and key role in e-commerce as they handle the physical delivery of online ordered goods at the same time the postal sector is also reaping the benefits of e-commerce boom in the past decade the handling of parcels has become increasingly important for the postal sector in terms of both volume and value while the number of letters has declined significantly postal traffic has searched by more than 30% since 2000 it is largely due to e-commerce in some regions over one third of the total revenues of posts are generated by postal delivery the potential benefits presented by e-commerce include enhanced participation in international value chains greater market access, improved market efficiency as well as lower transaction costs while so far it is mostly large multinational companies that have benefited most from e-commerce it is believed that SMEs especially those in developing countries have the greatest potential to benefit from the e-commerce as we all know in both developed and developing countries SMEs make up a majority of business and employed majority of workers in both manufacturing and services sectors e-commerce may play an instrumental role in helping SMEs find new business opportunities reduce production and transaction costs and thus increase their competitiveness a number of studies show that more and more SMEs in developing countries have engaged in e-commerce marketing their goods and services online there is one convergence in WTO that WTO rules do not preclude trade by electronic means this means that e-commerce actually benefits from certainty and predictability provided by the world trading system the WTO's new trade facilitation agreement is very important one which is reached December 2013 in Bali Indonesia the agreement is expected to improve merchandise trade flows resulting from e-commerce as it eases the customs, procedures and processing for trade in goods that are increasingly purchased online today it allows the option of electronic payments for duties, taxes, fees and charges collected by customs in the area of services trade the general agreement on trade in services in WTO also applies to postal services and other services relevant for e-commerce so the gas has established rules for greater transparency non-discrimination and competition cross-border postal services have existed for centuries despite challenges from electronic means of communications the postal sector remains an important component of today's global economy which generating about 350 billion US dollars at revenue in 2013 globally we notice that liberalization and competition in the postal sector provide incentives for postal operators to embrace new technologies and explore new business opportunities the active engagement of posts in e-commerce is a good example in this regard for instance, the designated postal operators in several countries has partnered with Amazon and other e-commerce companies to deliver their packages further, the postal sector has a great potential to help SMEs overcome important obstacles to e-commerce for instance, the postal network is the largest physical network in the world connecting 640,000 postal outlets which makes it a cost-effective method for connecting people and business especially SMEs to the global e-commerce in addition to delivery services, SMEs can also benefit from other services provided by posts such as internet access, financial and logistics services which are all crucial to e-commerce finally, let me conclude by saying that we highly appreciate the contribution made by postal sector to the world trade and its role in trade facilitation Thank you Thank you very much, Mr Yi That was very interesting as an important introduction from the WTO because basically that's what we talk about Now I give the floor to Mrs Arancia Gonzalez Executive Director of the International Trade Center Unfortunately, Mrs Gonzalez has to leave us at 10 o'clock so I'm changing the presentator's number and it's a pleasure to present you Mrs Gonzalez She is an expert in international trade issues She has 20 years of experience and she serves as Executive Director of the ITC since September 2013 before joining the ITC Mrs Gonzalez served as a Chief of Staff to the World Trade Organization working very closely with Mr Lamy at the time She was before, she held several positions at the European Commission also in these World of Trade Agreements She is a lawyer and she's originally from, as I understand from Madrid Please, you have the floor, Mrs Gonzalez Thank you Thank you for this invitation to the UPU I'm pleased to share with you from the point of view of an agency which is part of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization and the aim is to help small and medium enterprises to globalise The topics which have chosen for this event is music and areas Thank you to Cote d'Ivoire too for providing us with some colour It's always welcome in Geneva Which is for you Message number one Logistical efficiency Improvements in the facilitation of trade is an essential ingredient for the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises So we talk a lot about building productive capacity We think in the International Trade Centre that maybe we are not paying enough attention to logistical elements logistical efficiency and trade facilitation as part of this logistical efficiency which is again essential to support micro, small and medium enterprises being part of value chains which is what international trade is today So reducing the cost of trading is not just something that is good It's something that for SMEs is essential It's the difference between being confined to a domestic market or being allowed to go in search of broader markets starting with the region This is why we are extremely happy that WTO members reached an agreement on trade facilitation which we think when implemented and I say when and not if implemented would reduce tremendously the cost of trading for economic operators So we think effective facilitation is a global positive and this is why we think it's very important that organisations like UPU take this and put this at the heart of its agenda because to solve logistical efficiency to address that trade facilitation we are going to need a very strong public-private partnership Private operators with a big multinational so small on medium and micro public entities within the government from ministries of trade to ministries of finance to responsibles of customs to and the list goes on to a concerted effort at the side of the agencies internationally that can support this global effort at streamlining operations of customs This is why in the International Trade Centre we are focusing at the moment on supporting countries implement the trade facilitation agreement understand where countries have already met the WTO standard understand where gaps remain and derive from their bankable projects to improve the areas where a bit of work remains to be done message number two trade facilitation is more than borders trade facilitation and logistical efficiency is also about the design of regional integration is also about non-tariff measures beyond behind the borders it's also about procedures and procedural complexities it is also about quality it's also about cross-border trade and cross-border trade facilitation so we have to think in our view of trade facilitation in a wider context so that we don't only tackle parts of it but we tackle the entire chain third message what's the role of the post and what's the role of the UPU in this debate I think the UPU has a big role to play in this discussion first obviously in the postal delivery of goods of which there is still an untapped potential in particular for SMEs so in the area of customizing delivery services to buyers is an area where we think from what we see on the ground it would merit a bit of an action on the side of all of you two obviously in reforming postal services for greater efficiency again as a contribution to reducing costs three in the new opportunities that you have for addressing what we would call transactional part of B2B there it's for example areas like linking e-payment solutions with single windows such as for example interagency coordination between border agencies to allow for postal operators to have to enjoy pre-arrival treatment and clearance so there is a big again a big role that we see for the postal services in these discussions on trade facilitation let me end by mentioning that in this discussion there are two dimensions in this discussion one is the UPU dimension as regulator and another as the UPU as a player in simplifying assistance to small and medium enterprises in order to develop their trade as our moderator said developing countries have problems in adopting e-commerce solutions they are lagging somewhat behind there's a different reality though in the field I can say there are many countries which are developing countries which are using technology because they have access to technology but they need regulatory systems and operators in the field which will facilitate the use of technology one example of this is a project which we are currently developing in North Africa in Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia we are creating with assistance from the World Bank and the European Union a virtual market for small and medium enterprises there is a major task we face and a space for all to participate and for all postal operators many thanks for your attention Thank you Mrs Gonzalez Please, I ask you a question if you would have a wish what two or three things would you wish to be improved in bringing down the obstacles in the trade in the e-commerce? You mentioned several things but if you would say these and these and these are the main problems which have to go down Well the first one would be first beta leverage technology I'm still amazed that one goes through customs having to do papers and stamps and papers and stamps and again this is not just an issue for developing countries there are many developed countries where this is still the case so use electronic solutions because these are the solutions that are better for small and medium enterprises again who are technologically savvy but need to make their operations more agile to have in mind that trade today is not an issue of nations trading with nations there is a huge regional dimension in trade so thinking about when you regulate especially those of you that are party to regional groupings to regional integration processes make sure that you regulate with the regional dimension in mind so that it is not just simply the national lens that you use when regulating when selecting the manner in which you are going to design your operations so simplify by using leveraging technology and think original and my third wish would be think micro, small and medium enterprises think of simpler of course respecting security safety which is essential when we talk trade and when we talk cross-border but think also that the 98% of the economic issues of your countries and this is true also north to south, east to west are micro, small and medium enterprises so think of solutions that are going to be adaptable for them thank you very much I think you were very clear thank you very much and have a good day and you were very clear in your messages which is very useful for our further discussion now I can give the floor to Mr. Geo Zhang Zhu director of the World Customs Organization Mr. Zhu you've heard the wishes of Senora Gonzales now you can deliver the wishes just to introduce you quickly you are the director of World Customs Organization in 2000 you became the director of compliance and facilitation there and you had before drops at the permanent mission of China to the European Union in Brussels you have a degree of Masters of Public Administration of the King Wai University in China but you as a specialist of customs we will be very interested to listen to your presentation you have the floor so good morning ladies and gentlemen so first of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank UPU for inviting the WCO to be here to this very important World Strategy Conference so I'm very happy and honored to be here to bring for the conference on the work the WCO has been done in the past years and the cooperation with the UPU and and I will also brief you on the how to say our joint efforts to fight against the challenges, difficulties and problems facing us in the future so to be straight according to the UNCTED in 1999 approximately 300 million people had internet access globally and nearly 25% of them made online purchase that year and total e-commerce sales were about 110 billion US dollars but by the end of 2014 last year there were around 3 billion people online and 40% of them participated in the e-commerce and taking the global business to consumers scale to surpass 1.5 trillion including domestic and international transactions so 15 years, 15 times increase so this offers huge opportunity for growth in e-commerce and online shopping leading to exponential increase in small parcels that postal services around the world are uniquely positioned to handle and deliver at low cost and of course a large chunk of these shipments emanate from MSMEs so with their universal service model wider outreach and years operational experiences and reasonable cost postal services in many countries have a competitive advantage over private carriers when it comes to moving smaller parcels so here I would just inform you the WSEAL's initiatives and also I just mentioned the cooperation collaboration with UPU so for many years the WSEAL has been at the forefront in the development of international standards for customers and also in the promotion of electronic data exchange and e-commerce in customs environment so recognizing the significance of e-commerce the WSEAL adopted the Baku declaration on e-commerce in the year 2011 or 2001 so and developed its e-commerce strategy for customs the WSEAL's immediate release guidelines the latest version adopted last year in 2014 further support e-commerce and assist both customs and trade with expediting the clearance of large number of small or negligible value goods across borders on provision of minimum data in advance of course so the RTC, the revised Kyoto Convention the information communication technology guidelines so which is updated in 2014 also provide a detailed outline on how customs can use these technologies to enhance program delivery and plan improvements in their services to clients and trading partners so the WSEAL's recommendation on dematerialization of supporting documents adopted in 2012 and the lately updated compendium on how to build single window environment further support e-commerce by encouraging our members to identify supporting documents that are normally required to accompany the cargo and goods declarations and examine the need thereof with a view to eliminating them so of course the specific NXJ 2 of the revised Kyoto Convention which deals with the customs provisions specifically applicable to postal traffic providing a simplified declaration so that is CN 22 and 23 form and also clearance and duty payment process so here I'm glad to inform you as of March 2014 or 15 98 WSEAL members had exceeded the RTC and the 22 of them have in addition accepted specific NXJ 2 so another important provision to facilitate speedy clearance of low value consignments the transitional standards 4.13 of the general annex of the RTC requires contracting parties to specify in their national legislation a minimum value and or minimum amount of duties and taxes below which no duties and taxes will be collected so dear delegates, customs and posts have very good cooperation and have been working together over 50 years and established a contact committee in 1965 so which has since provided an excellent platform for posts and customs to talk openly with each other in a spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding and has delivered tremendous results so last year the WSEAL UPU jointly published two documents to enhance cooperation between customs and posts at national level one is the joint WSEAL UPU postal customs guide two the joint WSEAL UPU guidelines for developing a MOU between customs and the UPU and posts of course changes have also been made to EMS version so over the CN23 customs declaration with a view to facilitation facilitating the customs clearance of EMS items so in addition to that another important area to facilitate e-commerce is to improve electronic interface with posts and customs and how to expedite advanced electronic exchange of data so which enables customs to carry out necessary risk management and take a timely decision to either allow quick release of a postal shipment or carry out its inspection so additionally electronic data exchange between posts and customs is expected to facilitate track and trace of postal shipments and enhance service delivery especially in dealing with the growing number of postal shipments so to that end a joint working group is currently engaged in developing a set of recommendations guidelines, good practice on advanced electronic exchange of information and another joint working group is looking into various issues related to the e-commerce with a view to develop a collaborative solutions to support this growing sector of course while securing compliance with security and other regulatory requirements the WCO and UPU have also collaborated to jointly developed electronic messages compliant with the WCO data model to limit pre-advice and possible pre-clearance of postal items the UPU Postal Technology Center has developed an electronic customs decalibration system so CDS on the basis of the joint WCO UPU customs post-message so some pilots are currently under progress and more countries such as Canada and the US all countries are likely to join soon for example Australia and the UK so because I have too many to inform you although I shortened it but I think you want to listen to what we have been doing if you okay I will try to shorten it because EDI customs administrations are taking several initiatives not only at the policy level but at the operational level as well for example 24-7 clearance e-payment of duties and taxes and e-duty calculator and mobile enabled services so another thing I would like to mention was agreed just as Misty mentioned in 2013 and the protocol adopted on 27 November last year so among others it provides for several measures for expeditious release and clearance of shipments in particular air shipments including postal items such as pre-arrival processing operation of release from final determination of duties and taxes and electronic payment and expedited release of minimum documentation so WCO has all the tools and instruments and also has a big pool of expertise experts so we also developed a Mercado program we will how to say to effectively and efficiently to implement the FTA so we entered into force of course so dear delegates we have together with how the UPU have done much in the past and we will have more to do together in the future so I'm confident our collective efforts would go a long way in simplifying and improving postal customs processes to support MSMEs to leverage the growing e-commerce for catalyzing electronic economic growth and prosperity so thank you for your attention and your time thank you very much what I liked in this presentation is to nations, it's firms to firms it's clients to clients work in regions we have to simplify declaration and speed up the whole procedure I think that is very interesting and it's also interesting how WCO and UPU work closely together and of course have to work closely together now thank you very much and I give the floor now to Mr. Friberg who plays the director channel of Perus Serpost the interesting thing is now we heard it on the multinational level but of course the big question is how do you do it on the national level on the authorities either or on the operational basis and in South America as we know they try to implement this what you said from the WCO is implement this easier clearing this easier declaration working regionally together and it will be interesting to hear from Mr. Friberg to hear how they do it in Peru Mr. Gracheda is currently the general manager of the postal services of Serpost in Peru that's the Peruvian post he has been always a specialist in making easy export import easy and to really make the way clear for e-commerce to bring down the obstacle so here's the ideal speaker to see it from the practical side Mr. Gracheda is a lawyer by profession and has over 12 years of experience in the postal sector you have the floor thank you for the invitation I would prefer to talk to you in my native language I mean in Spanish thank you once again it's important for us as a postal operator to be present here to share with you a tool which we've worked on for a number of years with of course support of Brazil which initiated this system but we've managed to further develop it and in our opinion it's important to further develop what needs to be done and what's been commented on by representatives as Arancia said the development of technology is important as an instrument and we're going to share this with you in the presentation the easy export program in Peru came about in 2007 there was a major problem for us it's a major program for us we've developed it with other countries of the region of Latin America and it's achieved great success and we are proud that in our region official posts are developing postal exports parcels exports to other countries using this instrument of course e-commerce is growing and our aim is as a country, as a state we want to generate an instrument which facilitates exports of parcels to international destinations I'd like to share with you and to point out that Exporter Facil in Peru is an integrated project it's a tool which is used through the postal service post and in developing it in promoting it, in strengthening it there are other institutions which are involved at state level not only the post as a logistics operator but we have the customs organization in Peru which promotes this tool at the international level too here you can see three institutions in order to put you a clearer picture of what's happening and these institutions are involved in promoting this instrument however, there are two stakeholders which are very strongly involved that's to say the postal service the post and customs and in this connection we play an important role through Exporter Facil we want to develop technology this is what differentiates things in Peru exporters when they wish to perform exports don't need to fill in forms this is all done through the web page of the customs in Peru and this information is interconnected with the post so we receive the information and the processing and dispatch of items abroad is immediate of course it's true that we need to innovate it's not only about exporting products abroad through this tool but it's also about meeting requirements of a market in the area of international trade international sales and we've managed to develop things accordingly through Exporter Facil it's an instrument which allows us to facilitate imports from other countries to Peru and we are currently working with Brazil in this connection so that Exporter Facil is connected with Brazil through an Importer Facil easy import system in the opposite direction if you will so what's the easy export program to summarize products to be exported weighing up to 30 kilos and with an FOB value of up to $5,000 per custom declaration but due to the growth of this product we are developing so much that in Peru we hope we will increase this amount of $5,000 to maybe $10,000 Exporter Facil is an instrument which is a small and medium enterprises as Aranja said and we can share with you in Peru in 2008 we've got micro, small and medium enterprises a total of $659,000 this product can of course be used by big businesses too but on a smaller scale it's designed for MSMEs as you can see here through the Sunout webpage there's a whole process which is conducted the registration the online filling in all the information so what are the benefits of exporting via Exporter Facil what are the benefits of the country for the exporters too well first for exporters save money it's quite simple a natural person can do it a physical person or a legal person can do it what's important is in the world of exports there's no need to have a customs broker this is perhaps the most relevant aspect because this costs a great deal of this process there's great coverage at the national level this means that we have to be covered technologically speaking so that all our post offices are able to receive items and conduct the export process so we have points where the exports can be received every day of the year 365 days 24-7 one topic which is important is that small exporters can have access to the mechanism and they're considered exporters as such and as a result they benefit from discounts and from tax facilities for smaller medium-sized exporter if that represents major opportunities it allows them to access international markets it opens up windows to other countries and it's an inclusive factor prior to this system in Peru above all if you wanted to export then you had to go to the capital in order to have access to the international market through the system you don't need to now you can access the system through any point of Peru now you can export from anywhere what then are the achievements we have more than $18 million in exports for your exporter facile if we consider things in international currency it's triple that amount we've got more than 43,000 statements transactions more than 5600 MSMEs which have used the system it's an important impact it's making and 40% of the exports go to the United States of America and 21% to Europe what matters with this system is that it allows us to complement other services such as money or other services and there are other benefits which are available and we're working on that in order to further strengthen the system we've got a whole video I'd like to share with you now it will last 3 minutes and it will allow you to appreciate the importance of this tool the exporter facile is thank you very much Mr Grageda it was very interesting thank you and I think we saw it from the practical point and from South America which is very active which is we heard it yesterday sometimes merging countries are leapfrogging in the technology in the adaptation of these rules and can be a good example for let's say western European or North American countries now I would like to give the floor to representative of the Caribbean it's Mr Sandra Davoren please take the floor she's the Secretary General of the Caribbean Postal Union she has this position since 2014 she's also a Post Master General of Saint Kitts and Nevis Mrs Davoren is from Saint Kitts and Nevis traveled a long way here and she's in her role she was assisting the Post in developing new products and improving the quality of service of Saint Kitts and Nevis but of the whole region as a profession she was before teacher she comes from education and I think that's not a bad thing to start the career by educating the Post and the regulators how to do the thing so we'll be interested of your presentation Mrs Davoren you have the floor Good morning ladies and gentlemen I deem it an honour and certainly privilege to be able to represent the Caribbean Postal Union at this conference and I want to thank the UPU for their invitation for me to do this as we look at the topic trade facilitation and the development of MSMEs micro, small and medium enterprises through the postal network I will share with you our ideas and experiences as a Caribbean men and women the world over have had to rely on MSMEs for their livelihood studies have shown that they contribute significantly to the gross domestic profit of countries they are often considered the lifeblood for many countries and they are very resilient in their nature despite the many setbacks they often experience the genesis of an MSME individual with a brilliant idea for creating employment and wealth and this usually requires funding that the individual or individuals can ill afford depending on the type of business the overhead expenses can be highly high especially if it's a manufacturing business for example the making of bread and pastries or just making clothing some of these business owners however are not technologically savvy and in other instances they don't have access to the internet and that of course would give them an e-commerce experience of trading globally if they did have that also there are some lengthy customs procedures which usually create setbacks for them and in many instances they cannot afford to pay a broker to do these tasks an electronic payment facility set up in post offices could greatly assist these businesses as some of them would like to transfer funds or make payment to other businesses or suppliers in different locations within the countries or even within the region for example an MSME would like probably to transfer funds from Barbados to another supplier in St. Kate's or even in the BVI the British Virgin Islands also post offices are strategically located in villages so that access to post offices is quite easy they are dotted across the countries so that you don't for example sometimes you might not have to leave the rural area to go to find one in the capital for example and so a small business owner might want to transfer funds from a rural post office and transfer those funds to another business in the capital and if those experiences are provided for them the facility is provided for them that would be great especially through the post we have already established here that the post is a trusted organization the world over and in countries like St. Kate's Barbados and the British Virgin Islands where they provide funding programs for MSMEs it would be really best if these programs are done through the post thereby giving the post an opportunity to partner with these businesses in St. Kate's for example there is a program called S-E-E-D-C the acronym it affords citizens the opportunity to start their own businesses by providing them with training and interest free loans ranging from 5,000 to 100,000 EC dollars and each entrepreneur is assigned a business manager and accountant for at least one year contracted at no cost to the business to help ensure the profitability and success of this venture that is why we think that these businesses can come through the post office where we can greater assist them in another location for example like Guyana MSMEs who have a difficulty finding a place to operate their businesses post affords them the opportunity to rent premises located in close proximity to the post office so they could ply their trade post also can provide access to technology through internet cafe services hosted at post offices entrepreneurs who don't have the technology can come into the post offices, serve the internet and find markets for their goods and purchase raw materials and goods to assist them in their business the world at their fingertips at the click of a button the provision of a US mailbox service is another way that posts in the Caribbean help to facilitate e-commerce there are post offices in St. Kate's, in Anguilla in St. Vincent, the British Virgin Island, St. Lucia just to name a few that provide a mailbox facility in the US so customers send the goods they purchase online to these facilities and then they are delivered to the different countries also when customers purchase goods online they want to know that their goods are delivered to them in a timely and efficient manner hence the development of websites through the use probably of dot post or other methods which would allow MSMEs the opportunity to track and trace and return merchandise post office again can consist them by providing a reliable and efficient delivery service and sometimes this is done by providing the goods or sending or taking the goods to their door steps posts can create also opportunities to collaborate with governments and encourage governments to review or create the requisite legislation that would assist MSMEs in their business trade in the Caribbean for example there are many cottage industries that are run by women in many cases they are home owners and the sole providers for their families we as a region aim to provide them with access to global markets and at the same time target the increase in women in industry both on a national and global level again I would like to make reference to a program in St. Kate's that is called wise women in small enterprise development and the government is doing quite a lot to assist these women finally we all recognize that the advent of technology and the internet will continue to change the way people do business this phenomena have caused posts to change their most modest operandi and make the requisite paradigm shift so that we can meet the needs and expectations of our customers customers are demanding more and they will find ways to get their needs met this will cause MSMEs to grow and continue in the future to be the engine for innovative and new services in our region we have acted effectively within our region and there is still more that we can do however we think that there is a lot of benefit from inter regional cooperation for example we have heard yesterday about innovation and new initiatives new products and services being offered around the world but the challenge is how can we as a region utilize the UPU network to dip into and learn from other regional international innovations and get best practices for the benefit of our customers we are not homogeneous and are at different stages of development in the Caribbean but with hard work and dedication to the task it is definitely possible the post is here to stay but posts must define the USO and take advantage of the IPDP programs that the UPU has offered and this would assist greatly with reform thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you very much Sandra Davorn it was very interesting in the shows the importance also of the post offices yes the David disc has a lot about where to deliver it he even had this example of somebody taking a picture of the entrance of the house lack of postal address and then send it to the one to deliver it now here we heard about the necessity of the post offices and of the infrastructure and of the teaching of the people there in the post office so you can send off your goods which you produce somewhere in a rural area this was very very interesting both examples Peru, South America and also from the Caribbean now we don't have much time unfortunately but I have one question to the panel it's a very easy question and I expect a very short quick answer what is for you still the main obstacle in e-commerce which has to be tackled just one if you ask the main obstacle what would it be how do you see it I think they need to have the poor people need to have infrastructure and they need to have a free regulation to allow the e-commerce to proceed so infrastructure and free regulation, Mr Grageda well for us we believe that one of the obstacles which is present in our region e-commerce we see it from two perspectives first in terms of raising awareness we have to raise awareness of potential exporters and train them and also we need to facilitate regularity issues to facilitate exports and a third point I'd like to include here my comment is the role played by the universal postal union in this topic and all the countries we send our mail to it's recognised as an important aspect of a postal service so I take I take one awareness it's very important what they understand is that right Mr how do you see it what is the main obstacle I'm sure you will not say the customs for us the main obstacles is how to keep the best balance between facilitation and compliance so it's not easy to keep the balance and of course we will strengthen the cooperation with stakeholders including UPS and also the customs self-modernisation okay Mr Stavorn the main obstacle as always the woman has the last word so how do you do see it one point not five okay I would say one of the main obstacles we have to get by is the changing of the legislation that would give us more opportunities to create situations for them to access the technology that they need to do business access to technology thank you very much so before then we have to go to the next panel who would like to take the floor but here I give one rule and I'm pretty brutal we discuss here so it's not no long statements no long questions just a one minute question or statement whatever but please no declarations who would like the floor to this topic okay oh yes I can see is that please you have the floor the question I want to ask Peru and the Caribbean what is the profitability or the the quantum of business regarding this initiative thank you please Peru and then Mrs Stavorn yes the profitability for us aimed at increased use of export so it's profitable for us of course there is social profitability too which means making available to our citizens to Peruvians to be able to use this facility to export to other countries Mrs Stavorn the greatest profitability for us nationally it helps to reduce unemployment when these MSMs get the opportunity to start a business thank you very much thank you the panellists Mr Jajun Yi Mr Friberg Wiesbeger Acheda Mrs Arancha Gonzales Mr Guajon Zhu and Mrs Sandra Davorn for participating for your very interesting and competent presentation and I declare this panel as finished and we go on as we are working very hard with no breaks to the next panel that's the panel 5 and I ask the panellists to come to the floor it's Mr Saidi Abdul Karim Mrs Lina Rainiene Mr Mutuna Mutusi and Mrs Victoria Tsukulik and Professor John Nkoma please take the seat and thanks the panellists for their contribution we go on immediately thank you very much sorry that we had to be bit short but the interesting thing is that we have so many speakers and so many aspects thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much it was very good sorry I had to ok because I know the times I give you my no, no, no but it was interesting I give you my thought I give you my thought I give you my thought thank you see the slide so ladies and gentlemen and I ask you please to take a seat again please take a seat we continue thank you very much and thanks for stopping your conversations I'm very much for communication I think we would like to start with the next panel so ladies and gentlemen the next panel we have with the title how regulation can leverage the postal sector in all its dimension already the title says that regulation could have an important role and of course the question is and I have to ask these as a regulator is that really the case can regulation leverage the postal sector in all dimension is the regulator the Superman in this thing or is he not so what role does regulation have in innovation you know innovation is usually something which comes from the crisis from the human being not from the government or from the regulation but can regulation probably do and governments of course ministerial policies can they do a framework for it for innovation for investments is it necessary to intervene for the regulator where is it necessary and where it's not necessary what to do that regulators on caste rate is regulator deviant caste hater want so what is to do there so what is the role of the regulator we have very different intervenions from regulatory offices but also from ministries in the next panel who can see put the light in different ways the danger is of course of overregulating we all know that overregulating stops investments stops innovative thinking and the important thing is that the regulator becomes a facilitator but how can he as a facilitator improve the value chain the new value chain the new processes which we have in for example e-commerce and where is intervention necessary for regulators and where not and then there is the other thing there is the convergence of financial services we heard yesterday from the director general from UPU the importance of payment postal banks and so on we have more and more streams of migration the financial aspect of the postal services is very very important there it needs of course a financial regulator it needs there's a convergence with telecommunication we also mentioned SMS many things go together with the mobile or of course e-commerce goes very much with online so there is also a convergence with the telecom sector with the financial sector what that does mean on the regulatory side we also know many post offices are also internet bistros where people have the access so we should have a common view of regulation not just concentrate on the postal regulation by the way that will also go already into the next panel 6 there will also have this issue discussing so that is a bit the introduction to our next panel and we have the panellists are the followed Mr. Mortsaidi Abdul Karim he's director of public affairs and digital signature from Malaysia we have Mrs. Lina Rainien deputy director general of communication regulatory authority of Lithuania we have Mr. Mutuma Mutusi he's the director public affairs in the Kenya ministry of information communications and technology we have Mrs. Victoria Sekulik she is the director of postal sector of communications of Argentina and we have professor John Asen Kumar director general of the Tanzanian communication regulatory authority I start this list with the presentation of Mr. Mortsaidi Abdul Karim director of the postal affairs and Mr. Mortsaidi Abdul Karim is director of postal affairs and digital signature in Malaysia at the communication regulator he's that since 2000 he had a key role in Malaysia building up the modern postal infrastructure he gave the legal base for the postal services he formulated also the national postal strategy and policy and many things went under the title in Malaysia regulate for growth so the policy says you need a regulation for growth in the postal sector that's very interesting and we will listen to you with much interest Mr. Abdul Karim please thank you Mr. Mortsaidi Abdul Karim for the responsibilities and gentlemen on behalf of the Postal Administration of Malaysia I would like to congratulate and express my highest appreciation to the UPU the Swiss government and the government of the Coddiva for organizing this important strategy conference as we look ahead to a new world postal sector roadmap in front of all of you here the esteemed global postal leaders, policy makers and fellow regulators and be given this opportunity to share some of our thoughts and our experience in Malaysia on regulatory development in the changing postal sector indeed we are now entering into an exciting phase of development in postal sector I would say that five years ago we know that we are going to celebrate this year for the 175 years of the Penny Black of the first step I think today we are also entering into something similar if Penny Black has changed the letter now e-commerce is going to change the way we are going to regulate postal sector in this century of course in the next decades to come I am going to say that in the next few decades is a golden decade for postal sector and the future of postal sector is in our hands the regulator cannot decide who is going to win the battle in this sector but the role of the regulator is to facilitate development and ensure level playing field it is up to the imaginations of the postal players how they can modernize and innovate in this competitive and interesting era of e-commerce the post must modernize quickly or declines including in the field of postal regulations the post sector must rejuvenate the regulator also must change and UPU also we must rejuvenate it is up to all of us to decide our future and I think UPU as the global regulator and facilitator of e-commerce in future must play a more important role and a leading in e-commerce we all know that letter post is declining and postal post is increasing as shown by our panelist yesterday e-commerce is now recognized as the most vital growth engine for the postal sector in many parts of the world including in Malaysia and developing economies therefore ladies and gentlemen it is obvious that the economics of universal service obligation in particular the central of postal regulation in most countries in its current form are no longer sustainable if mail volume continues to decline year on year at a rapid speed to safeguard the universal service on one hand and to rejuvenate the postal sector on the other we need a fundamental change in the way we regulate and act indeed this call for a delicate balancing act the regulator must transform and act as a facilitator for delivering innovative integrated and inclusive postal sector development agenda that have to enforce the requirement of the law the regulator plays an important role in rejuvenating the postal sector in this respect Malaysian postal regulatory regime has been transformed in the last few years to facilitate growth achieve national policy objective of the postal sector and meet the national development policy such as to make Malaysia more efficient by year 2020 to this end our national postal development roadmap 2010 to 2014 has given greater emphasis on transforming the regulatory regime as well as continuing the institutional reform which has started since 1992 Malaysia passed its new postal legislation in 2012 among the key features of the legislation as follows the acts require the commission to safeguard the provision of universal service as well as to respond to technical economics and social environments and need of consumer in this regard the commission has taken a friendlier and lightier approach in defining universal service obligation in Malaysia especially in rural areas whereby the designated postal operator is given a task to develop its own rural service master plan which is reasonably acceptable by the rural communities and the commission the law also incorporate three key dimensional of postal services physical, financial and electronics thus Malaysia is ready at least from the legislative perspective to have a converged physical and electronic universal postal regime in future the act is not regulating the postal operator in this industry ecosystem including courier, operators, direct mail postal facility service provider two licensing scheme have been established namely universal service license and non-universal service license the postal service fund it will also be established and maintained by the commission to rejuvenate postal sector including modernizing the rural postal service in this connection Malaysia will be a suitable model for the fund for postal sector which may likely commence in 2017 we believe our new regulatory model could provide solution for the regulator to deal with current postal issue like declining mail volume sustainability of USO as well as imaging postal issue related to security digital post and e-commerce as a developing country Malaysia to modernize its postal infrastructure and build capacity to ensure our readiness to support the explosive e-commerce growth in the next decade to come not only in Malaysia we did Malaysia which has 30 million population but also within the ASEAN region which has close to 600 million population the postal sector regulator and policy maker must ensure a healthy and vibrant environment within the postal sector itself in order to attract investment needed in this regard Malaysia has done fairly well in the global ranking for instance we are at number 20 in the global competitiveness index number 21 in the DHL global connectedness index and number 25 in the logistics performance index in closing I would like to reaffirm that the future of e-commerce and the post interwean e-commerce as the main revenue spinner for postal operator worldwide is indeed a reality postal regulator must play a central role to rejuvenate the postal sector and take immediate steps to transform, modernize and overhaul their postal regulatory regime towards a growth facilitating framework ladies and gentlemen we must regulate for growth and not grow our regulation thank you for your attention thank you Mr. Morzai the Aptel Karim thank you very much for this interesting insight and I would like to go to the next speaker it's the colleague from Lithuania Lina Rainier she's deputy director general of the communication regulatory authority of Lithuania Lithuania has this year the chair of the ERGP that is the group of postal regulators of Europe and every year the chairmanship changes and this year the chair is with Lithuania she is also chairing for that the CN the contact network in the ERGP Lina is a lawyer and she's since 2002 in this national regulatory authority which also deals with the telecom regulation and she is as a lawyer of course deals mainly with legal aspects and we also know each other quite well from the BEREC that is the bond of the ERGP for the telecom sector you have the floor thank you Mr. moderator ladies and gentlemen it's a pleasure to be here and to share short insights into the progress of the postal sector evolution so as you record already I am from the country in the middle of the Europe and we facing the situation that we opened our market since more than two years already but today I will not speaking about the opening of the market I will emphasize the issue that it is actually even not important whether the market is closed with some exclusive rights whether the market is in the position when some some glide path for the incumbent is in place or whether there are no exclusive rights at all at the moment so in any case we have the situation and every of us in every single country we are facing the situation that alongside the incumbent we have other players other operators which are there already active as the bulk mailers which are also present in the market and provide the services which not always clear whether they are recognized postal whether or not we also have the consolidators which also are in the market which play in the market and for the bulk mailers segment yesterday I already saw that they already evaluated from the simple letter bulk mailers from maybe big integrated companies which in any moment can enter the market so this is I think a major challenge for the regulator because when we look at those all market players starting from the historical operator and ending to some potential integrated operators which are not present in the sector today actually they all are working towards the fostering the businesses with the large volumes which are growing and as we heard yesterday and today that okay the letter segment it's declining but other segments are growing and luckily those segments as a parcel segment is growing much more quicker than the other segments are declining so here we have this evolution of growth in volume with some changes from the behavior of the businesses with some expectations from the consumers and all these issues are in front of the regulation and in front of the regulator it doesn't matter what the regulator is from country to country whether it is the independent authority whether it is the ministry or the in any case someone is performing the regulatory functions so first of all as it was mentioned today the legal environment is important the competition for the postal sector we may call them very narrow rules for the competition as we understand or we may call in the broad sense the predictable rules how the sector is working and as yesterday Mr. Director General stated that all of us should step out of our comfort zone so I think we already done that and from the perspective of the operators who are competing with each other and thinking about the progress of the businesses and especially from the regulatory side the regulators already stepped away from the comfort zones because we should look around and we should think what is the situation in our countries what are the rules because we see the market we are closest bodies to the market we can see the pulse and we can see some obstacles from the regulation which is in present written in the country so first of all I think this is the challenge because the worst thing that could be legal rules are as an obstacle for the market evolution so it's better sometimes to have more flexible rules which are in favor of evoluting of the market player starting from the incumbent as well so the second issue is just extend the oversight from the pure postal marketers to understand today because as it was talked a lot yesterday and this morning session there are so many things around going and for the regulator it's important to understand and to be able to be able evaluate and identify the services and the players earlier we had very easy situation the postal player means providing postal services that we are having today today we have that postal operator is providing a bundle of services which sometimes fall under other regimes under financial regime under logistical regime so that means that not only operators and the market players are growing and improving the skills but the regulator should improve the skills as well the governments should improve the skills to understand and to monitor what is happening in the market and to reflect it in the legislation of the country so when we are talking about the changing business models and post I think that the major challenge for the regulation is first of all to facilitate and to allow market to evolve at the very initial stage and at the end of course everything is for the sake of the small medium big businesses and at the end of the day we always come back to the end user and when we ask why we need regulation or whether we need regulation, regulation also always can be very hard one or very soft one but for the end user for the consumer sometimes even very difficult to understand what kind of service they are purchasing whether they are purchasing the postal service whether they are purchasing the logistical service to whom to apply to whom to apply to solve the problem the same issue may arise for the postal operators while providing the businesses for the incumbent as well because the market players sometimes of course are eager to use some facilities to use the network or to compete within particular areas we know the cherry picking issues so therefore we should be trying to put our hand on the pulse and just to try to facilitate the growth and the regulation not to keep as an obstacle for the evolution so I would like to thank you and I think that the major way forward also is that from the collection to e-delivery it is always some kind of physical element in the postal market so the postal market still will remain as a platform having some physical element in it. Thank you for your attention ladies and gentlemen Thank you, Lina Rainien Deputy Director of the Lithuanian regulatory authority in Europe as you have seen the question of opening the market liberalization is one of the key questions which is not the case in many other countries so I think we would like to come back in the discussion with the panel to that but Lina has shown the strategy which is of the European Union and of the ERGP in opening these markets which is concerning of course mainly mail markets. Now the next speaker is Mr. Mutua Mutusi he is the Director of Consumer and Public Affairs of the Communications Authority of Kenya he is responsible for the Consumer Public Affairs and the International Relations of course here in UPU very well known he does that for the last 16 years he was right from the beginning of the regulatory body in 1999 if I understand right in different roles in the Communications Authority of Kenya and he will be sharing with us the Kenyan perspective on how regulation can leverage the postal sector Mr. Mutusi you have the floor Thank you very much Mr. Moderator I would also like to thank the chairman of the conference for according to this opportunity to be able to speak to this great audience let me start by conveying apology of my minister was expected to sit on the panel this morning but due to other pressing engagements in Kenya was unable to make it will try our best to represent him the Kenya ICT landscape is divided into the policy maker who is the ministry the ministry of ICT then we have the independent regulator the communications authority of Kenya who regulates the entire ICT spectrum from telecommunication broadcasting postal services and e-commerce within that lineup we have the postal corporation of Kenya as the designated postal operator we also have other licensed courier operators private postal operators 214 of them and then we have over 1400 postal courier outlets internet penetration in the country stands at 64% now we have 26 million mobile money subscribers in a population of about 40 million the penetration of mobile services in the country is at 82.6% the last three statistics are giving you because innovation is actually taking place in the platforms that are being powered by modern technology including digital communication the landscape of the legal regulator framework we now have sector legislation which is specifically addressing issues of e-commerce and matters of cyber security these are very important elements of innovation in the postal services because as I have said most of the innovations are coming from the digital platform and of course within those digital platforms we need them to be secure so that players and customers can have peace of mind when they are transacting we keep on progressively reviewing our sector policy so as to take care of emerging issues to ensure that the trend in the industry keeps up to the best standard and the last one, fortunately it was reviewed a while ago 2006 the sector guidelines are the ones that provide the market operations and these ones we recently reviewed them and they are basically targeting emerging markets and emerging markets are the ones where we are finding a lot of innovation coming in services that are very new to the postal traditional postal business of course within the regulated framework we have the license terms and conditions within which all people are licensed to operate in the postal sphere ought to follow we also take advantage of forums like here to get global perspectives and best practices that we can infuse into our regulatory market as Mr. Moderator you said the regulators are basically enablers and facilitators of business and we do also subscribe to that in Kenya the regulator sees itself as the facilitator of all these services that are being undertaken within the ICT sector and in fact our vision is to see all Kenyans have communication services by the year 2018 so we provide an enabling environment where players can compete and find business reason for existing in the country for the customers to also take advantage of the open market and be able to get value for their money we get involved also in infrastructure development and services where we assist the playing ground to so that the players in the market play within an atmosphere that has very good and well developed infrastructure we develop also markets so how do we regulate and foster innovation because we are only facilitators we are not the ones innovating as such so we get into lots of research studies and development so that we can be at the cutting edge of what is expected in the market and this is to enable us to come up with regulatory interventions that will be able to enable all players to find very conducive environment where they can innovate come up with the new services compete in a manner that provides value to themselves and to the customers capacity building we do also as a regulator we need to be at the cutting edge of what is happening in the market so we carry out a lot of capacity building so that the regulator is also at a level where they can fully understand what the operator is doing and in fact we like being ahead of them sometimes but of course since they are the players in the market interacting with customers sometimes they are far much ahead this also capacity building also we conduct some capacity building for the players in the market the licensees to just get them to some of them understand the new trends in the market because we have big and small players and some of them we really need to assist them to get to the level of the cutting edge of business the Kenya posts which is the designated postal operator also has a unique obligation of doing the universal service obligation and but this is an obligation that can also be given to another person but currently these are the people who are doing it and the we have seen a lot of innovation coming from the Kenya posts recently and I think one of the most celebrated is the offering of the government services within our post offices we call it huduma centers and this is a very innovative aspect of postal business where we have seen government services getting closer to the citizens through the elaborate network of postal business we also have seen them get into financial inclusion where banks are partnering with them also using their large networks to reach their customers a few challenges there national addressing system of course the issues of which are across I think everywhere there is not enough money to do this all the time and everybody is complaining they are contributing much more than they would wish to do we are doing a few things to try to address these challenges and for the national addressing system we have evolved a national policy that is looking at national addressing system as an infrastructure that needs to be addressed from a national policy level so that it can be driven by the government and the regulator legislations on usf we have ensured they make it mandatory for all players in the market to contribute to these so that it can be expanded to reach our people and of course regulation of e-commerce we have strengthened it by addressing issues of cyber security and within the monitoring system we have recently acquired the FID from the UPU and we are rolling it out in the country to be able to monitor our quality of service thank you very much and I am sorry I think I have exited my time thank you thank you very much thank you very much Mr. Mutua Mutusi for this interesting insight of the work and the policy of the communications authority of the Kenyan regulator and I come now immediately to the next speaker that is Mrs. Maria Victoria Soukenig she is well known in the UPU she is an advisor of the international affairs and communications secretariat of Argentina she is representative in the UPU since 2006 and she is Argentina's vice chair of the CA and her education is master of international affairs and economics and I give you the floor Victoria to you and to your colleague from Tanzania as short as possible then we have time for questions and remarks thanks okay good morning to all of you first I would like to convey the best wishes of Mr. Banner the secretary of communications who wish you every success we are bringing you a brief presentation now and we would like to point out some of the basic concepts in the area of regulation and above all the challenges that we have identified facing us in this area I think that the main challenge we have seen in some of the presentations today and yesterday is to ensure that the regulator is not seen as a bad party in the film through the other presentations too we have emphasised this and we will continue by reflecting on the matter some of the basic ideas in terms of the role of the state to summarise as we all know are to ensure the constitutional guarantee of the availability of correspondence to secure communications and their expansion to ensure the sector and its working conditions and to promote conditions for valid competition and above all to pursue development, social inclusion and progress of the country the state intervention in post-regulation ensures compliance with these objectives and the satisfaction of social needs many of these concepts were expressed by the panelist and we fully share what they have said and we hope to contribute from our side from our humble position we understand that regulation is a tool to reconcile all interests in the sector it is of course an ongoing process that faces constant challenges specifically other today and yesterday regulation and the various requirements seen on a daily basis through technological development and change in society in general and our aim is to take up this challenge on an ongoing basis to update ourselves and as we have seen through the various opinions expressed it is important that regulation is practical pragmatic and flexible and as we have seen as bad party in the film through regulation the state needs to order the markets and the stakeholders and the market too as was mentioned yesterday our aim is to ensure that clear rules are applicable to all and we defend the rights of users and workers I repeat we need to defend the rights of users and workers I think we feel it is a very important point and we base ourselves in a sector which counts on the biggest physical network in the world and this network is made up of human resources and for this reason we point out the importance of the rights of workers it is a fundamental factor in our sector as a regulator now we would like to mention as has been mentioned today and yesterday we need to act as a facilitator so that all stakeholders can work and develop under the same rules of play specifically speaking we need to ensure that the conditions in which services applied are correct and quality is applied correctly we need to ensure compliance of objects and public policies ensure human right to communications as we mentioned before in order to ensure this compliance with the objectives and public policies and human right to communications there is a particular case in Argentina which we would like to point out this we would say is that new challenge in 2014 there was a law which was adopted and this law is known as Argentina Digital and the aim is to incorporate within the regulatory areas our regulation control monitoring verification of the postal service and communications thus far we have regulated telecommunications postal services, satellite services and from now onwards we will also attend to ICTs this law has created a federal authority for technology communications and this will report directly to the national executive and our new challenge is to regulate and that aim is to harmonize the interests of the various stakeholders and to reflect the needs of citizens in the area of new technologies and innovation other challenges we face very briefly now we have identified the following challenges and we share these with many of the countries here present we need to adapt to control and regulatory tasks as we mentioned before this is an ongoing task and it needs to be based on needs of the various stakeholders and above all of users there is the implementation of mechanisms for citizen participation in order to meet the growing requirements of users as things stand requirements are qualitative rather than quantitative and we speak a great deal about the importance of understanding and anticipating needs we need to comply with what we promise to provide we need to provide the service we say we are going to provide there is also economic development with social inclusion and we would like to point out here a number of functions which are provided by a designated operator they are not only to additional services that are provided by a DO but there are also distribution of smart transportation to a loans managed by a social security there are links with citizens established at post offices and various government services provided at post offices I shouldn't neglect the most important aspects at this conference we are at UPU stretch of the conference here and at the international level we see the UPU as a partner also in regularity of matters we understand that cooperation with regard to development of postal reform is very important and the work conducted by the restricted unions is important too and in our region we can say that we are working close cooperation with the UPU and the PUAS and we share a great deal with the UPU and PUAS and it is very important to exchange best practices and to organise forums, seminars and debates and this is very important at events like this and future events we can deal with this and other topics and we can bring in all players involved in the work of universal postal union with a view to developing the sector this is in summary I have tried to be as brief as possible and what I have said I had little time available but this is what I wanted to share with you and of course we are available to continue to work with the UPU and member countries in particular in the area of regulation and this will allow us to develop the sector as a whole thank you thank you sorry I have to so now I would like to go straight to the next speaker who is a colleague from Tanzania it is Professor John as in coma Professor John as coma is currently the director channel of the Tanzanian communication regulatory authority he is that since 2004 he is in the family of the regulators a well known personality I may say he is also regulating telecommunications, broadcasting postal services managing the radio frequency spectrum I would say how it should be and all together and professor in coma has over 25 years experience also in university teaching he was the head of department from 1987 to 81 in the university of Darae Salam and then joined the university of Botswana where he served as the dean of faculty of science and he is a professor of physics and so not always lawyer also physics could be important in regulation John you have the floor thanks very much to begin with I would like to thank the UPU for organizing the World Strategic Conference and also Averacost for chairing this particular meeting my presentation will be in two parts the first part will be talking about Africa in general where in my height is a chair of the administrative council of the Pan-African post union and then later I will shift to regulation within the TCR so to start with the Pan-African post union is a specialized agency of the African union there are 44 member countries and the vision of the Pan-African post union is actually to be one postal network for Africa but not just isolated as Africa but also as a part of the global postal network it has quite a number of noble objectives in each strategic plan the first one is establishment of adequate and efficient postal outlets and intra African mail transmission networks the second objective is creation of the new ICT products and services and development of the postal financial services I think in the last two days we have seen how important the financial services are we have also seen how important the ICT products are the third objective is to improve efficiency and capacity building at the power of the secretariat and I'm glad that the secret general of the power is actually here objective number four is creation of a single postal territory in Africa and then objective number five is the promotion of reforms of sustainable development of the post in the continent and finally objective number six is to promote responsible and positive contribution to the community and the environment now Papu has got quite a number of those noble objectives and actually last week in BAN we had a very good meeting where we reviewed the performance of the African countries since the Doha postal strategy and also preparing Midway to us the next strategy in Istanbul let me now shift my head to the regulation of in Tanzania first of all I should say that TSARA is a convergent regulator so it regulates telecommunications broadcasting and poster there are a lot of discussions whether you should have one regulator or more regulators but I would like to say that within the experience of the Tanzania situation I think there are a lot of synergies for example you have a directorate of postal regulation a director of telecom regulation a director of broadcasting regulation but then you share the other services like the legal you share all the legal issues licensing issues you also share the issue of consumer protection and market study tariff analysis it doesn't matter whether you are analyzing the tariffs for telecoms or broadcasting so I think those synergies are important the regulation improves the postal sector governance by primarily ensuring proper operation of the designated postal operator which in Tanzania is the Tanzania Post Corporation the regulation landscape actually goes a long way since 1993 and then 1994 there were separate regulators for telecoms for posts and for broadcasting but in 2003 these were made into a single regulatory body the importance of policy is also important there is the national postal policy of 2003 which outlined very clearly the importance of competition the importance of evolving the private sector and then the importance of developing a national address system which in this case is the postcard the legal the laws we have the Tanzania communication regulatory authority Act which is substance regulator in 2003 and then we have the electronic and postal communications act of 2010 from these laws you have regulations like you have the consumer protection regulation of 2011 and this includes all the issues of telecoms broadcasting, quality of service and so on the institutional arrangements between the government and the regulator and the operators are clearly defined my minister is here who actually heads the minister of communication science and technology let me say that the regulated services include the universal services electronic services and then courier services there is quite a lot of competition in the courier area where you have the international licenses like DHL, TNT you have the national licensees and then you have the East Africa licenses from between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, Rwanda and let me conclude by saying that there are also quite a number of challenges and these challenges include the management of the new financial services in the postal arena financial services has been very successful for example money transfer by the mobile companies and within Tanzania there is quite a lot of interoperability between one mobile operator and another there is also cross border money transfer for example between Tanzania and Kenya you have the safaricom in Kenya and Vodacom in Tanzania you can pay across the border you can also have cross payments between Tanzania and Rwanda for what is known as TIGO PESA now all these of course have been facilitated by regulation to conclude I seen the posts in the early years looked at ACTs as a threat when the data sort analysis that was a threat but now it is clearly an opportunity so I think the post sector has to integrate the ACTs in its plans so that we see applications like e-commerce e-government and all the electronic applications thank you thank you very much for this statement professor John Asencoma I just have a short question and then we go to our dear friend delegates where do you see, be a bit self critical where do you see a point where we could bring down regulation we have you all find the operational side finds too much regulation too much red tape, too many obstacles where in you field in being self critical you think we could bring down regulation we could deregulate I start with you, where could we deregulate in Malaysia just one thing, just a brief answer we can deregulate the value added service that's happening already and USO we have to relax a bit Lithuania probably for the whole European Union but once you can speak for the whole European Union as for the Europe actually the regime is very light so the entering is already deregulated the provision of the services is very liberal the provision of the services is very liberal already in the Europe so as for the Lithuania I think what we've done yesterday, I mean like in the very short period since some time it's we lightened the universal service up to the natural less forward to the natural persons on small enterprises I think what I've seen is the more we innovate the less we regulate because most of the innovations ride on services that are already regulated and if now the innovations are many you don't kind of regulate every other innovation so most of the innovations operate in an atmosphere which is not very much regulated so the more we innovate the less we start getting into regulation and we've seen it even so when you fly back to Nairobi where will you deregulate you go back and say I've been in Geneva where do you see a possibility we need to encourage more innovation because as people innovate more they get into the realm that does not need a lot of restriction and that is really when you start allowing them to do what they ought to do as long as it is not inhibiting other people to play Ok, Archandina where would you deregulate Yes, in my opinion yesterday one of the speakers in the first panel said we did increase regulation and we believe we shouldn't speak more or less about regulation regulation is needed and countries need to know their own reality and regulate based on reality and the specific situation in their country but we can't speak about more or less regulation that's not in order So you would say better regulation but not less regulation John? Well you don't know how regulated the market is working for example a good example is the interconnection rates I mean you allow the market to regulate itself but if there's market failure then of course you intervene in the financial services for example we've seen interpretability is not something which the regulator forced but I think the market itself people realize that if you are subscribed locked to one mobile operator it's not good the market is working So that's clearly if it's not really necessary to regulate it is necessary not to regulate as I understand I would like to open it now to the floor to you dear delegates I have an intervention already from Cuba Cuba you have the floor Thank you After one minute I'll intervene Thank you Thank you In Cuba we are working on the regulatory framework and regulatory policy bearing in mind the topic of flexibility above all and postal reform we understand that we need to diversify services you're all familiar with this subject we are dealing with these topics two in Cuba and the new trend of postal services the universal service and electronic services too we're bearing all this in mind as well as increasing flexibility now I would like to ask our Malaysian speaker to talk more about one topic about rural communities how have you born rural communities in mind in the regulatory issues in your country particularly in terms of providing services in rural areas in Cuba so it's an area of concern for us thank you regulating the universal service especially in rural areas is a challenging method in Cuba as well as worldwide but as let the pose is declining which let the pose used to be the main finance of the universal service system in the last decade for example so the overall model is changing so what we have done in Malaysia is how to make sure that our universal service is not burdensome so one way in Malaysia in particular what we're trying to do is to ask the designated operator themselves to define what is rural service and the service standard that you're going to offer rather than the regulator who imposes on you but of course there will be some safeguarding measures to protect the consumer I have a question isn't mobile communication so mobile handsets and so on replacing a lot of communication which was meant to be before in mail postal mail and that almost replaces a bit universal service very interesting questions I think this is many countries are looking into how you can have a converged universal service for example in telecoms and posts I haven't seen anyone in the world has done that even in Malaysia we still have a separate universal service for telecoms and for the posts and I think in the next few years maybe in the next decade you never know there will be a converged USO we will discuss this in the next panel of course but I have another question once again France you have a floor but please be brief in your intervention thank you I am Jean-Paul I am responsible for regulation for the post group in France I heard the various interventions and in my understanding the regulator today needs to be very aware of the universal service and how it is financed the clearing funds of course compensation funds don't function properly national budgets are limited and we need to reflect on actual demand and to understand what the level of the universal service is today and what can be tolerated at a level of universal service we need to ensure that the universal service responds to the drop in volumes in terms of extending regulation to other sectors I believe that things begin with parcels and financial services we talk about new technologies in these areas too there are regulators of course in these markets financial services and in any case there are the competition authorities which one day become the only regulators in the postal markets and finally I would like to draw your attention to a fact that we need to think about protecting postal operators from other operators which don't comply with the same rules of a game in terms of taxation and social measures thank you France for your intervention of course the final comment is a very important one that at this point if the rules are the same for posts and for new players such as Alibaba such as Amazon and of course there is a big question opened up there we might be able to discuss that this afternoon but we have a lack of time time is limited and the question of financing the universal service during the next panel so at this stage due to time constraints I need to conclude this panel I'd like to thank all the panellists I'd like to thank the four panellists who have just spoken that's to say Mr Karim from Malaysia Mrs Raniini from Lithuania Mrs Sukinik from Argentina and our speaker from Kenya and Mr Nakoma from Tanzania I'd like to thank all of you for your various interventions and for your contributions and I would ask the speakers of the next panel, panel 6 to come to join us immediately on the podium that's to say Mr Tolstine Olsen Mr Jack Hammond Mr Eunice Gibrin and Mr Gebrine Miquel so many thanks continue in two or three minutes time thank you so thank you very much thanks yes I know that's a problem thank you very much we've seen each other in Nairobi and that was great, I had such a good memory of it thank you Dan give my greetings to your colleagues thank you thank you very much thank you very much thank you could you give me an expression yes thank you yes yes I'm the moderator thank you because I don't have the time to talk so I'm fighting a bit with the time nothing should be alright I mean I go a little bit 4 to 1 hello Mr hello Mr so dear friends, dear colleagues we go on to the panel number 6, the last panel this morning thanks for your enthusiasm to stick to the end of this morning lunch is not waiting yet so we're looking forward to the next panel the next panel we discuss we also have regulators on the panel but not only regulates representatives of the Postal Pan-African Union and of course also of government so it is quite a versatile panel of course this morning it's more about governments more about regulators less with the Postal firms that we had very much yesterday and we'll have it again this afternoon the discussion this morning this panel is about universal service serving countries, businesses and citizens through the universal service universal service was already mentioned this morning we can't regulate we can't have a policy a government policy without respecting the universal service because I think everybody agrees liberalization is great opening markets is great doing business is great but it can't be only grabby for the people in the privileged areas in the towns the privileged parts of the towns universal service has to deal has to serve also those in rural areas the poorer people and so on universal service is a demand of humanity I would say be it in Postal service financial services telecoms medical services very much so this is an important topic it's a topic for regulators of course for governments because the regulators they have to implement the rules of universal service the governments have to say what are the roles, have to do the definition of this universal service that's not same in every country and the designators operators who have usually the license of the universal service who have the obligation to do the universal service they are of course the ones who have to do then the service to the citizen the definition of universal service is different in every country that's good like that that's concerning the needs of the population and also concerning the national conditions for example in the European Union it's very difficult to do a definition for the universal service in the Postal area because the situation in Greece or in Latvia is different than it's in Germany or in Spain and the universal service definition has to be a bit different from country to country but some common rules but there are some common rules for universal service be it financing but be there being also in implementing I hope we can also discuss which role the integrators have the e-base the loans the Alibaba's of this world because they of course can pick their cherries they don't have any obligations but shouldn't they contribute to the financing for example of the universal service because it was just mentioned by the French colleague you know what about financing the universal service in many countries this is a problem and we have to face this problem because if you can't finance it anymore it is useless to talk about universal service this is a difference to the telecom sector where universal service usually is easily covered the cost covered by the market not the case necessarily in the postal markets so I would also like in this panel to put a special focus on the emerging countries because we have a national universal service but we also have an international universal service the universal service or the post situation of the postal services in less developed countries is completely different than here in Geneva or in Paris or in New York and I think we as a UPU family have to really also go into this discussion new ways also their innovative ways could be the way more using modern technologies like mobile payment mobile telecommunication to deliver the needs of the people in rural areas in for example in Africa in South America and so on so those are the topics we tackle this morning and it's a pleasure to have my colleagues here I start with the colleagues are Thorstein Olsen the director general of the Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority Jack Hammond the chairman of the Belgium regulator we have Yunus Dibrin the second general of the Pan-African Postal Union and we have the honour to have the vice prime minister and minister of communication and information technology of Ethiopia the honourable Dr. Dibrezian Gabri Michael here welcome gentlemen to this panel and I give the floor first to Thorstein Olsen Thorstein Olsen is since four years director general of the Norwegian Post and Telecommunication Authority he is since the beginning of this authority there he has built it up he has a very active role not only Norway but also in the European in the European group of regulators of the telecom regulators of the BEREC he was two years ago vice president of BEREC and so he he has of course a big knowledge of regulation general but the postal sector also belongs to this authority so we'll be interested to have your short presentation Thorstein you have the floor thank you Mark and thank you to the UPU for inviting me here I'm very glad I got this chance to talk to UPU also I haven't done that before so this is a great pleasure for me to do this and I will start with my conclusion I will conclude that we need to find a new definition of postal services and that mail is not anymore the most important way of communications so I'll show you why and this is happening on all countries in a different phase though but it's happening in Norway as many others have said today the declining volumes of letters are increasing and the increasing volumes of parcels are there and it seems quite balanced we have 22% less letters since 2005 and 21% more parcels since 2005 so it's pretty balanced but you have to remember that we are talking about billions of letters and only millions of parcels so it is not balanced and this is crucial to all postal operators throughout the world in Norway no repost is the main operator they are represented here so I have to be very and have to behave myself not talking badly about nor repost they are a good company so is our ministry they are also here so I have to behave but our government as one of the last countries in Europe they have finally decided to propose to liberalize the postal market in Norway and this proposal will be put forward for the parliament hopefully before the summer so at the end of this year we will probably have a liberalized postal market also in Norway but as you see the letters are declining the number of letters are declining so there won't be much new things to compete on on parcels there is full competition already this is the estimated development of the number of letters for the next years to come these billions of letters are diminishing they are they are gone and there are other ways of communicating because people are still in need to communicate but they are new means of communications and we are facing this severely in Norway and we have a digital population we call it a digital population because now the figures are from last year more than 80% of the households have access to internet and one third of the households have actually internet connections with more than 32 megabits per second and almost three fourth of the population not the households but 75% of the population have smartphones so they are communicating via smartphones instead of letters and they are communicating more and more via the smartphones and via the internet actually 90% of the population use internet banking so the bank branches are closing down also and since two years ago the majority of the population is actually the newspaper digitally and not in paper anymore which is a tremendous challenge to the newspapers and the news houses and as of next year our government have decided that all communications from the public sector to the inhabitants and the citizens of Norway will be done by email this is very severe for Norway Post and others that are conveying email but we have to adapt to this and this shows that mail is not important as a means of communications and anymore but mail and especially parcels is still very very important the implications we see from this is that we need a new and clear definition of postal services I will come back to that and ask the UPU to start looking into a clearer and better definition of postal services but we still need a minimum level of universal services especially when it comes to parcels there we need in all the countries of the world we need an efficient network for distributing physical items the electronic communications have come to stay and people will switch to electronic communications for the normal communications but we need better and more secure physical networks to convey parcels and physical items and as we see we have seen yesterday and we see today that there are huge differences between the different countries in the world but there are also differences within a country or within especially within Europe it's a huge difference and that is a challenge because the needs in the different countries are very different between the north and the south of Europe it's a huge difference and we need also to start a new discussion on the right to communicate because that is what we are trying to regulate let this as such the government of the world need to ensure the right of the citizens to communicate whether this is by mail or by electronic means the right to communicate is what we are striving to achieve and we have to start this discussion in a new way we have to look into the universal service obligation within the telecom sector and within the postal sector because the way we communicate changes and the universal service obligations within these two sectors have to melt and we have to have to regard them together but to enable us to do that we have to start we can start with the postal sector and we need a clear definition of what is post in many countries we don't need to communicate but we need post to ensure the fiscal conveyance of items and I would like to start with this the yellow circle is what somebody called the postal services it's include conveyance of all fiscal items whether they are addressed or not it's included in the yellow circle part of this yellow circle is the universal service obligation that should depend on national needs within this yellow circle this is a white circle that is the registered and unregistered addressed mail that is smaller than the postal service as such as many define it but we are talking also about the basic postal services and what is that it's not registered and unregistered addressed items as such because in this circles we have not put in any limitation when it comes to kilos for example and that is the main lack of the definitions we find throughout the world today it's a definition of universal service obligation it's not a definition of postal services as such I was leading a working group within SERP many years ago we were trying to define what is the the real postal services what is the the source actually the funny thing is that everybody knows what post is until they are asked to define it and it's like time everybody knows what time is until you have to define it then it's almost impossible so that's why we are striving with this definition and the core element of postal services is actually the red circle it's unregistered addressed items that is the unique thing that postal operators throughout the world does registered mail can be passes or all ordinary registered letters but they are all registered and they are based on an individual agreement between the operator and the sender but the core thing that nobody else is dealing with is actually the red circle unregistered addressed items when you need a postal operator as a third party that you trust and the trusting thing is very very special thing for postal operators throughout the world and still there are only the designated postal operators that is dealing with this red circle unregistered addressed items and I think we have to start with defining more clearly what is postal services and then we have to start a discussion how to ensure universal communication services including electronic services yes thank you very much thank you for this very interesting views and food for thought about universal service and I give the floor to another colleague of mine Jack Hammond he is the chairman of the council of the Belgium institute for postal services and telecommunication Jack joined BIPT the Belgium regulator in 2013 and before he has quite an interesting curriculum vita he worked for Disney corporation and Verizon business he was in Cisco so he comes from the private sector and then he changed to join the public sector as director channel for personal and organization development at the FPS personal and organization he is by by profession has a master in organizational psychology and has an additional degree in management and is now the as I said the chairman of the Belgium regulator who is also regulating telecom and postal services together and he was last year vice president of BIPT Jack you have the floor thank you if I may first of all thank Côte d'Ivoire as the house country and of course I would like to thank the director general and the vice director general of the UPU for organizing this conference I know that I have a challenge because we have the lunch afterwards then I have two questions for you please answer quickly first of it did you get a parcel home within the last three months show me your hand last three months okay thank you and did you send a person mail or postcards within the last six months six months okay they still work to do you know when I was a young boy I enjoy a lot to the postman of course because I was getting a nice presence from my grandmother but also because when you think about postman you think about every time all the weather is it a letter is it a parcel they are just coming to your home to deliver it it is incredible and for a long time but I have to sorry about that Marc to talk about my holidays because I was on leave last week and I don't know about you but when I'm traveling the first thing I need to do is to find some post office and to find posts and mailboxes and it's so attractive and you know interesting for me that whenever you go you will find in the middle of nowhere mailboxes this is just incredible that you are a small company you are in a small farm far away you will get your letters you will get your parcels but as you know we told that already for the last two days there are changes in the postal environment we see a fantastic growth of the parcels and in the panel 6 of course we have to address that because or PMEs SMEs small medium business enterprise they need of course postal services to be successful in the e-commerce and we see the transformation the transformation based on four pillars first of all dryful changes are based on new kind of competition secondly new kind of demands from companies and citizens collaboration trends between market players and of course a number of changes like Thorsten said between economical situation social situation and technology evolution but of course what we see and I don't want to discuss too much about that very exciting products emerging for example postal e-services but we see also some changes in behaviors like community mail and we see also that in the transformation of postal players they change the way they are delivering all mail and parcels for example in boxes, home or in pick up points and we can even dream to get your lunch later on delivered here by post companies at ERGP we knew that it was the right time to think about what will be the USO in the future based on the existing European postal directive and then we first had to look on what's going on in Europe of course and what we see is that there are different trends like Thorsten said we don't have one single model fits all we have changes enlargement, coverage reduction different trends that we need to understand but also in the world we have in Canada, New Zealand or in the US different ways to think about postal services coverage and universal service obligations then we continue the exercise at ERGP with our consultation and stakeholders meeting first of all we see that when we look about quality of service we see about number of postal access points or registered mail we have difference within Europe member states and then we decided to go through five questions first of all what could be the common minimum scope of USO including essential elements that should be guaranteed secondly who will finance that and how do we need to define a USP provider what will be the relationship and impact on USO and competition effects and last but not least thinking about professional or private users we have of course to think which user category should be targeted by the USO ladies and gentlemen I don't know if we have to talk about evolution or we have to talk about revolution if we look to the first preliminary bottom up feedback we got from all the players and governments, ministries attending to a stakeholders meeting few months ago what we can see about US definition is one we have to discuss about reduction or at least review the scope secondly we need to introduce more flexibility three we have to consider potentially some specific user groups and needs regarding designation we have to rethink about the way we will designate some USP providers public auctions, tendering a lot of questions do we have to do that question mark about financing different way to do it public financing or even compensation funds we still have to discuss that further about competition also leveraging what will be the impact on the current competition and the future of it ladies and gentlemen is the time to go to the next level I invite the whole audience to help ARGP and UPU to rethink about the future of USO because it's the time now to think about the future and I'm dreaming about a time in the world when I will order something from another country from a small companies and getting delivered to my home independently when I'm living in the middle of nowhere like I call it and I hope that Belgium is not in the middle of nowhere but I really would like to invite all the members to a call to action to think about that I invite also you to have a look at the end of 2015 about a report and I would like to say thank you very much for the future thank you thank you for this presentation and I go immediately to the next one Mr. Yunus Gibrin his secretary channel from the Pan African postal union Mr. Yunus Gibrin was inspector general of Cameroon's ministry of post and telecommunication chairman of the anti-corruption unit of post and telecommunications and ICT sectors in Cameroon he brings a lot of postal experience I think you are since 30 years I didn't think you were that old but 30 years experience in postal development in Cameroon and in other countries he was also representative of Cameroon to the council of administration of the UPU so he knows UPU very well when they served there as a chairman of the technical corporation and postal reform project group in UPU but now you represent the Pan African postal union Papu that's also where we met in Grand Basin recently you have the floor Yunus Gibrin Merci Thank you moderator and my thanks above all to Côte d'Ivoire which is hosting the conference at the CICG in Geneva and I would also like to thank the director general of the UPU the Swiss authorities that have enabled this meeting hosted by Africa to take place now before beginning my brief presentation I wish to point out I've just noticed that we have a convergence of views with the UPU in regarding the contribution of innovative inclusive solutions the African union for his 2063 vision has an objective which is a prosperous united Africa through inclusive growth based on sustainable development and PAPU last week organized a conference on its vision for 2020 with post 2020 Africa at the forefront for developing inclusive solutions to satisfy the needs of clients and all parties as part and therefore inclusion really comes cross strongly through all of these institutions now very briefly I have little time but for detail but you see the aspirations of the 2063 agenda of the Africa that we want which you see now displayed on the screen a glimpse of the PAPU which was established as a governmental body a specialist body of the African unit a few indicators which are appearing on the screen they speak for themselves and could the speaker is asking for his laptop I thought I could read the screen but I'm afraid I can't read at that distance well yes we need the electronic means of communication at the post yes so as I was saying we we have there for 76% of adults who do not have a bank account over 20% of post offices in Africa do not have electricity and are even less connectivity and over 12% almost 20% of the population does not have access at all to postal services which in terms of the Pan-African Postal Union provides us with this strategic vision for promoting visions in order to develop the postal services in Africa in all member countries and to encourage cooperation between the stakeholders in order to save time I won't go into all the details you see in the tables but you'll have this in the documents that will be circulated now I wish to emphasise the challenges that we face concerning the very rapid development of the market and the acceleration of technological innovation clients are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of the quality of service we have a drastic decline in mail volume with reduced profits and an exhaustion of the investment reserves and the organisation of the service postal services constantly evolving we have requirements for the offering of postal services that have to be simple affordable and accessible in Africa contrary to the diagram that was showed by a previous speaker in Africa this demand is growing at an increasingly fast pace and the sustained development of a postal market is increasingly open to the competition therefore how can we prepare tomorrow's universal postal service we must therefore define a universal postal service that is appropriate for the needs of our time and that is appropriate in order to take into account and we are talking about a dichotomy in development given the development of new technologies now I'm talking about dichotomy but there is no antinomy because technology is a neutral factor it depends on us and it's up to us to use it appropriately because even criminals use it when they see fit therefore we have four criteria diversifying the services physical, financial and electronic services three improving infrastructure and number four postal regulation which are the main thrusts with the improvement of the service for both domestic and international mail services, postal services and also financial digital inclusion the theme of financial inclusion has become a major theme for our organization the African Union which is seeking integrated development by 2063 as I said earlier when it will celebrate its centenary anniversary the improvement of infrastructure and is the most significant aspect because the weakness is the breaks on development in Africa derived from the inadequate infrastructure and the lack of an addressing system and the obsolete nature of the means of communication which at African Union level has led to the key priority being strong cooperation with the UPU and the PAPU in order well first of all we didn't want to put the car before the horse because connectivity and the inclusion that we see for African citizens wherever they may be whatever the size of their wallet may be requires a basic infrastructure in terms of connectivity which itself depends on the availability of electricity of a power grid when it is needed and therefore this has become a flagship project which will give ride at the headquarters of the African Union in August of a conference for the international lenders conference which will enable financing and to enable all Africans to be connected and to be citizens of the world with the addressing system which is also a factor it is part of our identity somebody who does not have an address simply does not exist and this is a project this is a phenomenon that requires us to respond in order for mail to be delivered to the remotest parts of Africa now of course this has to be backed up by regulation we are considering this needs regulation because the economic reforms that have been undertaken based on what at the time seemed to be our development partners led to an almost total disaster that left by the roadside many of our fellow citizens and for our objective of 2063 these aspects have to be settled and we need regulation to put order in this market and the universal postal service has to have a sustained financing hence the need to create special funds for the financing and the adoption of an appropriate postal directive and a national directive based on a continental directive that we are in the process of drawing up with the Pan-African parliament so moderator and dear colleagues is in a nutshell what I wanted to say with this presentation thank you very much thank you very much thank you so much the secretary general of the Pan-African postal union he is the secretary general of this important organisation and I would like to thank you warmly for those comments and we will discuss this afterwards and I now give the floor to Dr. Dabretzian Dr. Dabretzian of communication and information technology of the Democratic Federal Republic of Ethiopia he's also chairman of this papu of the Pan-African conference of the postal union Dr. Dabretzian Dabretzian is Deputy Prime Minister of Finance and the Economic Cluster and the Minister of Communication Information Technology of Ethiopia. And he is also currently the chairman of the Board of the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. He was previously Director General of the Ethiopian Information and Communication Technology, so his whole professional life he put into building up technology infrastructure in his country. And I welcome you warmly here. He's by profession engineer, which usually helps understanding the technical developments in a country, not like me as a lawyer, who usually does not understand that really in depth, so you have the floor. Thank you, moderator. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. First, I would like to thank the organizers, UPU, Cordoba, and other partners for organizing this event and inviting us to be part of the event. Well, I think this is not the right time for me to make a speech regarding this post on services, but in the interest of time I would be very short. Before I proceed to the topic that has been already introduced by the moderator, I would like to talk one story that comes across the postal service. Well, it's a long time back while I was a student. You know, in Ethiopia, we had a revolution. The current party in Paris, the one that led us to revolution. So one day I was assigned to send a letter to officials by the revolutionaries. Since the revolution by then is illegal, I just cannot communicate the officials directly because I would be put in jail. So what I have to do is I have to go through the post office. I should not register my name, but it's an ordinary mail. So mail has done the service for me. And it was quite uninteresting. There were a lot of messages from the revolutionaries to the then governors to let them know that they have to cool down. They have to take care of our people. They have to be as much as possible moderate until the time comes. So this is one of my best memories of post when I was in travel, when I was assigned by the revolutionaries to hand over, but I cannot do that because I will be caught. So I have thus good memory. And today I'm the head of this, well I'm not the director, but as a minister I'm heading this postal service. So I know the benefits during bar time. Now I will move to the main topic, the challenge of the universal services and the solutions. They have been, many speakers have discussed about it since yesterday, but I just want to briefly say some few words and some few ideas on what we do with Ethiopia and of course it also covers the region. There are four challenges that I have tried to identify, but I'm sure you will agree with them with me as well. And I will highlight what we are doing to address those challenges regarding the universal service. One of the challenge that has been discussed time and again is of course postal volumes is declined also in our case. So to address that we have embarked this e-commerce initiative in our country. We are just beginning in this track. So the government has issued strategies and many other directives to expedite e-commerce and postal service will be instrumental in transforming the digital to the physical one. You cannot complete the whole process by e-commerce. E-commerce you can do all the activities, but the physical handover must be done by some agent. And that agent I'm sure you agree is a postal service. In this regard I also heard yesterday a good experience from Saudi post. They have said they have an agreement with Amazon. So they have to bridge the communication, the digital with the physical and that's an excellent experience. We all have to emulate and we also like the experience that I heard. The second thing that we have to do in our case is to serve the underserved population. So in the rural community we have around 80% of the country is rural and they have don't have access to posts. So now we have already embarked a project at currently it's a model project link post office to the rural communities as well. At the moment almost 95% of the rural communities have a telecom service. We have already telecenters. We have added a new list of service to the centers. It is IT, electronic services. The third service coming is postal services. So now we are transforming the telecom centers at the villages, communication centers. They can provide services of telecom, IT and post. And regarding cost there is a much to do from the postal service because it's already there. The establishment is already there. We are adding the services. So people that will be served and postal service will also get a revenue. On top of it they are supporting the development of the country. This is a new initiative. At the moment it is a model kind of intervention. By next year we are going to scale up to cover all the villages. The other that had been raised time and again is increase of personal. I think this is also the case in Ethiopia and we are working on it. The other challenge and this is the communication behavior has changed of the citizens. People are using Facebook, emails and many others. So the later service is declining obviously. Now the satisfaction of the customer will have to use IT again to attract and retain customers. So with the use of this tracking mechanism and then tracing these services, the quality of service is changing. Before that the quality of service from the sender point of view was hidden. The sender doesn't know the quality of service as the recipient need. Currently because of this tracking mechanism we have applied it and we are using and tracking it from any corner whether it's from Geneva, whether it is local, whether it is from US. The sender can track. So quality of service is increasing and this will help us retain and attract, as I said, others to improve sustainability in terms of the perspective of finance. The diversification of business is one of the strategies that we are following. And our postal services are doing non postal services like finance, like payment, insurance. So many others are coming in the list and utility billing is also being handled and taken care of by post and this will help again in generating more revenue. Diversifying the delivery channel is another intervention that we are trying outsourcing some of the businesses to the third party. This mobile post is also another intervention that we are trying to address. So this will help us. And again, maintaining sustainability. Use of IT, actually IT is a common denominator in all scores, but we are using also IT to improve the transaction costs between the sender and recipient and as well to modernize the logistics and security. So this will help us to attain the other challenge from our perspective and it can also impress others as a limited professionals. So to improve the professionalism within the sector we are linking this with the universities with postal union and there are trainings, opportunities that have already benefited out of it with the support of UPU and Papu who are gaining. And there are a lot to do by Papu in modernizing the postal service as well. So business process re-engineering and technology and application are being developed by some experts and we are being shared by Papu and Papu has a lot to play in our region including Ethiopia and we are gaining out of it. So I think I just want to end by appreciating the role played by Papu as well. And personally I also want to appreciate the Director General Ambassador for your support of the Ethiopia as well as to other is the postal union and thank you very much. And I also thank all of you for giving the time and as well as the patience during this long time. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. That was the right honorable Dr. de Bretzin, thank you very much. Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Communication and Information Technology from Ethiopia. Just a short question to the panel and then I will open the discussion. We don't have that much time anymore. Financing, we all talked, wishing list of the USO or which universal service obligation should be. How in one or two sentences, how do you see the financing of it? Should that be the government? Should that be the sector? Should it be another mean? How do you see that Thursday? That is one of the main reasons why we have to look more carefully into universal service obligation because it's becoming costly for something that people doesn't want to the same degree anymore. People are using electronic communications while the states have to pay so far for a traditional way of looking into universal service obligation. But the easiest way to do this is pay by the state. Pay by the state, Chuck? I think, one, two? Yes, please, that was the signal for you. Okay, then just quickly, we have three options open. I think that when we did our study at RGP, compensation fund, benefits, and of course some threats, we have public financing and we have, of course, self-financing. It's too early to define what and how because we need firstly to review what will be exactly the USO scope. Then sorry, Mark, I cannot give you the final answer about it. So you don't think in, for example, industrialized countries that it could be self-financed by the gains of the designated post? It can be, but we definitely need to review the scope and based on that we have to decide which is the best way. But self-financing is one of them, of course. Okay, Mr. Yunus Gibri, how do you see things regarding financing? Well, in order to seek financing funds, first of all, you have to establish who benefits from this. We're talking about the universal postal services which is for the benefit of citizens, for the ordinary citizens. And serving the ordinary citizen is the duty of any responsible government. Of course, it is down to governments depending on their economic and social conditions to come up with the appropriate mechanism. This does not mean that it's necessarily the public coffer, but the government has to come up with the appropriate mechanism depending on the actors we are talking about regarding these funds. And funding options vary even in Africa. Often it is the operators because the public operator is the only one who has the duty to cover the last mile, whereas the other operators who are seeking to run their own business in a restricted scope have to pay a fee. Now, in order to establish the infrastructure and to provide the service, there are still, in some countries, there's still a form of reserved service in some countries which enables the funding to be provided. And the third category concerns countries which the level of the state pay a contribution for funding the universal service, which, again, is the duty of the government and the operator is the designated entity for fulfilling the mission. What do you guys say? Primarily, I would say the Postal Office has to diversify its products and services so that they can finance their obligations. The second one is, as long as there is market inefficiency, the government can come to support some financing or expenses as well. Okay, thank you very much. I think that gave about the whole possibilities and, of course, this is a matter of discussions. Also, it's a matter of how much we want to extend the universal service obligation. The more we extend it, the more expensive it is and the more we need funding for it. So that's, of course, but that's a very political question. Now I would like to open the floor to the plenary who has a remark. I have time for about two remarks or questions. Even better, and please be short. Yes, that's, I can't see. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, yeah, and the one to the left is? What's? Thank you, yeah. It's the same thing. No, it's just one. Okay, Nigeria, sorry. I saw two panels of Nigeria, so. Nigeria Eastern, Nigeria West. Okay, you have to flow. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. My question actually is on the definition of postal services. One of the panelists has raised an issue of need to redefine or declare definition of what postal services means. I think that being that the post office works on a three-dimensional basis, both physical, financial, and digital, and these definitions were there in the beginning. What should the UPU now consider as definition of postal services? Because I hear most often when the postal services and digital services or postal services and financial services, I did not know part of the post office. Thank you. That Torsten Olsen said how impossible it is to give a definition of what the universal service or what the postal service is. In general, is it possible to do a definition on postal services or is it not any more possible because we have so much convergence with other elements like telecommunication, like financial services, and that's of course important also for the definition of universal service obligation. So is it possible to give a definition of the universal service? I start now with a colleague from Ethiopia. How do you see that? How would you do the definition? I don't expect your clear definition in five words, but still, how do you see that? Yeah, well, I probably have tried to define universal services in our case in terms of parcelists, who said it should be less than two kilogram. And later, just later. So, and of course the timeline, quality of service has to be also very clear. And we have, I don't exactly remember, but I think we said it should be within a week. There should be, later has to be addressed to the destination within the country. So these are some of the items that we have identified in the world, defined in our universal service. In terms of distance, around five kilometers. So quite a clear definition on criteria of quality. Yes, that's right. Unistv. Thank you. Well, if I understood correctly, the question from Nadir is not the definition of the universal postal service that they're after, but the definition of postal services. That's, in his question, postal services, this means that there's a dichotomy here. And I think the essence here takes precedence over existence. Postal services have always existed because they facilitate communication between men and women. It's not simply to share new news at local level, but it's to exchange goods and services. And from that point of view, this need for exchange evolves along with the technological evolution and increasing and diverse requirements. And this means that one has to base the definition on that essential characteristic. And as the content has to evolve, well, from our standpoint, I do agree with the colleague from Nigeria in that when we talk about the UPU postal network saying that it's multidimensional, it cannot walk on one leg as it were. It's multidimensional. There has to be the financial aspect, the physical service, the e-services, and one has to view this as a whole in terms of the offering of postal services. So how would you define it, Jack? To take into account what is changing. And then we have to make sure that the definition will accommodate with the dischanging world and the needed transformation in postal services. For example, regarding logistics and so on, and also convergence. Regarding USO, I think that, as I said during my presentation, we are revisiting a number of dimensions and maybe it might help to also rethink about what might be the postal services definition. Paul Stein? The core definition of postal services, I think I gave an overview of that. It's possible to define that. The core that is the unique thing that postal operators throughout the world are offering today. That is the unique one. But then the government have to decide what kind of universal service obligations do we need? And for sure, we need to ensure that citizens are able to communicate, whether this is by mail or by electronic communications, that has to be decided by the government. And further on, we need all the, each and every government have to ensure or discuss whether they want to have a universal service obligations when it comes to parcels. And that is something totally different from communication. So you have to split this in communications which can be done by mail or by electronic means, and parcels which can only be done by a fiscal network. But that has been done with, or by many other operators than the designated OOP operator. So that is a totally different thing. Thank you. Now I have, I can only give two interventions to place because we should wrap up and finish this session. Otherwise you have nothing to eat. We don't want that because you already had a fantastic engagement this morning. The room was always full. So I give the floor to Uruguay and then to Komori, Uruguay, you have the floor. Sir, can you hear me? Yes, I do apologize. Now, if you could be concise, well, yes, of course I'll be concise if I'm not interrupted, so I will be very brief. The duty to provide universal postal service, this is a human right, this is indeed a progress. So we have to define the new services. So what are we going to include in the duty because designated operators also represent a tool for economic and social development? Now, this is not a question, but a comment. I would like Africa to achieve these changes. It has been working on them for some time, but we're hearing about a universal postal service which could be self-funding. However, this is not to say that we should allow compromise or concession on the provision of these universal postal services. The break is also the bridge over to the remarks from the African colleagues. Now, the last intervention I give to Komori. I'm sorry, the lady of Egypt smiles at me, but still I have to stop it once. You can bring it, put it forward in the afternoon, my colleague will take it. Okay, yes, good. So Komori, where are you? Thank you, moderator. I would like, I represent the Komar. We had a question on the intervention of the Ethiopian Communication Minister. His intervention we felt was very interesting regarding the approach to profitability that he set out vis-a-vis the inclusion of postal and telecommunication services. Now, historically in the Komar, it was the telecommunication service that used the postal network, which was a long-established network to sell the telecom services. And I understand that the approach developed by Ethiopia was the reverse, the opposite, in other words, postal services that used the telecommunication services. So I would like to hear a little bit more, some explanation on how this works specifically in the market. Thank you very much. I now give the floor to the Vice Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia. And now I'm afraid we have to wrap up. Thank you. Have the floor. The ERA guys is just a comment. And I think both compliment, if we take the case of Ethiopia one, regarding universal services, by the way, I said two kilo for parcel, it is 20 kilo. I'm sorry for that. We have already standardised the kind of services that should be offered in all villages. We have 16,000 villages in our country. So the whole intervention of the government is, all the villages has to be served by the universal service. So this is a decision by the government and that is an intervention from the government. Well, this government is working hard on development, so we say this is an instrument to accelerate, especially to get out of poverty. We are still struggling to get out of poverty and we say this is an instrument for us. So there is a constitutional obligation and commitment from the government to serve the people, to serve especially the poor. And the poor are in villages. Regarding the sequencing or the experience mentioned, yes, in our case, telecom went ahead. By the way, this is also an intervention from the government. So the government has decided, actually 10 years back, to cover all villages by telecom. And we say this is a very good instrument, again, to get out of poverty, to spread education, to connect people to health doctors and to get market information. So this is a line, again, to get to the whole project, supporting people to get out of poverty. So telecom came first. That was the thoughts of the government. So telecommunication is spread in these village areas. Now, this year, actually, we added electronic services to it and then posts. And this is historically how it was designed. Postal actually came lately. So we preferred to connect the rural population by telecom first than post. Again, this is an initiative by the government. I think we were right in terms of sequencing, but it could have been even done together. This is the reflection I have. And thank you so much for your comment and for your identifying, actually, the reason and your interest also to know why we have done that. Thank you very much. And with this, I would like to finish this panel. I thank you very much, panelists, dear gentlemen, for participating. And I would like to wrap up by saying, I think, just the last panel showed that we talk about a right of communicate. That is what we said. It's a human right. And that, of course, needs a universal service, a post-universal service, a telecom universal service, a financial universal service. But it mainly needs inclusion. It needs access and it needs connectivity. It's these three things, which, unfortunately, we've seen the figures this morning, are not given in the whole world by far not. Most parts, I must say, do not have these three points, inclusion, access, and connectivity of the human right to communicate. I think in all these discussions, also, e-commerce, which is, of course, a fact, whether it's in older countries of this world, e-commerce is the future of the postal services, of the communication, also, of the businesses. But also, here, we have to have two speeds. In one way, in the industrialized countries and in the emerging countries, there are two different speeds. In the industrialized countries, we have to bring down obstacles. We have to make this trade cheaper, and so on, all these things. Customs is a big issue. But still, though, there are big efforts done. But of course, we also have to see then in Africa, in some parts of Asia and South America, there are other obstacles to overcome for this right to communicate. The infrastructure has to be done. Electricity, it was shown by our African colleagues. Many countries don't have electricity. If you don't have electricity, it's difficult to run a post office. We have to have, for that, the infrastructure of the post office, of the professional teaching of the people who run this post offices, and of course, also an address system. And for all this, it can be overcome also by the use of new technologies, like telecommunication, mobile, telephony, more SMS, and so on. This can be done. But with all these things, it needs the engagement of the facilitating by the regulator, by the government, and also, of course, by the UPU. We must be aware that the postal network that was set in the morning first is the biggest physical network. We have almost 700,000 postal offices. In some countries, it's by far not enough. We know that. But still, this is a big physical network which has to be used. But it's necessary to have more logistical efficiency, that the cost of trading must go down, and that we design a regional integration. Mail and postal services is not a matter of nation to nation. We must work regionally. And that was, as I said this morning, impressed when I was on the Ivory Coast in Abidjar, Grombassam, how, for example, the eastern, western African countries work together. It's not a matter of Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Kenya, but they work together, and that's how it should be. That's also what we try here in Europe to do. So this must be the future. And the other thing is the red tape. We still have much too much stamps and paper and so on. We need to use the technology, ladies and gentlemen. We are not enough that everybody who delivers parcels and so on knows we are going in this direction, but we're not far enough. We need speedy clearing and we need simplified declarations. Otherwise, we will never get where we want to go. Peru was a very interesting example. We should take, like what they're doing in South America, but it was also very interesting to listen to the lady from the Caribbean, from how she shows how important for the people who do agriculture, who do small trade, how important it is to have post office, to be physical able to send off their goods, be it nationwide or into another country. So opening these things in concrete and practical ways is essential for growth of wealth and for fighting poverty in the whole world. And I think that's something we should take with us. But the colleague from Malaysia gave us an optimistic note. He said, we are going into a golden area for the postal sector because e-business, e-commerce gives tremendous possibilities, tremendous opportunities for the postal services. And that's true because the combination internet and physical logistic delivery gives tremendous opportunity. And with this positive note of the Malaysian colleague, I would like to finish this panel, but not saying we must accept the challenge. The postal operators, they must change their mind, set the authorities, the regulators and the government. They have to do big changes to face these challenges which e-commerce bring to us. With this, I would like to thank you very much. Everybody here in the room, I'm impressed. We're all hungry and thirsty and you're still all here. That shows that you show a big interest on the topic and I'm looking forward to the discussion in the afternoon which my colleague will lead. And I wish you all the best and thanks again for your engagement and I give now the floor to the right Honourable Minister of Ivory Coast, Mr Kuni. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates, first of all I'd like to thank and commend the speakers. At this panel, thank you Mark and thanks to you all for those extremely interesting interventions. If I may, I just have a few announcements to make regarding formalities, but first of all, I, if I may, I would like to make a very brief comment on some of the points that were made during this morning's panel. We have all noted with interest everything that was said on the use of ITCs and I don't, ICTs, I don't think there's any need to dwell on that e-commerce which is at the very heart of everything that we have to do in all our postal services in the coming years. We have also noted the very significant traffic of e-commerce. We've noted the improvement of access to the market which is a prerequisite in order to enable our populations, especially in the developing countries, to have access to postal services. We noted with interest the proposal that was made on opportunities provided in some countries to SMEs and to postal services. And for my part, I have noted the logistical services for access to the internet which clearly is very interesting for many of our countries. Now the regulatory aspects, well, we're all concerned by that. I think we listen with great interest to the discussions that took place. And unquestionably, we are all convinced that proper regulation enables us to have a postal service that develops better because this means that we have operators who are more dynamic, who can have secure operations, and we have consumers who will therefore be protected. The concept of the universal postal service has been discussed. I will not dwell on that, especially since there were some disagreement over the concept of the universal postal service and in particular regarding the definition of the universal postal service itself. But I would, for my part, recall that we need, the networks have to develop and it's necessary that our states contribute to this. Our networks are facing the challenges of technological development and our states must intervene. And I also note that our networks and our consumers are facing the cost of postal services and as well it's perhaps important that our respective states play the role that they should be playing. And I also noted that there are requirements that can be covered by the universal postal service internationally, particularly the access, the availability of postal, of post offices for society at large. We spoke about electrification, providing power to some post offices. And if all this is done then it will contribute very strongly to the development of the postal service in our countries and it will help to improve inclusion and it will help the extension of these services. Mark concluded in talking about the right to communicate. I think this indeed is a good summary of what was said during this session. So now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to just give us a few minutes to enable us to give the floor which is to Switzerland which has asked for the floor. I don't see, oh yes, there is Switzerland. So the Secretary of State has the floor to address the assemble gathering. Thank you, Chair. You are at the junction between information and I would like to share a confidential piece of information which I received a few moments ago whereby the next item on the agenda should involve food, gastronomy. Now I know how difficult it is to listen when on an empty stomach and therefore I've made a strategic decision to reduce my intervention to one hour only. Ladies and gentlemen, Chairman, Ministers, High Representatives, Director General, Representatives of the Universal Postal Union, ladies and gentlemen, it's a great honour for me to address you on behalf of the Swiss government as the representative of the host state of the UPU for the sixth Global Strategy Conference of the UPU after the BERN Conference in 1992, Geneva in 1997, Geneva in 2002, Dubai in 2006 and Nairobi in 2010. The strong participation in this event is really augurs very well and we're very happy with this. My brief intervention will cover four points. Switzerland as the host state, Switzerland as a solidarity, Switzerland as a candidate and Switzerland as a partner for reform. As the host for our Universal Postal Union, Switzerland is happy once again to enable dialogue to take place by making available the International Conference Centre of Geneva. You are far removed from your usual, well not very far admittedly, from your usual base in BERN. You are familiar with this infrastructure because the Universal Postal Congress met here in 2008 under the presidency of your current Director-General, whom I wish whom I would like to greet, like many other international organisations based in Switzerland. We are always prepared to facilitate meetings and exchange of views by stakeholders. As the host country to many international organisations, we're all the more aware of the synergies that can be established and this will be increasingly irrelevant in the digital era. With this in mind, we will always be prepared to play the role of the facilitator. Switzerland for solidarity, as we did for our Kenyan friends in 2008, we are doing this for our friends from Côte d'Ivoire today. We are all from Côte d'Ivoire. We all belong to Côte d'Ivoire. We all know under what circumstances the venue of this conference had to be relocated. The Ebola epidemic moved us all and it hit some member states of the sub-region. Fortunately in Côte d'Ivoire, there were no instances. We are all with the countries that have been effective. We wish to thank the Ivoirian authorities for all the effort that they had made in order to prepare for the conference that should have been held in Abidjan. Switzerland as a candidate. Switzerland is committing itself. Switzerland wishes the initiatives to continue over time, our role and our involvement in the UPU, since its inception over 141 years ago, are well known and therefore we call for continuity. And it is in this spirit that the Swiss government will ask you to renew your support to our Vice Director General at the International Bureau, Mr Pascal Cleaver at the next Universal Postal Congress to be held in Istanbul in 2016. We are convinced that he will able, if he is re-elected, to continue the wonderful job that he already been accomplishing with great dedication, competence and enthusiasm. I'm not making diplomatic compliments here because I can tell you what diplomat is being asked to say here really does correspond to the truth. Now as further proof of our commitment to the UPU, my country has decided to be a candidate for a seat on the next Council of Administration. We wish to participate fully in the many challenges that await the Universal Postal Union in the years ahead and to contribute our experience in order to meet these challenges. Switzerland wishes to be very present, very active within the governing bodies of the union in the next cycle. And finally, Switzerland as a partner in reform. This strategy conference is particularly important because over two days it enables the various parties to the panels and the participants to make their intellectual contribution in defining the strategy of the UPU. Indeed, these will provide the basic elements to establish the broad guidelines for the UPU and to set out its roadmap at the next Istanbul Congress. The Swiss government is arguing for an open, efficient UPU that serves everyone, a UPU that provides value-added solutions in a world that is going through upheaval as the Director-General recorded yesterday and as we see through the discussions that are being held over these two days. The pace of reform has to be stepped up further in order for the organisation to meet its objectives by 2020. The 141 years of the UPU's existence are a success for the postal sector and the UPU has launched this sector and developed it constantly over this period. This is a very strong guarantee for the future. The Universal Postal Union has become a model of international cooperation. Long live our second oldest UN agency. Let us continue to gather the major projects which we are in the process of defining here in Geneva. You may count on the full support of the Swiss government. I wish you an excellent conference or an end of the conference, and thank you very much and bon appétit. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished delegates, on your collective behalf, I wish to thank the Secretary of State who has just intervened on behalf of Switzerland. I wish to thank you, sir, for the very kind words that you said about Côte d'Ivoire. And in particular, I wish to thank you for having agreed to host the Abidjan Conference here in Geneva and to provide us with all of these facilities which have enabled so far a very successful conference to take place. Your message, I think, has been very well taken on board. And I will give the floor to a few people in the room who wish to intervene briefly regarding Switzerland as the candidate. I wish to convey my own sentiment and, of course, my support to the Swiss candidacy. And publicly, I wish to support the express support for the excellent job that is being done by the Director-General and his team. So I give the floor to the room and to all those who wish to intervene. Yes, Mr. Yunus, go ahead. Merci, excellent. Thank you, Excellency Minister. Thank you for giving me the opportunity at such a late hour to say a few words after this excellent announcement regarding the four thrusts that Switzerland has set out. Of course, we say that an empty stomach cannot listen to anything, but that sharpens our appetite further. It wets the appetite because we have just heard that the winning team will continue to work because traditionally one is always hears that a winning team should not be changed. And on the African side, we Africans, on behalf of the African postal community with the permission of my President of the Plenty Potentiary Commission, I wish to say that Africa has been fully satisfied over the two and a half years of the winning ticket that we have had. And I need I recall that it's been an African ticket, it was perhaps Swiss, but Basel, Kliwa and Bishar, Hussain were our candidates. They have won a resounding victory and they did not disappoint us at all. So we think that they should continue their job and this would be great for our postal services because under their mandate more than ever, cooperation with the Pan-African Postal Union for the benefit of its member states has been further strengthened and we wish this to continue in order to enable them to continue their very good job. Thank you very much. Thank you once again. I will ask the next speakers to be as brief as possible. Egypt, you have the floor. Thank you. I'm not sure that we understood what you said because I think that the interpretation did not work. I give the floor to Iraq. We are talking to the Arabs about the translation. We are also thankful for the work team. I think that the Arabic tradition does not work. The Arabic interpretation is not working. We will give the floor to other colleagues and we will give you the floor as soon as the interpretation works. Thank you. Djibouti, if you speak English or French. Hello. I just wanted to give my turn to Egypt, who speak French so that they can put their question in French. No problem, Jan. No problem. English, French, no problem. On behalf of the Egyptian government, I wish to thank Mr. Bashar Hussein, the general director and his deputy, Mr. Pascal Clivas, for the effort they spent during the last two years. I strongly believe that they spare no effort to fulfill their commitments and to provide support to all the country. And I wish to continue the fruitful cooperation with the UPU. And thank you very much. Which one is it? Ethiopia? Ethiopia? Go ahead, please, Ethiopia. Go ahead, Ethiopia. We also support the coordination of both secretaries general and deputy secretary general because they have shown outstanding performance during their stay for the last two and a half years. Thank you. Senegal? Senegal? Well, thank you. I wish to take the floor simply to say that Senegal commends the work that is being done by the director general, Mr. Bashar Hussein and the vice director general, Mr. Pascal Cliva, the work for transforming the UPU and the transformation of the postal service. We think this work should be continued by the winning team, which should be re-elected. And Senegal feels that Mr. Bashar Hussein and Mr. Pascal Cliva should be re-elected for the next cycle. Thank you. Well, I see many other hands raised, but I think that the comments will all be going in the same direction. So on your collective behalf, I wish to thank the Secretary of State. I wish to commend the team which is running the UPU, commend it for its wonderful job, and also congratulate it on the support that most delegates have just voiced. So thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Now, I said that we had other priorities, and the next priority, of course, is the culinary aspect. So I now invite you to lunch, which is being hosted by Côte d'Ivoire in the building. Thank you. And see you later at 2 p.m. We start at 2 p.m. stage so we can slowly start and have everybody seated so we can go on this afternoon with the different panels. So one is here. So, namely, I would like Mr. Ambassador Swing to maybe come here. Hello, Mr. Ambassador. Nice to meet you. Well, nice meeting you. Nice meeting you. Cheers. Mr. Fawseville? Ah, Mr. Fawseville. Bonjour. Third or fourth, Mr. Fawseville? Mr. Fawseville, thank you very much. Thank you very much. Bonjour, Mr. Fawseville. No, no, no, thank you very much. Mr. Fawseville, thank you very much. Thank you. We have 400. It's on. It's on. Just about. OK, perfect. Thank you. Oui, bonjour. Absolument. Monsieur le ministre, bonjour. C'est très bien de vous-même. Pascal? Sinon, on ne va jamais y arriver, je crois. OK, je vous laisse. Mesdames, mesdames. 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 delegations 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 for TV5 Monde in Switzerland. He is going to be the moderator for our panel. Thank you, Mr. President. 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 post in their major financial agencies of the world's 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 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 organisations. I think this is essential, can play in increasing financial inclusion generally. Distorted this afternoon will be Ambassador William Lacy Swing, who is the director general for the International Organization for Migration, who is currently serving his second five-year term. Just to remind you, the Organization for Migration is a 1.7 billion budget organisation, 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 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's also had a long diplomatic career in the U.S. Department of State and was a sixth on Ambassador Swing. Please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. It's a real honour 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. Um, numerically, 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 organisation 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. Three billion people today connected to the internet compared to 300 million in the year 2000. The distance shrinking technology, budget travel, climate change, environmental degradation, labour 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 the moderator has just said, sending home more than $400 billion a year, a total that's supposed to rise next year to much more than 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, is 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. Migrant 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. The 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 Hussein 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 U.S. dollars 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, la kini watu na watu, wana kutanaka. 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, et pour parler de l'autre parti 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 Nizigie 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 fertilisers. 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 fertilisers 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 organisations, 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 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 emphasised 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'll facilitate access to small producers and local producers to markets. We are members of the diaspora. We are emigrates. 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 to us migrants abroad. And before concluding, I would like to stress this because it's going to revitalize 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 nice 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 cachet 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. Merci donc. Thank you very much. Mr. Niziko Mano, Director General Burundi Post. And I think we were talking about trust. Our next speaker comes from Hungary. His name is Csaba Polishek. He's the Deputy State Secretary in the 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 companies since June 2010. And before that, he worked for Delwet Etush, Credit Anstalt, Credit Group, and CIB Security. 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. Hungary 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 a 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 nodes that are used for by utility companies, by tax authorities, and numerous other issuers. I would like to talk about the disbursements nodes 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 who 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 checks. 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 a 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 very 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 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 teller 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 teller 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 emirants 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 white-label 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 white-label product. We are provided by a professional partner. Also, we are selling deposits. It's a white-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 Telang's. We have one third share in this 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 of 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 capacities 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. Chabapolishev, 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-offer operators and is in charge of the universal service. You have the floor. So thank you very much. Minister, Mr. Kudne, Director General, Deputy Director General of the UPU, Ministers, Ambassadors, President, Director Generals, 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. He's 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 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's 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 centers. 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 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, 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, of course, characterize 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 Amar. 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, it's 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're under their jurisdiction. And it is very wary when it comes to the prudential aspect whether we have managed to recapitalize our bank on a number of occasions. I know there are four 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 Gases San Agustín. He's 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 of Calas 3D 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. Oh, I was 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 the 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 PUSP. 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 Lacey 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 globalised world, public operators, other institutions and international obligations have an obligation, 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 organisation 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 organisations and we wanted to show that posts can operate on the same competitive basis and provide the same financial services as the traditional financial institutions. And we're now in a position to say that thanks to the co-operation of all, thanks to the co-operation of the countries of destination and of international organisation, 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 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 the society and economy of a country. There are more than 600,000 post offices throughout the world. And about 5.5 million 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 remittances and the amount of remittances sent, 19% of outgoing EU remittances come from Spain present. Remittances from Europe, in particular 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 psychosocial development of children. They reduce infection or psychological upsets because this growth benefits all 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 organisations. 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 a 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 will continue to cooperate here because success will be guaranteed. Thank you. That's fine. That was very interesting. Thank you very much. Cheers. As you probably all know, time is flying by very, very, very rapidly. So we'll... 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. Because 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? Start maybe with Mr. Forstseville, 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 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 go 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 as it 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 percent 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 is autonomy. 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, just to speak about remittances. One last question to you. Do you have the impression that maybe governments, at least here in western countries, it's fully organized. We have the feeling in western countries that governments tend to fade away, rather than step in. Do we need to 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 rich economy 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 where these migratory flows take place, 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 added? 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? Well, 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 these 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 bang, it's remittances. What would you ask? We both are clients today. What would you ask in order, 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. 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 the 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 person, so you've got to deal with that. You have to deal with 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 of to a normal level five percent or below. I think that's 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 migrants are now working to reduce the question of remittance transfers. Thanks. Very quickly, as time flies, how do we get to that five percent 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. Seninglstein. Do you think or Mr. Forseville either? Okay, let's start with Mr. Forseville. Sorry. Oh, you didn't listen to it. No. I was saying, now Mr. Lisa was saying that maybe we should get down to five percent 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 the security part, there's the 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 equipment 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 percent, yes. 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 letter posts 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 the costs are quite high. So you've shared my point of view here. As I see it, as you 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 designate postal operators ourselves become autonomous operators for the transfer of money by mobile means. It's feasible. The technology is there that 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 organization of the Francophonie for the Francophonie. I don't know whether they want to take the floor. That 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 engine representative? Hello. Thank you. 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 Sujjalan besides the director general of the IBUPU and the DPT-DG for organizing this excellent conference. I would also like to thank the director general of international organization for migrations for his excellent presentation and recognizing 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 organizations 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 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 financial services and as the chair of ad hoc group on creation of postal financial services user group to emphasize 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. India would like to seek the support of all UPU member countries in this important endeavor 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. It was brilliant. Thank you very much. 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. All right, so this afternoon we're going to continue with panel 8 discussion 8. So this is a very important problem at any rate seen 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 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 can be translated at least as well if not better into the digital world and make that trust a stronger stronger. I would like to ask the Vice Minister for Policy Coordination Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication in Japan, Mr. Yasuo Sakamoto to come up the stage and take the floor. He has previously held numerous responsibility 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. Koinata. Good afternoon. I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to the chairman, panelist and participant for giving me 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 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 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 the situation the role of the postal sector delivering information through conventional method such as letters and postcards is facing a significant 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 socio-economic activities has also expanded the amount of close border commercial trade. In terms of social aspect nation around the world have been continuing their effort 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 ageing society in addition new global issues that cannot be solved by a single country have also arising 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 and 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 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 payment. 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 Japanese post providing memory service memory is Japanese in the sense of supporting elderly people. The post office played a significant role in the great east Japan earthquake four years ago providing various services for disaster victims. Post offices have been built upon the direct communication between people can be a great effect 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 in an accurate manner the role 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. Thank you. 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 the field of 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 we have a very very very brief of course it is indeed a great pleasure for me to be here today at the UPU world 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 how the post 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 of the economy 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 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 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 postal offices in the 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 a universal tool with benefits far beyond the voice and the text communication originally and visit. This is for the reason that myself I launched an initiative that I call M Powering Development M for mobile 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 in the future. 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 have been a four fold increase in the number of banking and financial related malware on some software platform from the first quarter to the first quarter of 2014. This has been a significant increase in the number of cyber crimes and security in the user ICT therefore remain one of our top priorities. ITU launched in 2007 the Global Cyber Security Agenda and I'm happy to tell you that in this front ITU has continued to play its role in the implementation and improve cyber security 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 state who have formally joined ITU security initiative at facilitating the deployment of computer incident response team. With the increase in usage of such 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 cyber security. The third point I want to talk to you about today is that customer 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 provider. We have a convergence of service providers and this is a new landscape where the assurances of yesterday could become the threats of today and even becomes a 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 multi lateral 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 repayment 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 provide an important vehicle to bring together various players and develop new joint international standards for interoperable financial 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 to equip everything. The postal vehicle may both parcel whatever you want with smart sensor, useful data about many things from panelists here I've mentioned the tremendous number of services that can be offered. The post can be part of it. The post should 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 etc. are few examples that are a kind of gold mine where the postal service could find a way to provide new services. The post are 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 partition. 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 converge to regulate and telecommunication to 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. ITU is committed to play its role together with UPU to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are now going to continue this discussion with the presentation of the director general of the Côte d'Ivoire Post Mr. Mamadou Konate has a length experience of over 30 years in the postal sector. He was previously a director of 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. Minister of the Post Your Excellencies Ambassadors 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 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 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 the product can be transferred at least as well 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 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 are 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 purview 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 cyber crime 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 it 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 when it comes to the management of our post offices in the 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 post 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 Sanly Shop so that whoever is interested they can go to www.SanlyShop.ci we're also developing partnerships and alliances 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 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 their birth certificate so the post also historically is a repository of trust within the framework of everything that we have noted when it comes to digitalization the post needs to be a digital pillar and this is a pillar which will come into force only when the necessary tools, applications and services are made available around the around the electronic services and projects states are making available various programs 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 rather the logistic platform for distribution is a very important element it enables a 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 centered in letter posts in spite of the developments that have taken place we will write to you, Sir Sir Chair 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 and economy and prior to her current appointment she serves 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 services 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 Services brand we also conservatively estimated that the postal service would forgo about $3.6 billion a year in financial benefits if it had no discernable 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 ask 100,000 participants to name the top five companies they trusted most for guarding their privacy the U.S. Postal Service was named enough times not only to be the first among federal agencies but it rated the tenth among all companies and organizations in the entire country I'm sure that many of your posts have similarly high trust levels with these points serving as guidelines we've conducted studies and research and I 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 it 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 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 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 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 posts 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 posts 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 to 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 as 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 but tomorrow who knows what it might be could post also be stronger logistics support centers for citizens that are temporarily or permanently homebound 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 post can help assist people that are currently 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 digital 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 Marchand he's the secretary general from 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 Ecuador and also the executive chairman at the same Correos del Ecuador please sir, thank you very much 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 and listening to me over the next few minutes I think it's important to look 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 it was everywhere we're in a very difficult context there are very aggressive telecommunications companies and competitors there are higher 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 I think the fact is month after month we are being asked to sell and do business so what are we doing we said 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 are 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 are not just looking for new laws and new regulations we are 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 are 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 are the biggest job creator in the world with 5.1 million jobs we generate wealth 1 billion US dollars and we have more than 660,000 post offices around the world we have been talking about e-commerce over the past couple of days and obviously we need to increase the volume of parcel post 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 number of occasions we don't know when letters are going to disappear altogether in one year, 50 years 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 what 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 when letters are going to disappear but we need to focus on our key strengths, logistics, parcels we've 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 program 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 to financial services 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 the 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 but 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 technology 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 and 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 program called the CEMENT, 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 program 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 exporter facile program which is a very inclusive program and such a vital one for the region and indeed for the world and we've been looking at the issue of remittances and we're looking for new sources of financing so that we can promote our projects 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 before I ask anything I think I'll go to the floor this time and if I recall correctly the Burkina Faso wanted to intervene 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 question from the floor anyone wishing to add anything the Dominican Republic please sir Mr Kavana Marcan 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 well 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 government's in the region not always aware of the role of the postal sector but we've been working more closely with them last question I give the floor to Kurt you have one minute for the question and statement as you are presenting this conference but I 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 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 our promises to the customer and we should 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 the time is really really really running fast and we have another panel and some guys I think catch a 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 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 Mr Cleaver-Killer 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 Jennings I'll talk for calls keep it under 10 minutes oh yeah yeah that'd be perfect I will try thank you never be heard that a union guy speaks yes you are yes you are I made an announcement okay so I'll wait for him for him to come in I'll wait for him okay you give me the go okay I'll wait for you yes Mrs Mohammed 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 so our third panel last one and we're going to be talking about an essential component for the global economy and sustainable development contribution of the sector of the sector the internal region global economy is more recognized by governments and international actors as well as international current concepts of globalization the universal postal network, resilient network is a major benefit for an 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 various speakers in this panel will review how the UPU members and the postal sector in a broader sense in the United States 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 Mohammed 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 a 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 Mohammed served as a coordinator also of the Task Force on Gender and Education for the United Nations Millennium Project so now Mrs Mohammed 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 UPU and our fellow panelists 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 the first set of goals to really try to bring together an anti-poverty push over 15 years 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 and 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 owned 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 that 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 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 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 are looking for are in the social agenda and on the environmental agenda an integrated whole environmental, economic and social so 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 are also looking for investments in sustainable development that are irreversible and I think that we have learned from the MDGs that anything that we do incrementally that addresses only part of the problem really does come back 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 we are 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 make sure 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 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 from the country level we are making commitments to greening and having a much more sustainable path so this is a year of really 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 lessons from those that have been involved with this but for which we have the greater challenge of going to scale the universal agenda meaning just that 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 what happens 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 that we are carrying reinforcing the agents of change and those decision makers that will be found in different parts of government, of parliament of our communities in reducing the cost of access to many of these facilities there has been much discussion on this and 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 so 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 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 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 we have yet 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 as 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 the 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 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 because I think 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 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 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 I think 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 in civil society as we see what would be an implementation plan what would it look like to 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 but to start as we would say yesterday what are the implications of this new agenda can you begin to speak with your partners broadening that base 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 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 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 telecommunications sector the audit and finance 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 have been hearing since this morning it is 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 in cooperation with the United Nations agencies including the United Nations environmental program and the international civilisation 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 organisation 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 their 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 the issue I would like to focus on in particular is the third pillar if you like the economy and there I think this must be 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 have 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 the wealth 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 of 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 are 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 joint 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 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 we need to develop our social networks to the benefit of SMEs and indeed to help individuals such as farmers 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 talked about this earlier 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 as I said earlier with regard to the prevention of HIV AIDS spread and now Ebola so to conclude I would like to say that 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 many developing 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 young children so these are very small aspects in terms of cost but they are very important in terms of the social impact and I would like to welcome as well the efforts of some developed country posts to help to support developing countries such as the Austria Post 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 office don't even like electricity and a lot is done through post offices 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 logistics 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 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 and that's why 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 so these are steps that we're taking to pursue our ITC and postal objectives commonly so there's a long way to go it's a long and winding road but we are determined to get there because we think that this will help our peoples and we think this will help our states 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 and not just because you don't have electricity in your post office to minister now we're going to be listening to a union representative so to balance the speeches Mr. Phillip 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 with a three year term on the board of the UN Global Compact he also received the Nagasaki International Peace and Friendship 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 turned 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 dependents we are the beating heart the public face if you have a strong brand as postal service is 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 brought financial calamity the question to all of us is what responsibility will we take will we be up to the challenge can we unions yourselves 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 but it is important for me to repeat them but it is 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 we will get up 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 in the recognition that this binds people together and above all hope of new possibilities 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 political pressure 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 one 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'm so pleased to see that in Asia and Africa there are a few initiatives in terms of remittances the messages being listened to at the G20 in Brisbane I was there and it's now got a priority at a global level where it did not have it before I also think that in this process you don't need me to repeat all the good things that 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 in the sustainable development 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 with the rugged 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 and I am asking Philip my right to join the 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 in 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 is a day of action it's 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 Wal-Mart 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 yourselves 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 Bishar Hussein 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 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 now if you ever wondered whether the international peace recipient or the global warrior would suit best Phillip Jennings, I suppose you have the answer as we all do we'll go down now with our next speaker I was with us through a pre-record message is Achim 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 Achim Steiner has been heading 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 he also was secretary 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 I would like to 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 of 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 and momentum 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 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 and only them 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 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 and also the objectives of Sustainable Development and addressing climate change an opportunity for an even more effective efficient and responsible Universal Postal Union community the beginnings of this we 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 your greenhouse 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 lower 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 inventory and the methodologies and I'm 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 started 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 is actually quite encouraging equally within the United Nations system we now have a number of entities amongst them I probably 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 but it is also in the context of managing our infrastructure, our buildings, offices vehicle fleets and electricity supplies across the world the net impact of trying to make UNEP 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 of the budgets 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 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 and 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 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 and the principles 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 Ahem Steiner Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Our last speaker now comes from the Dominican Republic Mr. Modesta Guzman is the General Director of Impostom Dr. Guzman is a lawyer with private and public sectors it was a decisive part in the reorganization of the Christian Social Reformers 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 I appreciate colleagues Dear colleagues, I'd like to begin by thanking the Director General of the UPU Mr. Hussein and the Government of Côte d'Ivoire represented by the Prime Minister Mr. Bruno Nabaño-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 that represents 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 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 in 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 forecasts for the region but it's said that the Central American Caribbean region will lead economic growth and the Dominican Republic has the 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 and that that will be one of the key factors 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 a great achievement of the Dominican Post was getting the postal sector included in developing the National Development Strategy 2030 law 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 in terms of modernization greater efficiency and becoming more competitive meeting the rightful 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 INPOSPAC Project and Exporter Facile INPOSPAC is the premium courier service of the Dominican Republic with international transport and retail and parcels and a service for e-commerce and it's 40% cheaper than services provided by competitors Export Facile is a simplified tool for exporting commercial parcels 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 innovative service and it's a very direct, simple cheap and secure system and obviously it overcomes bureaucratic or 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 improving relations with customers developing new markets meeting the 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 maximising benefits of automatic 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 cycles 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 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 strategy 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 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 understanding this message out to developed countries from a developing country mine Solanium 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 we're 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 that faith deep within him and he has demonstrated that 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 post of course he began his career as a scientific counselor with Swiss Post he took responsibility of relationship with the UPU and many times he was head of delegation of Switzerland and the post operations council as well and on behalf of Switzerland he took the presidency of the drafting committee at the 23rd UPU congress Mr Cleaver you have the floor ladies and gentlemen colleagues, friends, minister, panelists ladies and gentlemen and director general the colleague well I always thought that 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 we've shown through the vision that we have 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 have included this sustainement development component within this and this is obviously natural the final panellists to be able to react to what colleagues have already said so I will try to do this invited a few minutes ago to listen to Amina Muhammad so the United Nations is a 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 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 Akim Steiner mentioned a short while ago the 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 very small post but it has managed to reduce its expenditure, 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 social dialogue diversity and minorities and 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 access to post offices well 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 the example of financial inclusion is a clue, here we spoke about this this afternoon and that's a lazy swing so the strength 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 post or revenue and income another recent example we have produced a study together with UN Women and this will be 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 Forceville with regard to the capacity for posts to include people in the financial sector posts have been and will remain an area for public power we have been partners with the governments in many general policies whether it be social transfers and administrative aspects helping organise elections urban planning through addressing systems and others on a national level posts 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 which 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 sustainable 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 any 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 global post-war territory was 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 of course the Gates Foundation and others I can mention for many years 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 that it's a global organisation the postal community in its well 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 either 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 the promotion of investment and sustainable infrastructure fighting climate change and the effect on the economy and others as well we are already working in all these areas but of course we need to do more so 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 are carrying out in this area I'd like to highlight the role of Modesto Guzman who worked hard with the moment Haiti was severely affected several years ago the was the first to assist as well as with the US Postal Service as well we have 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 as with US Post and others we've been Sendai the Global Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and we have shown the role that the postal sector can play in these times in times of crisis 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 well meteorological organisation that we can use to warn populations when crisis are about to hit and natural disasters are about to hit so all these points that we need to bring together in our activities and our famous strategy for action to ensure that we can be effective in this sector and economic development in a 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 strategy at the heart of our action the global strategy that includes elements 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 and we all our initiatives can be seen on a daily basis in economic and social life we will continue to work in this vein thank you thank you thank you very much I have one quick question to all for you a very quick one and 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 and the difficulties as well that the post will be confronted to but at the same time isn't it difficult or isn't it even 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 Minister President perhaps well a quick 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 it 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 and 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 there are 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 so we all have those responsibilities we're all on the same boat that's what I said earlier and if there's a hole in the boat 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 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 where we can 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 to take a stand 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 have 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 JapanPost in the process to purchase ZITEL in Australia and therefore this is going to come to your doorstep 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 the passion that we have in the 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 it's a global network that is operational and even though Philippe has been talking about 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 it provides opportunities to discuss the rules of the game we have a congress now in 17 months time we have 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 is flying as I was saying from the audience and if I'm correctly know what I'm talking about I think the first one should be coming from Pat Mendocca from the USPS is that correct no Japan also asked for yes okay please please go ahead then open your microphone okay thank you as you said my name is Pat Mendocca I'm from the US Postal Service I've been speaking in my role as 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 must effectively 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 seven dollars 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 post 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 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 postal 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 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. Klee mentioned in his panel such as in Indonesia Maldives Sri Lanka Pakistan United States of America China Philippines, Haiti and recently and so on including our country there are many challenges for disaster risk reduction which are being implemented as one of the important common issues in the United Nations in this situation we did initiative and collaboration with the United Nations there were held the third United Nations world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan the first conference in Yokohama and second one in Kobe in Japan indeed in this opportunity Japan would like to express our sincere appreciation to Mr. Pascal Kribas the 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 role to play to establish disaster management framework in line with Toha postal strategy it is important to minimize the damages and affect 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 World Meteorological Organization please open your mic I take it yes please go ahead turn on your microphone please there you go thank you Mr. Director General 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 I mean 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 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 with that in mind I can reiterate the solidarity of WMO and UPU to try to help members pursue those objectives thank you 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 also to transfer know-how to all 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 COP 2121 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 it'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 country willing to air something with Costa Rica is it the case still hi how are you Hola a todos y a todas hello to everybody Costa Rica is in a region that for many years has been struck by earthquakes and volcanic 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 impact 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 posts 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 the experience of the Haiti 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 President 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 important for future of posts and future of citizens we are all customers we are all customers of posts we have benefits in 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 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 and how the customer views you and the trust they have in you I'd like to thank you very much for your attention we 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 Siruti 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 to invite the director general Mr Bishar Hussein to take the floor for some concluding remarks and I will continue after he's taken the floor so you have the floor Honourable minister distinguished delegates ladies and gentlemen well after two days of very intense discussions covering the main issues facing our sector 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 eminent speakers and interventions from many delegates from this floor Your Excellencies I want to tell you this that no stretch 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 much 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 the same pictures speak 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 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 Universal Postal Union first of all may I take this opportunity Your Excellencies to thank our host government for really taking leadership and organizing this great conference Mr. Minister on behalf of the entire 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 moderators who have facilitated our work this by name Mr. McFer 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 Excellency 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 sometimes very tedious and very boring speeches 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 had promised to 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 Excellency 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 these 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 you want to change Your Excellency 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 these are the fundamental three issues that really was underlined here by this conference during the last three days Your Excellency 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 that 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 Excellency, 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 a changing 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 Excellency 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 leftovers I quite agree with him we must be not be the network only providing those leftovers 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 some of the concerns expressed reliability of the postal network adopted remuneration 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 facilitations 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 in innovation is that 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 doesn't have the network then your efficiency is all lost I would 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 our business 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 networks financial payment services and with IFS we provide a full and affordable infrastructure to all regardless of their level of development 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 excellences this brings me to my third pillar here which is inclusion and sustainable development without any doubt our conference has shown the postal sector's role as a driver of inclusive and sustainable development inclusion has been a key word 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 so we have just to do that 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 of governments and posts and 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 greatly at length on how the postal sector can become a very important infrastructure for providing this inclusivity agenda which is now going to be adopted this is nothing new for us the post has been delivered in 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 through innovative e-services postal networks 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 in the financial 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 emphasised by several countries particularly in the last panel discussion the U.P.U. acts to help its members to respond to these difficult situations but also to serve their communities your excellencies 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 we must all act together in all these dimensions ladies and gentlemen for inclusion innovation, integration and inclusion are for me the main drivers that should shape our strategic framework for 2017 to 2020 my ambition is for all of us to deliver together by 2020 a postal world where innovation is shared promoted and driven not a luxury but as a reality for all of us 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 is fully recognised and exploited by governments development partners and international organisations however for us to achieve these objectives 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 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 emphasise here that 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 organisation 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 Excellency I would like to say 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 Excellency 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 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 Your Excellency Congratulations to the Director General of the UPU and I would like to thank him very much for his excellent engaging 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 Post Reunion so ladies and gentlemen I don't want to take up any more of your time but you must I like that there were two requests for the floor that we have not followed up on 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 they will be following up for 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 the regulation and the operation site and the regulation site has changed we determined as the regulator of the sector and we will try to do our best in 2016 to arrange all the things about the meeting we look forward to seeing you in Istanbul thank you 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 China 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 and indeed a stable one 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 personal 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 strategies 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 financial inclusion and equity reduction strategies in our countries ladies and gentlemen I heard often that the postal sector is a postal family and the fact that there are so many in 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 Alasen Watera president of Côte d'Ivoire and on behalf of the prime minister Duncan who was here yesterday to express our thanks the sincere thanks of Côte d'Ivoire to the director general Mr Bishah Hussein to the deputy director general 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 and all of 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