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.  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.  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, 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.  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.  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.  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.  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