 Welcome to the session 3.3, which is a session on FX and informal workers. This is a session jointly organized by Wider and Vivo. One of two sessions, this is the first session. The second session will happen on September 8th, session 6.1, 1700 to 1745 Eastern European time. Let me give a little bit of background behind these two sessions because it's important for all of us to understand. So the background is that this session and the session on the 8th of September the contributors in the sessions, the presenters and the discussants, will be contributing to a book volume that is being put together by Marti, Mike and myself. We have a title of the book, Marti and Mike. You might change it later, but let me tell you the title. It's called Informal Employment and Labor Markets, Insights and Refreshers from the Era of COVID-19. So the book volume, and just to give a background behind this particular book volume, I'm going to quote from an ILO report that came out last year, COVID-19 in the world of work, just to very quickly provide a context. The quotation, quoting ILO here, almost 1.6 billion informal economy workers account for 76% of informal employment worldwide, are significantly impacted by the lockdown measures and are working in the hardest hit sectors. They often have poor access to healthcare services and have no income replacement in case of sickness or lockdown. Many of them have no possibility to work remotely from home. Staying home means losing their jobs and without wages they cannot eat. Income losses for the informal economy workers are likely to be massive. This is really the background behind why Marti, Mike and I decided to put this book on it together. And what we have thought about in this book volume, and this is reflected in the two sessions, you're going to try and address three questions, and I'll read out the questions. The first question we'll address, this is the session today, is how has the informal economy been affected by the pandemic and short term policy responses? How have different groups of informal workers classified by inter-annual status in employment and occupation been affected? So what do we know about the effects of the pandemic on informal workers? That's the session today. The session on the 8th of September, the second session, session 6.1, is on the second and third questions of the book volume. The second question is, beyond immediate or short term relief measures, what have you learned about recovery and stimulus measures in different countries and among different groups of workers? And the third question behind the book volume is really looking forward. What does the COVID-19 crisis tell us about the future of informal employment and ownership of labour markets and economies? So that's the session that will occur on the second and third question address in the second session. And let's start now with this session. And let me introduce the presenters and discuss them. They were very rich and very dismissive of present and discussants. I will just simply provide the names and affiliation because there's really not much time to give formal introductions. The presenters are Robert Osei, Yisra Innosivgana, Mike Rogan, Viggo and Rhoads University, Mahi Chen, Viggo, Howard Kennedy School and also Chair of the wider board. And then we have Zilu Raman, the power and participation is at centre and we hope that Zilu will be with us very shortly. Oh, there is Zilu, good to see you Zilu. All right, that's great. And then we have two very distinguished discussants, Imran Valodia, Witsa University and Ravi Kanpur, who knows why I don't have a very long time called an university. Okay, so we're going to have six minutes per presentation. I don't know if I need to give you a time warning or not. I prefer not to, but I might give you a warning at six minutes then each. And then four minutes for discussion. And again, I'll give you a warning when you cross when you hit four minutes because you just want to keep some time for Q&A. So Robert, you're the first presenter. We have the slides and Cathy is going to show the slides. So as soon as Cathy puts it up, you can start speaking. Thanks. Thank you. So thank you very much. And so what we are looking at here is how the COVID, particularly the response of government to the COVID affected urban workers in Ghana. Generally, can we move to the next slide please? For Ghana, following the first cases of the COVID, we have the government react and then institutes a partial lockdown in certain parts of the country. More specifically, the two... Robert, you're muted. We cannot hear you. I can hear him. So can I? Yes. I can hear him. Yes, I can hear him. I am not muted. Yeah, Cathy, I think the problem is not at Robert's end. It's probably, again, I don't know where it is, but Robert, we can hear loud and clear. Robert, go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much. So, and I wasn't the slides were not moving anyway. So I have a printout here so I can speak to it. The two largest areas that we actually experienced the partial lockdown were the Greater Akrao metropolis and then the commercial metropolis area, which essentially recorded also the first cases of the COVID. And therefore, naturally, the government wanted to stop the spread of the disease and therefore implemented the partial lockdown in this area. And essentially what it meant was that except for essential services, people actually could not leave their homes to go out or except for people going out to buy essentials, food and medication. Let's slide please. And so what we did was in terms of the study design was to build on the Ghana social economic panel survey. And we drew a sample of 650 or so respondents from the Ghana social economic panel survey, some of which were in the lockdown areas and some outside of the lockdown areas. And we actually asked them questions relating to the labor market outcomes, but also in terms of welfare indicators, how the incomes fed as well as food security questions. And for the questions that we asked the respondents, they were three different recall periods. The first was February 2020, which preceded the COVID-19. And then there was the April 2020 when the lockdown was actually in force. And then in September, the lockdown was lifted in May. And so September was period after the lockdown. And this enabled us to actually assess what actually whether the lockdown had impacted on labor market outcomes, but also whether there was recovery after the lockdown. Let's play, not slide please. So generally, one note that the impact of the COVID actually based on the respondents was actually manifest in employment and income loss. And so the majority of the respondents that indicate that employment and income loss was the impact they thought was the source of the impact of the COVID. And if you look at even for the employment and the income source, that particular response is very pronounced for the informal, those who are in the informal sector relative to the formal sector. And so even there, you do find heterogeneity. Next slide please. Now, if you look at the lockdown area versus the no lockdown area, as at April when the lockdown was in place, the level of employment had decreased significantly in the lockdown area relative to the no lockdown area, which essentially will hint that the impact of the lockdown was actually directly on employment. Okay, of course, that then manifests itself and translates into income losses. And therefore, in terms of food security as well. Next slide please. Like I also mentioned earlier, we do find heterogeneity across the different functional groups of the employment. Those who are in this informal self-employed group experienced the largest hit with respect to the partial lockdown. And you can understand why that is the case, where these set of respondents could not actually, they needed on a day-to-day basis, be out there interacting with other agents for their daily upkeep. And so the lockdown meant that the whole economic activities of those set of individuals came to stand still or were shut down. And for most of them as well, they couldn't actually translate some of the loss in the physical contact through to the IT platforms that some of the formal sector areas could do. Next slide please. And for the majority of the respondents, they argued that the loss in income was essentially driven by government's restrictions. And you can understand why, again, given that the daily activities relied on actually having to go out, whether it was the barbering shop, whether it was the saloon, or whether it was those who were just hocking on the streets, they essentially relied on having to go out to make their daily living. Next slide please. So following the removal of the lockdown, we see that the employment effect was completely reversed. And so the difference between the no lockdown and the lockdown was almost equalized. And so strong recovery after the lockdown was actually lifted. However, the general effect of the COVID still persisted in the economy after the duty, the COVID, sorry. Robert, 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Can I go to the last slide please? I believe, yes. So three main findings. One is that the lockdown measures had an immediate impact on labor markets. It did cause a decline in employment. Second is that the impact was largely felt by the informal self-employed. And then third, we do find some recovery in employment due to the lockdown. However, the effect of the pandemic generally still persist even when the lockdown was lifted. Thank you very much. Thank you, Robert, for keeping your time. That was excellent. We now move on to Mike Rogan, Mike from VEGO and Rhodes University. And again, Cathy is controlling the slides. Mike, go ahead. Great. Thanks. Am I coming through? Okay. Yep. All right. I'm going to try and match the previous speaker in terms of time. So I'll go straight to it to the next slide please. And what I'll be doing here is outlining the impact of the crisis on the South African labor market. And the analysis here is based on our official National Labor Force surveys. I mean, first of all, the overall impact of the crisis has been devastating for the South African labor markets. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.2 to 2.8 million jobs were lost in the beginning of the crisis. One of the speakers in a session earlier today described it as 10 years of job growth in South Africa lost over a six-month period. So a real setback to say the least. Another way to describe it is the job losses have been roughly doubled. The impact of the previous shock to the labor markets during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. But notably in both of these crises, the impacts have been disproportionately felt by the informal economy. In fact, that was a notable outcome from the previous crisis. In the next slide, I think we can see probably better than any other slide that I have here. The sheer scale of the loss of informal jobs relative to formal jobs. I'm deliberately using the term informal employment, not informal sector in this presentation. So I'm looking at all informal jobs, not just those within the informal sector. We have quarterly labor force survey data in South Africa. So what you can see on the screen in front of you are quarterly year-on-year relative decreases in informal and formal employment. For each quarter, the first bar on the left denotes the decrease in informal employment. The second light gray bar denotes the decrease in formal employment. And then the third bar is a combination of the two that decreases in total employment. So if we just start towards the left of the graph there where it says Q2, this captures the employment losses during what's generally been described as one of the world's harshest government lockdowns. This was a period of roughly three weeks where we weren't allowed to leave our home. So obviously most forms of employment that couldn't be done online were essentially impossible to engage in. And here we can see the stark differences between job losses in the informal economy and in informal employment. The relative declines from the previous year were roughly 29%. So informal jobs decreased by about 29%, compared with a decrease of about 8% among formal jobs. So an absolutely stark difference between job losses between the informal economy and those informal employment. As you move to the right, you can see the results for Q3 and Q4. Job losses were year on year somewhat less severe, which is understandable given the fact that the lockdown had eased. But nonetheless, the differences in job losses between the formal economy and the informal economy persist year on year across all four quarters in 2020. Next slide please. Another way to consider how the labor market responded over the past five quarters, including the beginning of the current year, is to look at different categories of informal employment and compare them chronologically quarter by quarter. So this is the way that the pandemic unfolded in South Africa. You can see the second quarter of 2020, I've marked the red line for that first quite severe lockdown. Following that in the next quarter came the first wave of the pandemic itself. And then in the final quarter of 2020, the second severe lockdown coincided with the second wave of the pandemic itself. And what you can see across all types of employment, the blue and the gray bars denotes informal employment as a whole, informal economy for men and women respectively. And then the yellow and the orange lines denote men's and women's informal sector employment respectively. And the characteristic shape, and I think you'll see this in a couple presentations in this session, is a large dip between quarter one and quarter two of 2020, followed by a very muted recovery. There are a few signs of recovery, in particular with men's informal sector employment in the third quarter of 2020. But by and large, and particularly if we were to consider the confidence intervals of these trends, I think we'd see a very muted recovery. So very persistent effects following that severe lockdown and very little evidence of recovery amongst most groups of informal workers. Next slide, please. The other way to look at the uneven effects of the crisis are to look at different groups of informal workers. So this is another graph showing year on year changes by quarter. But now I'm looking at own account workers in the informal sector, informal sector employers, informal sector employees, formal sector employees, and informal workers in private households, largely domestic workers. And what you can see is that in the last three quarters of 2020, the two groups that I've circled there, those denotes two types of employees, informal sector employees, and formal sector employees who are employed informally. These two groups seem to bear the brunt of the pandemic. And as you can see as we move to the right as the quarters unfold in 2020, very muted recoveries from between these two particular groups of informal workers. So for example, by quarter four of 2020, informal sector employees still had 25% fewer jobs than they did in the same quarter in the previous year. Mike, two seconds. Great. Thanks. Next slide, please. This just suggests that the two main sectors, industrial sectors of the informal economy, retail and private households also had quite similar trends. So these are the main employers in the informal economy, a large dip in the second quarter of 2020, followed by very muted recoveries. Final slide. Yeah, so the takeaway from South Africa is evidence for a large disproportionate and persistent decrease in informal employment, particularly in relation to formal employment. Women and private households in the informal sector have been particularly vulnerable. And if we look at different groups by status and employment, the absolute decreases were largest among own account workers in the informal sector, while the relative decreases were larger and more persistent amongst employees both inside and outside of the informal sector. So thank you very much. We now move on to Marty, Chen. All right, Marty, over to you then. Okay, thank you, Kunal, for sharing the vision behind the wider WeGo volume and panels. And I'm presenting the results from the 2020 survey and study, and also the 2021 preliminary findings from an 11-city study. Next slide. In five regions of the world, we had a sample drawn from the membership of local organizations of informal workers, a purposive sample of over 2,000 and four main occupational groups, domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors, and waste pickers. And we partnered in our research with these local organizations of informal workers, and of course, local research teams. I should note that the map shows 12 cities. We excluded Dar es Salaam from the analysis because the government of Tanzania was in COVID denial during 2020. Next. The methods we used, which we always use, is a mix of a survey questionnaire. Excuse me. Am I the only one who can't hear, Marty? I can, Ravi. Me too. Okay. I can hear Marty, actually. Okay, that's good. I hope the majority can hear. But we used, as we always do, a mix of a survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews to help us understand context and interpret findings. And the interviews were with the organizations of the workers, informal worker leaders themselves, and depending on the city, other stakeholders from government, private sector, and civil society. And we did two rounds of the survey mid-2020, mid-2021, and both times we had different recall periods. So our recall was very much like what Robert said for 2020. We looked at February 2020 as pre-COVID and April 2020 as the peak restrictions. We found that to be the peak restrictions around the world. And in round two, the recall is previous month and last 12 months. Next. So when we look at the findings from round one, very much similar to what both Robert and Mike have reported. The lockdowns and restrictions in April 2020 led immediately to a triple crisis of work, income, and food security. And by mid-2020, as the restrictions were eased, recovery was slow, particularly of earnings. More specifically during April 2020, 74% of the respondents were not able to work. And the average earnings had dropped to 19% of pre-COVID earnings. By mid-2020, nearly 80% were able to work. But average earnings had recovered to just over half of pre-COVID earnings. And so a common refrain we heard around the world last year is we will die of hunger, not the virus. We also, of course, looked at heterogeneity less by status and employment like the previous two presentations and more by occupational groups. And what we found was that home-based workers and street vendors were the most affected, the least likely to work in the peak lockdowns. And the home-based workers were the least able to recover during mid-2020. And just an aside, there's a lot of attention to home-based work because all of us are working remotely. But just to say that traditional home-based workers are not working remotely, so to speak. They are producing goods and services from in and around their home, but they depend on being able to contact suppliers and buyers. So one of the distinct features of this study is that we looked not just at the degree of impact, but the pathways of impact by these four sectors. And let me just walk you through it. So for domestic workers, the real issue was whether their employers were willing to hire them. And we found quite a pronounced difference between live-in domestic workers who were allowed to continue working and live out who often lost jobs. For the home-based workers, there was a whole issue of decreased demand for the goods and services they provide, both domestic and export. And we found in some contexts that the factories that produced textiles or garments were closed for lengths of time. And there was decreased local demand for the self-employed from buyers and customers and work orders for the subcontracted. And in this sector, we found that the self-employed were able to do a bit better than the subcontracted, who were completely dependent on the factories or firms for contracts. When it came to street vendors and informal market traders, again, there was decreased demand, but particularly for non-food items during the peak restrictions. There were closures of the natural markets of street vendors and also built markets. There was closure of wholesale markets, and that meant reduced prices for, sorry, increased prices for stock and reduced prices for the goods they sold. And for the waste pickers, there was a decreased overall supply of waste. People were generating less waste, not just people, but firms and factories. There was a closure of dump sites and sorting areas, and there was decreased demand and prices for the reclaimed recyclable items. And we found that women were less able than men waste pickers to be able to negotiate this change environment, to access and sell the waste. Next. Of course, there were also differences between cities, and the main reasons for these differences, in addition to the composition of the sample, was the severity and duration of the pandemic, the intensity and duration of the lockdown or other restrictions, the coverage and amount of government cash or food aid, and there was quite marked differences. And then the stance of local government towards the informal workers during the lockdowns or restrictions, whether they were deemed essential, and if so, whether they were allowed to work and provided with PPE. And then after the lockdowns or restrictions were eased, whether they were continued to be treated punitively, whether they faced harassment, bribes, confiscation of goods, destruction of or eviction from their work sites, and whether they were included in economic recovery schemes. Next. Next slide. Thank you. So what is the current situation? We do have preliminary findings from mid 2021. Among the ability to work question, around 90% of domestic workers, street vendors, market traders and waste pickers, plus 65% of home based workers are able to work, but most are working fewer days per week and earning less. Around 30% of the sample households reported hunger among adults and or children during the past year. Most sample households are deeply in debt. Around 80% do not have any savings left, and many have not been able to redeem or replace the goods that they the assets that they had mortgaged or sold in 2020. I should also note that governments in most study cities or countries have not mounted relief efforts during the second or third waves of the virus, so relief aid is greatly diminished and governments in most study cities or countries have not included informal workers in their economic recovery plans. Next. Thank you. That's very good. Okay. Just one more. Just one more. Next please. Perhaps arguably the most important finding from our study is the demands of the informal workers and their organizations for relief, recovery and reforms. They want financial assistance to pay off debts and restore savings and assets. They need recovery support costs, cash grants and public procurement, social protection, not just cash grants, but also social insurance. They want an enabling policy and legal environment at the national level and at the local level. And I've itemized the specific demands at the urban level. And a lot of it has to do with abuse by police and authority that criminalize them and don't allow them to operate. And of course, they would like to be included, have their organizations represented in urban governance. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. Now we move to the fourth presentation by Zillu Hussain Rahman from Power Public Articipation Research Center, Bangladesh. Zillu, over to you. And slides in the front. Thank you. I'll start with the nature of the evidence. Second slide please. Next slide please. Okay, they are getting it. So we are trying to understand the impact not at one point in the time. We have four data points, pre-COVID, severe lockdown, early recovery and late recovery. And as you know, after the late recovery, there has been again another wave. So this dynamic part was important for us to capture. First evidence source is a panel study, 6000 plus households where we also had the pre-COVID information. And this was between a collaboration between PPRC and the BRAC Institute of Governance. We also had a second PPRC study in partnership with UNICEF on the richer pullers of Haka City. Again, looking at not just the COVID impact, but overall the economic situation. So those two studies are on the basis of what I'm going to see now. Can we move to the next slide? Yeah, the next one. Yeah, so I really not go through the graphs because they're already there, but summarize the findings in these five vulnerable issues where if you take, you know, like the pre-COVID to meet of 2021, now, what has been the five vulnerable results? Our sample has been mostly focused on the informant occupation. So the first one, which I think Marty also highlighted is that there has been activity recovery, but not commensurate earnings recovery. Both the studies point to the same thing. One year on urban slump households of Bangladesh were still having 17% pre-COVID income. Some of them are below their pre-COVID income. And the HITRO puller study also shows similar 18% below pre-COVID income. But activity recovery has been more pronounced, but has been uneven of course across occupation. So that's the first thing to highlight. Second one, this is also important. I think the sort of instability in the labor market. And you know, I'm not showing the graphs because that's in the interest of time. The second insight is that there has also been significant occupational instability. One year on, we found that 50% had returned to their pre-COVID employment, but 41% had shifted to another type of employment, which was quite a high figure. And in terms of the shift, we saw a distinct, you know, it was the shift was necessarily jobs. Even for example, the informal sector, small teacher, you know, home tutor type, was now having to do almost like mini labor. That's sort of a transition that worked in so. So that's another important thing to look at. The third one, again, I think Mathew also has mentioned this, is that yes, there has been this broad impact on informal occupation as a whole. But I think we also need to impact the impact on across the occupation, because there has been uneven impact. For example, transport sector, rickshaw pullers, small business, even still labor among the informal occupation have had more difficulty in terms of their, you know, earnings and their occupational livelihoods. Women have found it more difficult to reenter the labor market when they were kicked out during the lockdown period. So differential impact across occupations. The fourth, I think is an important one, what we found also was that much of this, you know, the urban sample in particular, what we found was that the non food expenditure burdens on informal occupation households, particularly in the cities had nearly doubled over this period. Let's not even talk of social protection. The regular non food expenditure had doubled and that triggered a process of what I call reverse migration. Some of those informal occupation have had to trudge back out of the city. They essentially kicked out of the cities into less remunerative smaller cities or villages. And we found that over a year, about 10%, you know, some came back, but net over a year we found 10% where it still had not come back. The fifth insight that I want to highlight is that because, you know, since our last survey, we're doing a court round now, you know, new lockdown cases are likely to come. What we find is that the informal occupation households have eroded financial capacity because the debt to household income ratio has doubled over the COVID to April 22 to one period. So we have this five big vulnerabilities affecting these people. If we can go to the last slide of my presentation. Can we just move forward please? These are the figures you can look at this later. Last slide please. There I draw some down, down, down, down this one. Yeah. So I found three implications for policy and discourse. First one is that government response has been not been a big part of the story of coping with COVID. There has been some, but it is not a big part of the story. One of the reasons in the Bangladesh context is that social protection has primarily been focused on the global poor. So in a way COVID-19 crisis has forced urban social protection engine back on to the policy table. That's an important move, but policy has retired to the mainstream and we are having some magic things starting to get focused. The second one is that this issue of differential impact is not enough just to say there is a differential impact. And I feel that what we are trying to do also is to get a try to get an integral typology of informal occupation in terms of their vulnerability and how they interface with the meso economy. In particular, I think this idea of the meso economy is something that we are trying to grapple with to try to understand. Can we do a typology of informal occupation in terms of the long-term sustainability and long-term development? The third and final insight that I want to highlight is that we also did a, you know, opinion survey of the Riksha Kundal, isn't it? And of our largest survey would be informal occupations of urban and rural Bangladesh. And at the end of the day, what we found is that while COVID impact must exercise our attention, it is the longer-term systemic disadvantages on economic and service opportunities, which actually is the larger concern of this urban informal development. For example, urban primary healthcare is not there. The healthcare cost burdens are huge. As I said, non-food expenditure has doubled, which means that the focus of policy is not on those areas, which make it, in any way, the conclusion there is that it is quite expensive to be poor in a city like that. That's a contradictory conclusion. But that's how I say that we, together with the focus on the impact of COVID, the systemic disadvantages must also become or remain or, in a way, we must take a look at the systemic disadvantages and get the policy attention on both the addressing the COVID impact, but also the systemic disadvantages. Just to conclude, the urban poor social indicators are actually worse than the rural poor social indicators in Bangladesh. That tells you about a story of the lack of policy attention, where for the urban poor, some economic opportunity is provided by the policy mindset. But the social variables, health, education, housing, transport, etc., are not really figuring the policy mindset. I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Zulu. That was a very clear and concise presentation. Now we have now two discussions. First Imran, Balutia, and then Ravi Kanpur. Imran, if you don't mind, four minutes please for your comments. Great. So what we have here is across all of the countries and all of the cities, I think the general finding that comes out consistently is that the impact on the informal economy has been much worse than it is on the formal economy. And I think in the recovery phase, the recovery has been a lot slower in the informal economy than it has in the other parts of the economy. And I think in general, the sense is that COVID has either permanently destroyed a large number of livelihoods in the informal economy, or else even when those livelihoods have recovered the levels of income are substantially below what they were prior to to the pandemic. And I think that finding applies across all of the cities and all of the countries in the excellent presentation that we've had. So what might it look like in the next few years, and what might be the the policy kind of issues for us to think about? So I'm pretty pessimistic about the possibilities in the medium term for two reasons really. The first is that the more we kind of learning about the nature of this pandemic, and the more we learn about the health dimensions of it, I think it's quite clear that the kind of ideas about some sort of herd immunity are kind of something that is that no longer applies. And that we will likely to have many waves of the pandemic in the kind of really impacting livelihoods in the informal economy in a negative way. And I think secondly, if we look at the studies on pandemics in general, the kind of medium-term effects tend to be more kind of pronounced than the short-term impacts. So I think for both of those reasons, we should expect this trend to kind of continue. And then that then raises what should be the key policy levers that we should be thinking about to kind of reduce the burden on the most vulnerable sections of the population. And here I have three thoughts. The first is clearly vaccinations are the only possible way in which we can kind of return to some level of what we might think of as normal. And kind of here, I think the kind of issues about the kind of international and national dimensions of the kind of inequalities in kind of access to vaccinations, I think we know those quite well. I think from the South African experience, the point that might be worth pursuing is the nature of the rollout. In the South African case, we've not managed to get the vaccinations to kind of places where informal workers really are. So they should be at sort of all of the taxi ranks, they should be in informal settlements, they should be in kind of areas of the city where people tend to move. And I think the rollout of vaccination programs and the role of the local state in that, I think it's really important. I think point two is Marty, Mike and in fact all of the papers highlighted, the vulnerability through different sort of periods of the lockdown points to the importance of how we think about the fiscal adjustment processes. I think kind of premature fiscal adjustment is a real issue and I think we should be pushing a lot more for much more careful consideration about how these fiscal adjustments happen. Final point, I think Marty's points around what the workers are kind of demanding give us really useful pointers for how we should think about a post-covid growth project. The fiscal adjustments, the fiscal measures can only deal with the immediate crisis. I think if we want to think about making livelihoods sustainable, we kind of going to have to think a lot more about how we build in kind of informal economy policy issues within longer term growth plans. And I think if there's one good thing that could perhaps come out of the pandemic, it's the possibility for a growth strategy that I think would build livelihoods of informal workers into that rethink how we think things like kind of transport systems, kind of health provision, social protections, social insurance, etc. So I'll stop there. Thanks so much, Imran. Really important points there. Ravi, four minutes and over to you as a final discussion please. Good, thank you. Thank you very much, Kunal. So I've been thinking about my contribution to the volume and I thought what I would do is to probably step back a little bit from the specifics of this study and just make three points which I've made in other writings but I want to highlight here. The first point which I think is very clear from these studies is that the consequences of macro shocks are quite micro, so to speak. They're quite granular, they're quite differentiated and particularly in the distributional consequence, it comes through in Zillow's study and Robert and all of the studies it comes through. Of course the formal informal divide is the granularity that's most emphasized but even within the informal sector and one would suppose even within the formal sector there's a tremendous differentiation. Why is that and I think Robert's presentation I think used the phrase proximity or density and clearly when you have this sort of pandemic type effects it's the degree of proximity, it's the degree of density clearly in the workplace but also actually in the residence place of residence and in the commute between residence and work it's the proximities or the structural proximities that I think in fact determine the spread of this thing. So there's a lot of emphasis on proximity by differentiating occupations and so on in these studies in the workplace but I didn't see the same degree of emphasis on proximity in the residence area and also proximity in the transportation from residence to work. So I think that's something analytically that we might think about. Secondly, I think if one takes this logic then some sort of a general quantification of the connection between proximity and informality or density and informality I think is something that would be called for both in terms of empirics but secondly what's the logic what is the logic behind the economic logic behind why it is that informal sector activities generally let's suppose it's true are densely concentrated. Ijaz Ghani and I had a paper a few years ago where we proposed a logic to do with intensity of space and so on, space intensity and in fact that might be something that might be useful to look at. And the final point I'd make on these studies is for some of the studies we've used the telephone interviews type method and I think from a methodological point of view it would be good to have an assessment of those methods which of course we have been used a lot in this in this pandemic and this might be a lens through which to see that. So that's my first point. The second point is that this crisis in its present form will pass but as Imran just said the new waves are going to be coming but actually there'll be other crises as well. And a point that I've been making over the last few years is preparing for the next crisis. We don't know what it's going to be. We don't know when it's going to come. But what is it? How are we ready for it? Particularly in terms of protection of the poor against the consequences of this thing. And we don't want to find ourselves again as we found here in this case that we're scrambling to get things to get things in place. And I've proposed in the past that what we should be doing is looking ahead in some sense imagining crises as they arise. And working through modeling the consequences of those for the poor and then seeing what gaps there are in existing social protection systems through that mechanism. I call this the social protection assessment program and it's analogous to the financial sector assessment program which of course is commonplace now. The F-SAP is commonplace. What does the F-SAP do? It imagines crises. It says suppose in fact the tourist sector tourism sector collapsed then the banks which are linked to that and so on and so forth. It imagines financial not-through effects. And my proposal is that we should be looking at this in the same way imagining crises and then modeling those and following through and seeing what gaps there are. And the thing actually the World Bank has already started doing this developing something called stress testing which is what I suggested some years ago in the context of the financial crisis. The third and final point I would make is which is sort of in some sense the biggest picture point is that there seems to be a lot of breathless commentary just now on that nothing will ever be the same again. The role of the state has been clearly established and so on and so forth. So going forward we're going to be in some sense to a new normal where the role of the state in this thing has been clearly have been recognized and so on. Well having thought that 12 years ago at the time and argued that 12 years ago at the time of the financial crisis my own reading of my own reading the cycles of thought in policy is that three four years from now we'll be back to the same debates and we'll have to fight those fights all over again. There will be no easy entry point because we had the because we had the COVID crisis and so on. In the middle of the crisis it seems as though things are moving in a particular direction but certainly my my writings on on broad cycles of thinking cycles of policy suggests to me that three four years from now just as three four years after the financial crisis we'll be back to the fighting the fight on the role of the state in providing particularly providing social protection. So those are my three points the specifics on the on the on these studies proximity quantify etc. Secondly preparing for the next crisis a social protection assessment program and thirdly cycles of thought we shouldn't we shouldn't too readily think that we're off the hook in terms of fighting the fight for the role of the state and there are there are papers behind each of these things but I but I and this is what I'll be trying to say in my in my contribution to follow you. Thank you Konal. Thank you Ravi that was very clear extremely interesting in fact another issue that he raised we're going to pick up again in the second session 6.1 Wednesday at five o'clock Helsinki time for everyone who's listening in and I know that we don't have any time for Q&A but I would like whoever wanted to ask questions to park those questions take them to the second session because we'll have more time I think Marti and Mike for questions in that session there's a few of a few of us presenting at that in that session. I think the point really is just to conclude is that one thing is quite clear from the four presentations on a very different country context it's a differentiated effects of the pandemic exactly as Ravi and Imran also alluded to very different across even within the informal sector I think you'd understand exactly how exactly that's happening the mechanisms and the pathways as as Marti mentioned. Another thing that's interesting also is that we saw different the timeline is important as long as come and go but that they're national they are local so on we see very different recovery processes and we see very different effects and so I think we need to understand the timeline also very very well because it's unusual the way the pandemic has come and come and gone so to speak in many countries for example I think Zilul Bangladesh is going through a lockdown or still maybe came out very recently and we know that how these lockdowns are when they come and when they go they're very different effects and the second lockdown might even be more drastic in its effects than the first lockdown for example so I think that can be also understood in the book volume that you're going to try and put together and I think the question about looking to the future is very important and that's exactly why we have this the next session and and I would again encourage all of us who are attending the session to come back on Wednesday afternoon and listen to all of the great sort of presentations there let me stop here thank you so much all of you there's a really interesting session and look forward to seeing all of us again back again on Wednesday afternoon bye