I'm going to do a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little Can I ask the speakers, please, of panel four, Mr. and Representative of Santa Lucia and the Caribbean Post-Lunion. Thank you to come down here because we start in five minutes. This is to advance, right? I don't think I need a microphone here because I'll have to speak here. Oh no, if I'm there, I need one. Yes, because there is no mic. So I will be either here or there. So I think I need a microphone. Yeah, but I don't have a mic yet. So who starts it? Who starts it? Not Mr. Cone. I present myself because there will be no introduction for me and there we go. One has to improvise. Thank you. Okay, yes, I'm the moderator. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to take your place and we will pass the floor to the President of the Conference, Mr. Le Minis Bruno Cone. Thank you. Pascal. Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. Honorable delegate. I would like to start by thanking you for your presence here at this conference. I hope that you have been able to rest and that everyone is ready to attack this second day with the same train as yesterday. We have not been able to do it yesterday. I would like to thank our panelists, our panelists yesterday as well as the moderator for the quality, the relevance of their interventions. This first panel, this yesterday, allowed us to clearly highlight the many challenges that our sector has faced, which are the survival, the problem of profitability, of a certain number of positions, the globalization, the necessary confidence that it is convenient to give to our customers, the need to practice judges-aborded rates by customers. I have adopted a few problems, such as those linked to the last kilometer, so the most expensive in principle, the address of the streets, the specificities of online trade in Africa, etc. The answers are numerous. The main ones were mentioned as the pre-visibility for, in particular, to reassure the customers, the implication of the states for a regulation and a more effective normalization, the reinforcement of the proximity that can give more confidence to our customers, the dimension, especially in terms of the financial dimension of our job, and the integration of the TIC, I think it was said and hammered several times, the integration of the technologies, the training of communication. Here too, our states must be involved in the level of connectivity, in terms of accessibility, and in terms of regulatory standards to put into action that must give confidence to the consumers. To the consumers, it is extremely important. The subjects such as innovation and permanent adaptation have also been mentioned. Our states have resisted until now because they have succeeded, in the face of the number of girls who have been there until today, to innovate and adapt. Today, we are going to start this first session on the theme of action-efficacy framework. This session will have to identify regulatory responses necessary to integrate more efficiently the digital financial dimensions of the postal sector. The experts who are with us will also examine regulatory responses that are necessary to promote inclusive postal solutions, while guaranteeing the performance of a universal, effective and sustainable postal service. I would like to say a word about the animator of this day, the moderator of this day, who will be Mark Furrer here on my right. Mr Furrer is the chairman of the Federal Commission on Swiss Communication, the Comcom. Before becoming the president of this commission, Mr Furrer has taken care of post-2008 and 2012 of the head of the Swiss Authority of Postal Regulation, and of the head of the Swiss Delegation of the Universal Postal Congress in 2012, in law, as Secretary of State. I have been very short to allow you to have the maximum of time. Mr Furrer, I leave you the seat. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr Le ministre, Mr Director General, Mr Deputy General, Ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, it's a pleasure to see you this morning, all fresh, with the more commitment, as we say, in Bern, and it will be great to discuss with you and I thank you that you're all here, already though it's a beautiful day today in Geneva, but I think we'll have an interesting morning. Yesterday we heard a lot about innovation, a lot about e-commerce, and all these things, of course, are important. It was, I must say, the first time I didn't hear the moaning that post-mail does decline. You know, before I always said, oh well, what can we do to stop declining the volume of the mail? I think it's just a fact, and it speaks for this postal sector that they accept this fact that people send less letters, at least in most of the countries, send less letters and go to other ways of communications like email or like, as we heard, e-commerce. And the point is to find alternatives for the designated posts, but also for all the others who work in this sector to find alternatives to compensate, obviously, the commercial losses you have by the declining of the traditional postal mail. So we will discuss these kinds of alternatives this morning as well, the role of regulators and so on, and we also discussed yesterday who makes the profit of e-commerce. Is it the integrators mainly, and the platforms like eBay, like Amazon, or can the designated posts or generally the post firms, can they also have their bit? Where is the beef for the posts? Is the question or was the question yesterday? Or is the designated post just the network of the leftovers as the Canadian colleague said it? So basically you have the service universel and all these things and the cherries get picked by the others. That is very much obviously up to the postal firms themselves, how they are entrepreneur, how they tackle these challenges. So the other question is of course what to do so we have a level playing field, we have the same discussion in telecommunication, some are making the infrastructure and the other use it to make the profit out of it and of course that is in our field the discussion of net neutrality and here it's a discussion of level playing field. What can the governments with their laws but also the regulators do that we have a level playing field and what the integrators can profit of the investment of for example the designated posts who do the infrastructure for it. So what's the role of the regulators we have to discuss? Is it more regulation or is it more free marketing? What is the role of the UPU as well? I think UPU is in front of bigger challenges, they tackle these challenges, we all know that this discussion is part of tackling these challenges by UPU, we will have this strategy in Istanbul and our discussion is preparing this strategy, we have substantial projects like eCompro and so on we discussed also that yesterday. But the key question is of course who will do the innovations and you know innovations you can't rule, the innovations come from the spirit and from the brain of the people and that's difficult to regulate, that's difficult to direct. That is a question of creativity and of entrepreneurship and the big question for the future will be do the designated posts and the others do they have enough entrepreneurial kick and entrepreneurial engagement to take this challenge which is brought by Amazon, by eBay and so on, can they do that? Do they have also the structures to do that? I think that's the big thing which we will have to discuss. I was yesterday quite surprised because Peter did, at the end I think he did a question to the panellists and asks the very crucial question, who will be the winners of eCommerce? Will it be the integrators like eBay or will it be the designated posts or the private postals? I was surprised that half of the panellists said now it will be the integrators, the newcomers, the new entrants in the sense who will bring new models I think that should be to the larmas and say what to do that the others can, as I say, like infencing, like take the attack in the commercial sense and also bring alternatives, new products and new services so they can survive well in this competition. So I'm coming to the discussion of today. Today clients will be in the center even more than yesterday in the center of our discussion and it's the small and medium enterprises because in all economy we all know that if the small and medium enterprises are not living well, don't have enough possibility to do their business, an economy like that has big problems. So it is important and it's crucial for our economies to see how the small and the medium enterprises can profit of this new world of eCommerce. And this is how they can take the opportunities, how they see the opportunities and take the opportunities and utilize the opportunities of eCommerce. But for all that we need an eCommerce without obstacles. We heard yesterday again from the Canadian colleague who said crossover eCommerce is still very, very difficult and if we don't bring down these obstacles, we will have big problems with eCommerce and we will have a detortion of competition. So especially in the first panel we will discuss how can we bring down these obstacles. There are still a lot of red tape with customs and so on, this bureaucracy and so on. The next panels will discuss the role of the regulators in these things. Regulators of course shouldn't make the obstacles higher, it's the opposite, regulators should be facilitators. At least me as an old regulator I've always seen my job like that, whether it's a postal regulation, the financial regulation, or the telecom regulation. We should be facilitators and not like the Moroccan colleague said yesterday, I never heard it so blatantly, but it's having been many, many years in Morocco, I understand this picture, we're having worked with horses. But of course the question is how can we be facilitator and we have many regulators on the podium to discuss that. And of course the role again of the UPU, what is the role? I mean President Valle of France Post said it very clearly, the UPU should be the socket of the eCommerce system. So that should be the rule, should be done by the UPU for all of us. That would be the ideal thing and that was very encouraging for us all, but of course especially also for the UPU. And then also in the last panel we talked about the service public, service universel, we probably didn't talk that much yesterday about that. This is important, a national service universel, because we all know politically it doesn't go without that. If in Switzerland you don't sense the letters properly to the least, you have a tremendous political problem. My colleagues from the regulatory authority of Switzerland know that. Closing a post office there is very, very difficult and that is the case everywhere. But there's also a service universel globally internationally, I've just been at the honour to be two weeks ago in Ivory Coast and I've seen the challenges I've discussed there with all East and West African colleagues of the governments and of the regulators and the challenges you have there. So I think sometimes we discuss eCommerce just from industrialised countries but of course they have completely different situations, a different framework and also that we would like to discuss this morning because it was yesterday interesting, the lady from the Unktat showed us a figure which showed very clearly the growth of eCommerce is in Asia, West Europe and North America, but not in South America, not in Africa and not in Eastern Europe. So what happens there? So if we talk about eCommerce we should also see this problem. Anyway, so that's my introduction to the day. Now I would like to go immediately to the first panel and the first panel is trade facilitation and the development of micro-small and medium enterprises through the postal networks or with other words to bring down all the obstacles we have. And I welcome the panellists here and I would like to just start with the first one. It's Mr. Yi Zhijun, Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization WTO. I already apologise for my Chinese pronunciation which is undoubtedly wrong, but I'll go next week to China to practice. Anyway, Mr. Yi was China's ambassador to the WTO. He represented China as a key negotiator in China's WTO accession process, a very crucial process as we know. He is basically a big specialist in trade negotiations. He was also China's Vice Minister of Commerce and he negotiated numerous free trade agreements including the China-Azien agreement. And he was also after becoming China's ambassador to the WTO. Mr. Yi was elected as the chair of the Working Party of the Accession of Laos, PDR and showed effective leadership in process leading to WTO membership for Laos. So Mr. Yi also knows obviously the problems of China but also of the neighbouring countries of China but now as Deputy Director General of WTO he knows the global problem of the world trade. Mr. Yi, you have the floor. Thank you very much Mark for giving me the floor and good morning ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure for me to be here at the UPU World Strategy Conference and in particular my thanks also for inviting me to this panel discussion. I would like to focus my remarks on e-commerce and as you all know that e-commerce is one of the most important developments in the past decade and then I would like to talk a little bit about the role played by postal sector. We all see that the rapid ICT advances have a direct and profound effect on the way people communicate and do business. In this context the e-commerce has expanded significantly in the past decade and will continue to grow. According to the latest information economy report of ENDTAT in 2013 the value of global B2B e-commerce exceeded 15 trillion US dollars and B2C 1.2 trillion dollars. Here postal services played a very important and key role in e-commerce as they handle the physical delivery of online ordered goods. At the same time the postal sector is also reaping the benefits of e-commerce boom. In the past decade the handling of parcels has become increasingly important for the postal sector in terms of both volume and value while the number of letters has declined significantly. Puzzle traffic has searched by more than 30% since 2000. It is largely due to e-commerce in some regions over one third of the total revenues of posts are generated by parcel delivery. The potential benefits presented by e-commerce include enhanced participation in international value chains, greater market access, improved market efficiency as well as lower transaction costs. While so far it is mostly large multinational companies that have benefited most from e-commerce. It is believed that SMEs, especially those in developing countries have the greatest potential to benefit from the e-commerce. As we all know in both developed and developing countries SMEs make up a majority of business and employed majority of workers in both manufacturing and services sectors. E-commerce may play an instrumental role in helping SMEs find new business opportunities, reduce production and transaction costs and thus increase their competitiveness. A number of studies show that more and more SMEs in developing countries have engaged in e-commerce marketing their goods and services online. There is one convergence in WTO that WTO rules do not preclude trade by electronic means. This means that e-commerce actually benefits from certainty and predictability provided by the world trading system. The WTO's new trade facilitation agreement is very important one which is reached December 2013 in Bali, Indonesia. The agreement is expected to improve merchandise trade flows resulting from e-commerce as it eases the customs, procedures and processing for trade in goods that are increasingly purchased online today. It allows the option of electronic payments for duties, taxes, fees and charges collected by customs. In the area of services trade, the general agreement on trade in WTO also applies to postal services and other services relevant for e-commerce. So the gas has established rules for greater transparency, non-discrimination and competition. Cross-border postal services have existed for centuries. Despite challenges from electronic means of communications, the postal sector remains an important component of today's global economy which generating about US$350 billion at revenue in 2013 globally. We notice that liberalization and competition in the postal sector provide incentives for postal operators to embrace new technologies and explore new business opportunities. The active engagement of posts in e-commerce is a good example in this regard. For instance, the designated postal operators in several countries has partnered with Amazon and other e-commerce companies to deliver their packages. Further, the postal sector has a great potential to help SMEs overcome important obstacles to e-commerce. For instance, the postal network is the largest physical network in the world connecting 640,000 postal outlets, which makes it a cost-effective method for connecting people and the business, especially SMEs to the global e-commerce. In addition to delivery services, SMEs can also benefit from other services provided by posts such as Internet access, financial and logistic services, which are all crucial to e-commerce. Finally, let me conclude by saying that we highly appreciate the contribution made by the postal sector to the world trade and its role in trade facilitation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Lee. That was very interesting as an important introduction from the WTO because basically that's what we talk about. Now I give the floor to Mrs. Arancia Gonzalez, Executive Director of the International Trade Center. Unfortunately, Mrs. Gonzalez has to leave us at 10 o'clock, changing the presentator's number, and it's a pleasure to present you Mrs. Gonzalez. She is an expert in international trade issues. She has 20 years of experience, and she serves as Executive Director of the ITC since September 2013. Before joining the ITC, Mrs. Gonzalez served as a Chief of Staff to the World Trade Organization. And with Mr. Lamy working very closely with Mr. Lamy at the time, she was before, she held several positions at the European Commission also in these World of Trade Agreements. She is a lawyer, and she's originally from, as I understand, from Madrid. Please, you have the floor, Mrs. Gonzalez. Thank you very much, Lupiu, for this invitation to share a little with you. From the perspective of an agency both belonging to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, the goal is to help the small and medium-sized companies to internationalize themselves. So somewhere the themes you have chosen this time are music for us. Thank you also to the Ivory Coast for bringing us a little bit of color from West Africa. West Africa is always welcome in Geneva. I will have three messages for you. Message number one, logistical efficiency, improvements in the facilitation of trade is an essential ingredient for the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises. So we talk a lot about building productive capacity and we think in the International Trade Center that maybe we are not paying enough attention to logistical elements, logistical efficiency and trade facilitation as part of this logistical efficiency, which is again essential to support micro, small and medium enterprises being part of value chains, which is what international trade is today. So reducing the cost of trading is not just something that is good, it's something that for SMEs is essential. Is the difference between being confined to a domestic market or being allowed to go in search of broader markets starting with the region? This is why we are extremely happy that WTO members reached an agreement on trade facilitation which we think when implemented, and I say when and not if, when implemented would reduce tremendously the cost of trading for economic operators. So we think effective facilitation is a global positive and this is why we think it's very important that organizations like UPU take this and put this at the heart of its agenda because to solve logistical efficiency, to address their trade facilitation, we are going to need a very strong public-private partnership. Private operators with a big multinational, so small, medium and micro. Public entities within the government, from ministries of trade to ministries of finance, to responsibles of customs, to, and the list goes on, to a concerted effort at the side of the agencies internationally that can support this global effort at streamlining operations of customs. This is why in the International Trade Center we are focusing at the moment on supporting countries implement the trade facilitation agreement, understand where countries have already met the WTO standard, understand where gaps remain and derive from their bankable projects to improve the areas where a bit of work remains to be done. Number two, message number two, trade facilitation is more than borders. Trade facilitation and logistical efficiency is also about the design of regional integration. It's also about non-tariff measures beyond behind the borders. It's also about procedures and procedural complexities. It is also about quality. It's also about cross-border trade and cross-border trade facilitation. So we have to think in our view of trade facilitation in a wider context so that we don't only tackle parts of it, but we tackle the entire chain. Third message, what's the role of the post and what's the role of the UPU in this debate? I think the UPU has a big role to play in this discussion. First, obviously in the postal delivery of goods, of which there is still an untapped potential, in particular for SMEs. So in the area of customizing delivery services to buyers is an area where we think from what we see on the ground it would merit a bit of an action on the side of all of you. Two, obviously in reforming postal services for greater efficiency, again as a contribution to reducing costs. Three, in the new opportunities that you have for addressing what we would call transactional part of B2B. There it's, for example, areas like linking e-payment solutions with single windows. Such as, for example, interagency coordination between border agencies to allow for postal operators to enjoy pre-arrival treatment and clearance. So there is a big, again, a big role that we see for the postal services in these discussions on trade facilitation. Let me end by mentioning that I see in this discussion two dimensions. One dimension of the UPU as a regulator and one dimension of the UPU as an actor in the simplification, in helping small and medium-sized companies to trade more. Our moderator told us that developing countries have problems with electronic trade solutions that may be a bit more delayed. What I see is a different reality on the ground. I see that there are a lot of developing countries that use technology today because they have access to technology but they need regulatory systems of operators in the field that will facilitate the use of that technology. An example of all this, a project that we are now developing in the north of Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, to create with the help and funding of the World Bank and the European Union a virtual market for small and medium-sized companies. There is a huge task. There is a space for everyone and, of course, a space for mail operators. Thank you for your attention. Yes, Senora Gonzalez. Just a question. As you have to leave, I ask you a question. If you would have a wish, what two or three things would you wish to be improved in bringing down the obstacles in the trade, in the e-commerce? You mentioned several things, but if you would say these and these and these are the main problems which have to go down. Well, the first one, it would be first beta leverage technology. I'm still amazed that one goes through customs having to do papers and stamps and papers and stamps. And again, this is not just an issue for developing countries. There are many developed countries where this is still the case. So use electronic solutions because these are the solutions that are better for small and medium enterprises again who are technologically savvy but need to make their operations more agile. To have in mind that trade today is not an issue of nations trading with nations. There is a huge regional dimension in trade. So thinking about when you regulate, especially those of you that are party to regional groupings, to regional integration processes, make sure that you regulate with the regional dimension in mind so that it is not just simply the national lens that you use when regulating, when selecting the manner in which you are going to design your operations. So simplify by using leveraging technology and think original. And my third wish would be think micro, small and medium enterprises. Think of simpler, of course, respecting security safety, which is essential when we talk trade and when we talk cross-border. But think also that the 98% of the economic issues of your countries, and this is true also north to south, east to west, are micro, small and medium enterprises. So think of solutions that are going to be adaptable for them. Thank you very much. I think you were very clear. Thank you very much and have a good day. And you were very clear in your messages, which is very useful for our further discussion. Now I can give the floor to Mr. Geo Zhang Zhu, director of the World Customs Organization. Mr. Zhu, you've heard. The wishes of Senora Gonzalez. Now you can deliver the wishes. Just to introduce you quickly, you are the director of World Customs Organization. In 2000, you became the director of compliance and facilitation there. And you had before jobs at the permanent mission of China to the European Union in Brussels. You have a degree of Master's of Public Administration of the King Wai University in China. But you as a specialist of customs, we will be very interested to listen to your presentation. You have the floor. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So first of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank UPU for inviting the WCO to be here to this very important World Strategy Conference. So I'm very happy and honored to be here to bring for the conference on the work that WCO has been done in the past years and in the cooperation with the UPU and and I will also brief you on the, how to say, our joint efforts to fight against the challenges, difficulties and problems facing us in the future. So to be straight, according to the UNCTED in 1999, approximately 300 million people had internet access globally and nearly 25 percent of them made online purchase that year and total e-commerce sales were about 110 billion US dollars. But by the end of 2014, last year, there were around 3 billion people online and 40 percent of them participated in the e-commerce and taking the global business to consumer scale to surpass 1.5 billion, including domestic and international transactions. So 15 years, 15 times increase. So this offers huge opportunity for growth in e-commerce and online shopping, leading to exponential increase in small parcels that postal services around the world are uniquely positioned to handle and deliver at low cost. And of course, a large chunk of these shipments emanate from SMEs. So with their universal service model, wider outreach and years of original experiences and reasonable cost, postal services in many countries have a competitive advantage over private carriers when it comes to moving smaller parcels. So here I would just inform you the WSEAL's initiatives and also I just mentioned the cooperation collaboration with UPU. So for many years, the WSEAL has been at the forefront in the development of international standards for customers and also in the promotion of electronic data exchange. And e-commerce in customs environment. So recognizing the significance of e-commerce, the WSEAL adopted the Baku Declaration on e-commerce in the year 2011, or 2001. So and developed its e-commerce strategy for customs. The WSEAL's immediate release guidelines, the latest version adopted last year in 2014, further support e-commerce and assist both customs and trade with expediting the clearance of large number of small or negligible value goods across borders on provision of minimum data in advance, of course. So the RKC, the revised Kyoto Convention, the information communication technology guidelines, which is updated in 2014, also provide a detailed outline on how customs can use these technologies to enhance program delivery and plan improvements in their services to clients and trading partners. So the WSEAL's recommendation on dematerialization of supporting documents adopted in 2012 and the lately updated compendium on how to build single-window environment, further support e-commerce by encouraging our members to identify supporting documents that are normally required to accompany the cargo and goods declarations and examine the need thereof with a view to eliminating them. So of course, the specific NXJ chapter 2 of the revised Kyoto Convention, which deals with the customs provisions specifically applicable to postal traffic, providing a simplified declaration, so that is CN22 and 23 form, and also clearance and duty payment process. So here, I'm glad to inform you, as of March 2014, or 15, 98 WSEAL members had acceded to RKC, and the 22 of them have in addition accepted specific NXJ2. So another important provision to facilitate speedy clearance of low-value consignments, the transitional standards 4.13 of the general annex of the RKC requires contracting parties to specify in their national legislation a minimum value and or minimum amount of duties and taxes, below which no duties and taxes will be collected. So dear delegates, customs and posts have very good cooperation and have been working together over 50 years and established a contact committee in 1965, so which has since provided an excellent platform for posts and customs to talk openly with each other in a spirit of cooperation and mutual understanding and has delivered tremendous results. So last year, the WSEAL, the UPU jointly published two documents to enhance cooperation between customs and posts at national level. One is the joint WSEAL UPU postal customs guide. Two, the joint WSEAL UPU guidelines for developing an MOU between customs and the UPU and posts. Of course, changes have also been made to EMS version. So over the CN23 customs declaration with a view to facilitation, facilitating the customs clearance of EMS items. So in addition to that, another important area to facilitate e-commerce is to improve electronic interface with posts and customs and how to expedite advanced electronic exchange of data. So which enables customs to carry out necessary risk management and take a timely decision to either allow quick release of a postal shipment or carry on its inspection. So additionally, electronic data exchange between posts and customs is expected to facilitate track and trace of postal shipments and enhance service delivery, especially in dealing with the growing number of postal shipments. So to that end, a joint working group is currently engaged in developing a set of recommendations, guidelines, good practice on advanced electronic exchange of information. And another joint working group is looking into various issues related to the e-commerce with a view to develop a collaborative solutions to support this growing sector, of course, while securing compliance with security and other regulatory requirements. The WCO and the UPU have also collaborated to jointly develop the electronic messages compliant with the WCO data model to limit pre-advice and possible pre-clearance of postal items. The UPU Postal Technology Centre has developed an electronic customs decalibration system, so CDS, on the basis of the joint WCO-UPU customs post-message. So some pilots are currently under progress and more countries such as Canada and the U.S. And more countries are likely to join soon. For example, Australia and the U.K. So because I have too many to inform you, although I shortened it, but I think you want to listen to what we have been doing. If you... Okay, I will try to shorten it. So besides EDI, customs administrations are taking several initiatives, not only at the policy level, but at the operational level as well. For example, 24-7 clearance, E-payment of duties and taxes, and E-duty calculator, and mobile-enabled services. So another thing I would like to mention is that the WTO Trade and Facilitation Agreement was agreed just as Misty mentioned, embodied in December last year, in 2013, and the protocol adopted on 27 November last year. So among others, it provides for several measures for expeditious release and clearance of shipments, in particular, airshipments including postal items, such as a pre-arrival processing, separation of release from final determination of duties and taxes, and electronic payment, and expedited release of minimum documentation. So WTO has all the tools and instruments and also has a big pool of expertise, experts. So we also developed a Mercado program. We will, how to say, effectively and efficiently to implement the FTA. So we entered into force, of course. So dear delegates, we have, together with the UPU, have done much in the past, and we will have more to do together in the future. So I'm confident our collective efforts would go a long way in simplifying and improving postal customs processes to support MSMEs, to leverage the growing e-commerce for catalyzing electronic, economical growth and prosperity. So thank you for your attention and your time. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Zhu. What I liked in this presentation is it's not nations to nations, it's firms to firms, it's clients to clients, work in regions, and we have to simplify declaration and speed up the whole procedure. I think that is very interesting, and it's also interesting how WCO and UPU work closely together, and of course have to work closely together. Now, thank you very much, and I give the floor now to Mr. Friberg, who is the director channel of Perus Serpost. The interesting thing is, now we heard it on the multinational level, but of course the big question is how do you do it on the national level, on the authorities, either or on the operational basis. And in South America, as we know, they try to implement this, what you said from the WCO, they try to implement this easier clearing, this easier declaration working regionally together, and it will be interesting to hear from Mr. Friberg, who is from Grageda, to hear how they do it in Peru. Mr. Grageda is currently the general manager of the postal services of Serpost in Peru, that's the Peruvian post. He has been always a specialist in making easy export, import easy, and to really make the way clear for e-commerce to bring down the obstacles. So here's the ideal speaker to see it from the practical side. Mr. Grageda is a lawyer by profession and has over 12 years of experience in the postal sector. You have the floor. Thank you very much for the invitation. I would prefer to talk to you in my native language, I mean in Spanish. The materials are important to develop what the expositors have been talking about since yesterday and today. For example, to avoid papels that were already there, and also the technology development are important as instruments that we are going to share in the future. As I told you, the easy export in Peru was born in 2007. It's an important program and it has been developed in some other countries in the region of South America. I understand with great success. In some cases we have contributed in that sense and we are proud to know that there is in our region a lot of development of the official mail to try to send them in orders or exports to other countries through this instrument. Certainly e-commerce is growing and we understand that as a country and as a consequence as a state we needed to generate an instrument that allows or facilitates that the orders and exports can be carried out as they correspond. As a consequence I would like to share with you also the signal that the easy export in Peru is an integral program. Although it is true it is a tool that is used through the postal service through the mail but in its development, in its promotion and in its strengthening there are also other institutions of the state. Not only is the mail as the logistics operator but we also have for example the Peruvian Agency of Cooperation that is in charge of the promotion of this product at an internal level and consequently at an external level. Here you can see three institutions that work strongly in the development and promotion of this instrument. However there are two actors that I strongly highlight and it is basically the postal service, the mail and the customs. In this role we played an important role. Consequently when we made the easy export what we wanted was to develop technology and that is a little a differentiator element in the Peruvian case because when the exporters want to do the exportations they don't need to fill out papers no more formats. They do it through the web page of the Peruvian customs and that information is interconnected with the mail in such a way that we capture that information and the process of development and sales of goods is immediate. Of course it is also true that we need to innovate a little because it is not only the possibility to export the products abroad through this instrument but we also understand that the market requires many times opportunities to bring from the outside purchases or goods to develop the figure of the importa fácil which is also an instrument that allows us to facilitate the importations of products abroad and in this moment we are working strongly with Brazil because what we want is that our Peruvian importa fácil is admitted in Brazil through an importa fácil system and we do a little the match that corresponds. The importa fácil simply in summary terms allows you to export products of up to a average weight of 30 kilos and with a value of up to $5,000 when we started the project it was $2,000 but due to the growth it has had and the acceptance of this product it is developing strongly to the point that we are already talking in Peru to see the opportunity to raise this value of $5,000 to maybe $10,000 but it is also true the importa fácil is an instrument that has been generated for small and medium-sized companies as Arancia said and there we share a lot of information in Peru 98.3% of the companies are the small and medium-sized and the micro and small companies the rest are the medium and large it does not mean that this product cannot be used by the large they can also be used they can appreciate there everything is online through the website the process is done of course the exportation and the registration and the filling of the declarations online, okay? What are the benefits that we find for this export system and consequently also face the country? First, that the exporters save money it is quite simple it can be done by a natural person it can be done by a legal person as I wish the important thing is that through the world of exports and through the facilitation that exists it is not necessary to have an owner agent that is perhaps the most relevant because in our countries that type of traffic is a bit onerous the other advantage is that we we have a lot of coverage and presence at national level so that all our offices can receive the exportations because remember that all of this is done online so we even have points where we can receive the exports every day of the year even 24 hours one of the issues that is important is that the small exporters who want to access this export mechanism are considered exporters as such and consequently they are benefitted by the redundancy by the tributary benefits that the owner generates for the exporters in consequence the easy export provides for the micro and small companies new business opportunities from the promotion and the back of a country so that they can have opportunities and windows abroad even the ease so that they are considered as inclusive agents because even before this system in Peru, above all if one wanted to export he had to go to the capital so that the market would go abroad under this system is not decentralized from any point in the country it can be exported what are the achievements that we have to date more than 18 million dollars exported under this system is in dollars if we consider it to be our national currency it is tripled we have more than 43,000 transactions carried out through state declarations more than 5,600 companies that have used this system certainly there is a mortality index too but the effect is quite important we understand that there is a 40% market that goes to the United States and 21% of the exports go to Europe and the important thing about this system is that it also allows complement other postal services such as the Temelogiros and other benefits that we are already working on to try to strengthen this system I have a small video that I would like to share with you in just three minutes so that you can dimension the importance of this tool thank you that was very interesting thank you and I think we saw it from the practical point and from South America which is very active we heard it yesterday sometimes merging countries are leapfrogging in the technology in the adaptation of these rules and can be a good example for let's say Western European or North American countries now I would like to give the floor to representative of the Caribbean it's Mr. Sandra Davoren please take the floor she is the Secretary General of the Caribbean Postal Union she has this position since 2014 she is also a Postmaster General of St. Kitts and Nevis Mrs. Davoren is from St. Kitts and Nevis traveled a long way here and she is in her role she was assisting the post with new products and improving the quality of service of St. Kitts and Nevis but of the whole region as a profession she was before teacher she comes from education and I think that's not a bad thing to start to start the career by educating the posts and the regulators how to do the things so we'll be interested of your presentation Mrs. Davoren you have the floor good morning ladies and gentlemen I deem it an honour and certainly a privilege to be able to represent the Caribbean Postal Union at this conference and I want to thank the UPU for their invitation for me to do this as we look at the topic trade facilitation and the development of MSMEs and media enterprises through the postal network I will share with you our ideas and experiences as a Caribbean men and women the world over have had to rely on MSMEs for their livelihood studies have shown that they contribute significantly to the gross domestic profit of countries they are often considered the lifeblood of many countries and they are very resilient in their nature despite the many setbacks they often experience the genesis of an MSME is usually an individual with a brilliant idea for creating employment and wealth and this usually require funding that the individual or individuals can ill afford depending on the type of business the overhead expenses can be highly high especially if it's a manufacturing business for example the making of bread and pastries or just making clothing some of these business owners however are not technologically savvy and in other instances they don't have access to the internet and that of course would give them an enormous experience of trading globally if they did have that also there are some lengthy custom procedures which usually create setbacks for them and in many instances they cannot afford to pay a broker to do these tasks an electronic payment facility set up in post offices could greatly assist these businesses as some of them would like to or make payment to other businesses or suppliers in different locations within the countries or even within the region for example an MSME would like probably to transfer funds from Barbados to another supplier in St. Kate's or even in the BVI the British Virgin Islands also post offices are strategically located in villages so that access to post offices is quite easy they are dotted across the countries so that you don't for example sometimes you might not have to leave the rural area to go to find one in the capital for example and so a business owner or a small business owner might want to transfer funds from a rural post office and transfer those funds to another post office another business in the capital and if those experiences are provided for them the facility is provided for them then that would be great especially through the post we have already established here that the post is a trusted organization the world over and in countries like St. Kate's Barbados and the British Virgin Islands where they provide funding programs for MSMEs it would be really best if these programs are done through the post thereby giving the post an opportunity to partner with these businesses in St. Kate's for example there is a program called SEEDC the acronym it affords citizens the opportunity to start their own businesses by providing them with training and interest free loans ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 and each entrepreneur is assigned a business manager and an accountant for at least one year contracted at no cost to the business to help ensure the profitability and success of this venture that is why we think that these businesses can come through the post office where we can greater assist them in another location for example like Guyana MSMEs who have a difficulty finding a place to operate their businesses the post affords them the opportunity to rent premises located in close proximity to the post office so they could ply their trade post also can provide access to technology through services hosted at post offices entrepreneurs who don't have the technology can come into the post offices serve the internet and find markets for their goods and purchase raw materials and goods to assist them in their business the world at their fingertips at the click of a button the provision of a US mailbox service is another way that posts in the Caribbean help to facilitate e-commerce they are post offices in St. Kate's in Anguilla in St. Vincent the British Virgin Island St. Lucia just to name a few that provide a mailbox facility in the US the customers send the goods they purchase online to these facilities and then they are delivered to the different countries also when customers purchase goods online they want to know that their goods are delivered to them in a timely and efficient manner hence the development of websites through the use probably of dot post or other methods which would allow MSMEs the opportunity to track and trace and return merchandise post office again can consist them by providing a reliable and efficient delivery service and sometimes this is done by providing the goods or sending or taking the goods to their doorsteps post can create also opportunities to collaborate with governments and encourage governments to review or create the requisite legislation that would assist MSMEs in their business trade in the Caribbean for example there are many cottage industries that are run by women in many cases there are home owners and the providers for their families we as a region aim to provide them with access to global markets and at the same time target the increase in women in industry both on a national and global level again I would like to make reference to a program that is called wise women in small enterprise development and the government there is doing quite a lot to assist the women in business trade in the Caribbean finally we all recognize that the advent of technology and the internet will continue to change the way people do business this phenomena have caused posts to change their most modest operandi and make the requisite paradigm shift so that we can meet the needs and expectations of our customers customers are demanding more this will cause MSMEs to grow and continue in the future to be the engine for innovative and new services in our region we have acted effectively within our region and there is still more that we can do however we think that there is a lot of benefit from inter regional cooperation for example we have heard yesterday about innovation and new initiatives new products and services being offered around the world but the challenge is how can we as a region utilize the UPU network to dip into and learn from other regional and international innovations and get best practices for the benefit of our customers we are not homogeneous and are at different stages of development in the Caribbean but with hard work and dedication to the task it is definitely possible the post is here to stay but post must define the USO and take advantage of the IPDP programs that the UPU has offered and this would assist greatly with reform thank you very much ladies and gentlemen thank you very much Sandra Davorn it was very interesting in the shows the importance also of the post offices yesterday we discussed a lot about where to deliver it we even had this example of somebody taking a picture of the entrance of the house lack of postal address and then send it to the one who has to deliver it now here we heard about the necessity of the post offices and of the infrastructure and of the teaching of the people there in the post office so you can send off the documents which you produce somewhere in a rural area this was very interesting both examples Peru, South America and also from the Caribbean now we don't have much time unfortunately but I just have one question to the panel it's a very easy question and I expect a very short and quick answer what is for you still the main obstacle in e-commerce which has to be tackled just one, if you ask the main obstacle what would it be how do you see it? for most developing countries I think they need to have the poor people need to have infrastructure and they need to have a free regulation to allow the e-commerce to proceed so infrastructure and free regulation Mr. Krajeta we also consider that one of the obstacles that is presented strongly in our region to develop the e-commerce we see it from two perspectives first, the capacity the hard work that has to be done with these potential exporters the micro and the small and on the other hand more ease in the regulatory issues of the correspondence and thirdly the role that plays the universal postal union in this issue and all the countries where we send our correspondence we want it to be recognized as an easy export so I take you gave three, I take one awareness, it's very important what they understand, is that right? Mr. Guarjon, how do you see it? What is the main obstacle? I'm sure you will not say the customs for us the main obstacles is to say one is how to keep the best balance between facilitation and compliance so it's not easy to keep the balance and of course we will strengthen the cooperation with stakeholders including UPS and also the customs self modernization Mr. Guarjon, what is the main obstacle? as always the woman has the last word so how do you see it? one point not five I would say one of the main obstacles we have to get by is the changing of the legislation that would give us more opportunities to create situations for them to access the technology that they need to do business access to technology a quick opening to the floor then we have to go to the next panel who would like to take the floor but here I give one rule and I'm pretty brutal we discuss here so it's not no long statements no long questions just a one minute question or statement whatever questions who would like the floor to this topic oh yes I can see is that Nigeria please you have the floor the question I want to ask Peru and the Caribbean what is the profitability or the the quantum of business regarding this initiative please Peru and then Mrs Taburn yes Mrs Taburn the greatest profitability for us nationally it helps to reduce unemployment when these MSMEs they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not they are not when these MSMEs get the opportunity to start business Thank you very much thank you the panelists Mr Jajun Yi Mr Frieberg Wiesbegracheda Mrs Arrancha Gonzalez Mr Gougeon Ju and Mrs Sandra Davuan for participating for your very interesting and competent presentation and I declare this panel clear this panel as finished and we go on as we are working very hard with no breaks. To the next panel, that's the panel five and I ask the panelists to come to the floor. It's Mr. Saidi Abdul Karim, Mrs. Lina Rainiene, Mr. Mutuna Mutusi and Mrs. Victoria Tsukulik and Professor John Nkoma. Please take the seat and thanks the panelists for their contribution. We go on immediately. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sorry that we had to be a bit short. But the interesting thing is that we have so many speakers in so many aspects. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. It was very good. Sorry I had to be there. I know the times of history. I'll give you my short. No, no, no. But it was interesting. I'll give you my short. I'll give you my short. I'll give you my short. Thank you. So, ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you please to take a seat again? Please take a seat. We continue. Thank you very much and thanks for stopping your conversations. Though I'm very much for communication, I think we would like to start with the next panel. So, ladies and gentlemen, the next panel we have in the title, how regulation can leverage the postal sector in all its dimension? Already the title says that regulation could have an important role and of course the question is, and I have to ask these as a regulator, is that really the case? Can regulation leverage the postal sector in all dimension? Is the regulator the Superman in this thing or is he not? So, what role does regulation have in innovation? You know, innovation is usually something which comes from enterprises, from the human being, not from the government or from the regulation, but can regulation probably do and governments, of course, ministerial policies, can they do a framework for it, for innovation, for investments? Is it necessary to intervene for the regulator? Where is it necessary and where it's not necessary? What to do that regulators don't become castrated, regulator, deviant, that we don't want? So, what is to do there? So, what is the role of the regulator? We have very different intervenions from regulatory offices, but also from ministries in the next panel who can see, put the light in different ways. The danger is, of course, of overregulating. We all know that. Overregulating stops, investment stops, innovative thinking and the important thing is that the regulator becomes a facilitator, but how can he, as a facilitator, improve the value chain, the new value chain, the new processes which we have in, for example, e-commerce? And where is intervention necessary for regulators and where not? And then there is the other thing. We have a convergence of financial services. We heard yesterday from the director general from UPU, the importance of payment, postal banks and so on. We have more and more streams of migration. The financial aspect of the postal services is very, very important. There it needs, of course, a financial regulator. It needs, there's a convergence with telecommunication. We just mentioned SMS. Many things go together with the mobile or, of course, e-commerce goes very much with online. So there is also a convergence with the telecom sector, with the financial sector, what that does mean from the regulatory side. We also know many post offices are also internet bistros where people have the access online. So we should have a common view of regulation, not just concentrate on the postal regulation. By the way, that will be also go already into the next, the panel six. There we'll also have this issue discussing. So that is a bit, the introduction to our next panel. And we have the panelists are the followed. Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim, he's director of postal affairs and digital signature from Malaysia. We have Mrs. Lina Rainien, deputy director, channel of communication regulatory authority of Lithuania. We have Mr. Mutuma Mutusi, he's the director public affairs in the Kenya Ministry of Information Communications and Technology. We have Mrs. Victoria Sekulik, she is a well-known colleague from the postal sector of communications of Argentina. And we have Professor John Asenkuma, director, channel of the Tanzanian Communication Regulatory Authority. I start this list with the presentation of Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim, director of the postal affairs. And Mr. Murtzai Abdul Karim is director of postal affairs and digital signature in Malaysia at the communication regulator. He's that since 2000. He had a key role in Malaysia building up the modern postal infrastructure. He gave the legal base for the postal services. He formulated also the national postal strategy and policy. And many things went under the title in Malaysia, regulate for growth. So the policy says you need a regulation for growth in the postal sector. That's very interesting. And we will listen to you with much interest, Mr. Abdul Karim. Please. Thank you, Mr. moderator. Mr. Chairman, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of poster administration of Malaysia, I would like to congratulate and express my highest appreciation to the UPU, the Swiss government and the government of the Codiva for organising this important strategy conference as we look ahead to a new world poster sector roadmap and the 2016 UPU Congress in Istanbul. It is a privilege and an honour to stand in front of all of you here, the esteemed global poster leaders, policy makers and fellow regulators, and be given this opportunity to share some of our thoughts and our experience in Malaysia on regulatory development in the changing poster sector. Indeed, we are now entering into an exciting phase of development in poster sector. I would say that 175 years ago, we know that we're going to celebrate this year for the 175 years of the Penny Black of the first step. I think today, we are also entering into something similar. If Penny Black has changed the letter mail now, e-commerce is going to change the way we're going to regulate poster sector in this century, of course, in the next decades to come. I'm going to say that in the next few decades is a golden decade for poster sector and the future of poster sector is in our hands. The regulator cannot decide who's going to win the battle in this sector, but the role of the regulator is to facilitate development and ensure level playing field. It is up to the imaginations of the poster players how they can modernize and innovate in this competitive and interesting era of e-commerce. The post must modernize quickly or declines, including in the field of poster regulations. The post sector must rejuvenate. The regulator also must change and UPU also, we must rejuvenate. It is up to all of us to decide our future and I think UPU as the global regulator and facilitator of e-commerce in future must play a more important role and a leading in e-commerce. We all know that letter post is declining and poster post is increasing as shown by our panelist yesterday. E-commerce is now recognized as the most vital growth engine for the poster sector in many parts of the world, including in Malaysia and developing economies. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is obvious that the economics of universal service obligation in particular the central of poster regulation in most countries in its current form are no longer sustainable if male volume continues to decline year on year at a rapid speed. To safeguard the universal service on one hand and to rejuvenate the poster sector on the other, we need a fundamental change in the way we regulate and act. Indeed, this call for a delicate balancing act. The regulator must transform and act as a facilitator for delivering innovative, integrated and inclusive poster sector development agenda yet have to enforce the requirement of the law. The regulator plays an important role in rejuvenating the poster sector. In this respect, Malaysian poster regulatory regime has been transformed in the last few years to facilitate growth, achieve national policy objective of the poster sector and meet the national development policy such as to make Malaysia as a developed nation by 2020. To this end, our national poster development roadmap 2010 to 2014 has given greater emphasis on transforming the regulatory regime as well as continuing the institutional reform which has started since 1992. Malaysia passed its new poster legislation in 2012 among the key features of the legislation as follows. The acts require the commission to safeguard the provision of universal service as well as to respond to technical, economics and social environments and need of consumer. In this regard, the commission has taken a friendlier and lighter approach in defining universal service obligation in Malaysia, especially in rural areas whereby the designated poster operator is given a task to develop its own rural service master plan which must be reasonably acceptable by the rural communities and the commission. The law also incorporates three key dimensional of poster services, physical, financial and electronics. Thus Malaysia is ready at least from the legislative perspective to have a converged physical and electronic universal posters, poster regime in future. The act is not regulating the poster operator but the poster service industry ecosystem including Korea operators, direct mail, poster facility service provider. Two licensing scheme have been established namely universal service license and non-universal service license. The poster service fund will also be established and maintained by the commission to rejuvenate poster sector including modernizing the rural poster service. In this connection, Malaysia is still studying a suitable model for the fund for poster sector which may likely commence in 2017. We believe our new regulatory model could provide solution for the regulator to deal with current postal issue like declining mail volume, sustainability of USO as well as emerging postal issue related to security, digital post and e-commerce. As a developing country, Malaysia will continue to modernize its postal infrastructure and build capacity to ensure our readiness to support the explosive e-commerce growth in the next decade to come. Not only in Malaysia, we did Malaysia which has 30 million population but also within the ASEAN region which has close to 600 million population. The poster sector regulator and policy maker must ensure a healthy and vibrant environment within the poster sector itself in order to attract investment needed. In this regard, Malaysia has done fairly well in the global ranking. For instance, we are at number 20 in the global competitiveness index, number 21 in the DHL global connectedness index and number 25 in the logistics performance index. In closing, I would like to reaffirm that the future of e-commerce and the post are interwean and the potential of e-commerce as the main revenue spinner for postal operator worldwide is indeed a reality. Poster regulator must play a central role to rejuvenate the poster sector and take immediate steps to transform, modernize and overhaul their postal regulatory regime towards a growth facilitating framework. Ladies and gentlemen, we must regulate for growth and not grow our regulation. Thank you for your attention. Thank you, Mr. Maulzai, the up belt Karim. Thank you very much for this interesting insight and I would like to go to the next speaker. It's the colleague from Lithuania, Lina Rainier, she's Deputy Director General of the Communication Regulatory Authority of Lithuania. Lithuania has this year the chair of the ERGP, that is the group of postal regulators of Europe and every year the chairmanship changes and this year the chair is with Lithuania. She is also chairing for that the CN, the contact network in the ERGP. Lina is a lawyer and she's since 2002 in this National Regulatory Authority which also deals with the telecom regulation and she is as a lawyer of course deals mainly with legal aspects and we also know each other quite well from the BEREC that is the bond of the ERGP for the telecom sector. You have the floor. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here and to share short insights into the progress of the postal sector evolution. So as you record already I am from the not very big country in the middle of the Europe and we facing the situation that we opened our market since more than two years already but today I will not speaking about the opening of the market I will emphasize the issue that it is actually even not important whether the market is closed with some exclusified whether the market is in the reserved area position when some Glythe path for the incumbent is in place or whether there are no no exclusified at all at the moment. So in any case in any case we have the situation on every of us and in every single country we are facing the situation that alongside the incumbent we have other players as other operators which are there already active as the bulk mailers which are also present in the market and provide provide the services which not always clear whether they are recognized postal whether or not we also have the consolidators which which also are in the market which which play in the market and for the bulk mailers segment yesterday we already saw that they already evaluated from the simple letter bulk mailers to some maybe big integrated companies which in any moment can enter the market. So this is I think major challenge for the for the regulator because when we look at those all market players starting from the historical operator and ending to some potential integrated operators which are not present in the postal to a postal sector today. Actually they all are working towards the fostering the businesses with the large volumes which are growing and as we heard yesterday and today that okay the letter segment it's declining but other segments are growing and luckily those segments as a parcel segment is growing much more quicker than the other segments are declining. So here we have this evolution of growth in volume with some changes from the behavior of the businesses with some expectations from the consumers and all these issues are in front of the regulation and in front of the regulator it doesn't matter what the what the regulator is from country to country whether it is the independent authority whether it is the ministry or the in any case someone is performing the regulatory functions. So first of all as it was mentioned today the legal environment is important the competition of for the postal sector we may call them very narrow rules for the competition as we understand or we may call in the broad sense the predictable rules how the sector is working and as yesterday Mr. Director General stated that all of us should should step out of our comfort zone so I think we already done that and from the perspective of the operators who are competing with each other and thinking about the progress of the businesses and especially for from the regulatory side the regulators already stepped away from the comfort zones because we should look around and we should think what is the situation in our countries what are the rules because we see the market we are closest bodies to the market we can see the pulse and we can see some obstacles from the regulation which is in present written in the country so first of all I think this is the challenge because the worst thing that could be when the legal rules are as an obstacle for the market evolution so it's better sometimes to have more flexible rules which are in favor of evoluting of the of the market players starting from the incumbent as well so the second issue is just extend extend the oversight from the pure postal market as we understand today because as it was talked a lot yesterday and this morning session there are so many things around going and for the regulator it's important to understand and to be able to be able evaluate and identify the services and the players earlier we had very easy situation the were postal player means providing postal services what we are having today today we have that postal operator is provided is providing a bundle of services which sometimes fall under other regimes under financial regime under logistical regime so that means that not only operators and the market players are growing and improving the skills but the regulator should improve the skills as well the governments should improve the skills to understand and to to monitor what is happening in in the market and to reflect it in the legislation of the of the country so when we are talking about the changing business models and post I think that the major major challenge for the regulation is first the fall to facilitate and to to allow market to evolve at the very initial initial stage and at the end of course everything is for the sake of the of the small medium big businesses and at the end of the day we always come back to the end user and when we ask why we need regulation or whether we need regulation regulation also always can be very hard one or very soft one but for the end user for the consumer sometimes it's even very difficult to understand what kind of service they are purchasing whether they are purchasing the postal service or whether they are purchasing the logistical service to whom to apply to whom to apply to solve the problem the same issue may arise for the postal operators while providing the businesses for the incumbent as well because the market players sometimes of course are eagering to to use some facilities to use the network or to to compete within particular areas we know the cherry picking issues so therefore we should be trying to put our hand on the pulse and just to try to to facilitate to facilitate the growth and and the regulation not to keep as an obstacle for for the for the evolution so I would like to thank you for your attention and I think that the major way forward also is that from the in collection to e-delivery it is always some kind of physical element in the in the postal market so the postal market still will remain as a platform having some physical element in it thank you for our for your attention leaders and gentlemen thank you Lena linear I mean a deputy director of the Lithuanian regulatory authority in Europe as you have seen the question of opening the market liberalization is one of the key questions which is not the case in many other countries so I think we would like to come back and the discussion with the panel to that but Lena has shown the strategy which is of the European Union and of the ERGP in opening these markets which is concerning of course mainly the male markets now the next speaker is Mr. Mutua Mutusi he's the director consumer and public affairs of the communications authority of Kenya he is responsible for the consumer public affairs and the international relations of course here in UPU very well known he does that for the last 16 years he was right from the beginning of the regulatory body in 99 if I understand right in in different roles in the communications authority of Kenya and he will be sharing with us the Kenyan perspective on how regulation can leverage the postal sector Mr. Mutusi you have the floor thank you very much Mr. Moderator and I would also like to thank the chairman of the conference for recording us this opportunity to be able to speak to this great audience let me start by conveying apology of my minister was expected to sit on the panel this morning but due to other pressing engagements in Kenya was unable to make it we'll try our best to represent him the Kenya ICT landscape is divided into the policymaker who is the ministry the ministry of ICT then we have the independent regulator the communications authority of Kenya who regulates the entire ICT spectrum from telecommunication broadcasting postal services and e-commerce within that lineup we have the postal corporation of Kenya as the designated postal operator we also have other licensed courier operators private postal operators 214 of them and then we have over 1400 postal courier outlets internet penetration in the country is stands at 64% now and we have 26 million mobile money subscribers in a population of about 40 million at the penetration of mobile services in the country is at 82.6% the last three statistics are giving you because innovation is actually taking place in the platforms that are being powered by modern technology including digital communication the landscape of the legal regulatory framework we now have sector legislation which is specifically addressing issues of e-commerce and matters of cybersecurity these are very important elements of innovation in the postal services because as have said the most of the innovations are coming from the digital platform and of course within those digital platforms we need them to be secure so that players and customers can have peace of mind when they are transacting we keep on progressively reviewing our sector policy so as to take care of emerging issues to ensure that the trend in the industry keeps up to the best standards and the last one for tonight was reviewed a while ago 2006 the sector guidelines are the ones that really guide the market operations and these ones we recently reviewed them and they are basically targeting emerging markets and emerging markets are the ones where we are finding a lot of innovation coming in services that are very new to the postal traditional postal business of course within the regulatory framework we have the license terms and conditions within which all people are licensed to operate in the postal sphere ought to follow we also take advantage of forums like here to get global perspectives and best practices that we can infuse into our regulatory market as mr. moderator you say the regulators are basically enablers and facilitators of business and we do also subscribe to that in Kenya we the regulator sees itself as the facilitator of all these services that are being undertaken within the ICT sector and in fact our vision is to see all Kenyans have a communication services by the year 2018 so we provided an enabling environment where players or players can compete and find use find business reason for existing in the country and also for the customers to also take advantage of the open market and be able to get value for their money we get involved also in infrastructure development and services where we assist the playing ground to so that the players in the market play within an atmosphere that has very good and well developed infrastructure we develop also markets so how do we regulate and foster innovation because we are only facilitated as we are not the ones in innovating as such so we we get into lots of research studies and development so that we can be at the cutting edge of what is expected in the market and this is to enable us to come up with the regulatory interventions that will be able to enable all players to find very conducive environment where they can innovate come up with the new services compete in a manner that provides value to themselves and to the customers capacity building we do also as a regulator we need to be at the cutting edge of what is happening in the market so we carry out a lot of capacity building so that regulator is also at a level where they can fully understand what the operator is doing and in fact we like being ahead of them sometimes but of course since they are the players in the market interacting with customers sometimes they are far much ahead these also capacity building also we conduct some capacity building for the players in the market the licensees to just get them to some of them understand the the new trends in the market because we have big and small players and some of them we really need to assist them to get to to the level of the cutting edge of business the Kenya post which is the designated postal operator also has a unique obligation of doing the universal service obligation and but this is an obligation that can also be given to another person but currently these are the people who are doing it and the we have seen a lot of innovation coming from the Kenya post recently and I think one of the most is celebrated he's the offering of the government services within our post offices we call it Houduma centers and this is a very innovative aspect of postal business where we have seen government services getting closer to the citizens through the elaborate network of postal business we also have seen them get into financial inclusion where banks are partnering with them also using their large networks to to reach their customers a few challenges there national addressing system of course the issues of you so which are across I think everywhere there is no enough money to do this all the time and everybody is complaining they are contributing much more than they would wish to do we are doing a few things to try to overcome the challenges and for the national addressing system we have evolved a national policy that is looking at national addressing system as an infrastructure that needs to be addressed from a national policy level so that it can be driven by the government and the regulator and legislation legislations on usf we have ensured that they make it mandatory for all players in the market to contribute to these kitty so that it can be expanded to reach our people and of course regulation of e-commerce we have strengthened it by addressing issues of the cybersecurity and within the monitoring system we have recently acquired the FID from the UPU and we are rolling it out in the country to be able to monitor our quality of service thank you very much so moderator and I sorry I think I have exceeded my time thank you thank you very much mr. mutu amutusi for this interesting insight of the work and the policy of the communications authority of Kenya of the Kenyan regulator and I come now immediately to the next speaker that's mrs. Maria Victoria Soukenic she's well-known in the UPU she's an advisor of the international affairs and communications secretariat of Argentina she is representative in the UPU since 2006 and she Argentina's vice chair of the CA and her education is master of international affairs and economics and I give you the floor Victoria and probably to you and to your colleague from Tanzania as short as possible then we have time for questions and remarks thanks okay buenos días a todos primero quisiera transmitirle el salud del secretario comunicaciones y su deseo de éxito en esta conferencia nosotros trajimos una breve presentación donde lo que quisimos destacar fueron algunos conceptos básicos en materia de regulación y sobre todo desafíos que hemos identificado a futuro en esta materia pero creo que el principal desafío luego de las presentaciones que tuvimos estos días es tratar de hacer que el regulador no se ha visto como el villano de la película no quisieron usar la misma palabra que venían usando a lo largo de las otras presentaciones sino simplemente hacer menciona esto y con algunos conceptos intentaremos tratar de reflejar lo contrario algunos ideas básicas como ser en el en el rol del estado para sintetizar son como todos sabemos el garantizar la inviolabilidad de la correspondencia el asegurar también el derecho a la comunicación el procurar el desarrollo del sector y sus condiciones laborales el propiciar condiciones para una competencia legítima y sobre todo procurar el desarrollo con inclusión social para el crecimiento del país por eso vemos que la intervención del estado a través de la regulación postal pero cura el cumplimiento de estos objetivos y la satisfacción de las necesidades sociales muchos de estos conceptos fueron manifestados a lo largo de los paneles anteriores lo cual lo vemos con mucho agrado y esperamos poder contribuir desde nuestro nuestro humilde lugar no entendemos que la regulación es una herramienta para conciliar todos los intereses de los distintos actores que intervienen el sector postal y se trata de un proceso continuo que afronta desafíos constantes precisamente hemos estado hablando durante estos días de innovación y de las distintas necesidades que se van viendo día a día a través de los cambios tecnológicos y de los cambios en la sociedad en general por eso entendemos que se trata de un desafío de constante de estar actualizados y también como hemos visto a través de distintas opiniones la importancia de que la regulación sea pragmática y flexible por eso como decía antes que no somos el el villano en esta película además de regular controlar y fiscalizar lo que trata de hacer el estado a través de su regulación es ordenar a los actores y al mercado como se mencionó también en el día de ayer lo que se busca es establecer reglas claras para todos y que se pueda trabajar de esta forma con condiciones de competencia legítima también se debe procurar defender los derechos de usuarios y de trabajadores un punto que consideramos nosotros muy relevante y también se mencionó ayer al pasar no como que y algo que debemos destacar que nosotros trabajamos en un sector que cuenta con la red física más más grande a nivel mundial y que esta red sobre todo se compone de recursos humanos por eso nosotros siempre destacamos la importancia de defender también los derechos de los trabajadores como uno de los factores fundamentales dentro de nuestro sector bueno dentro de los roles del regulador algunos ya los mencionamos destacamos también como se vino mencionando durante estos días el tratar de ser el un facilitador no para que todos los actores puedan trabajar y desarrollarse dentro de las mismas reglas de juego pero a su vez dentro de las funciones específicas está la de verificar las condiciones que en que son prestados los servicios y sobre todo el cumplimiento de los estándares en la calidad también debemos velar porque por los derechos de los ciudadanos de contar con servicios públicos de calidad y eficientes para a su vez como mencionamos antes asegurar el cumplimiento de los objetivos y de las políticas públicas y sobre todo garantizar el derecho humano a las comunicaciones ahora sí un caso particular de argentina que queríamos mencionar que lo ponemos como nuestro nuevo desafío en diciembre del año pasado en argentina se sancionó la ley 27.078 que conocemos como argentina digital esta ley lo que hace es incorporar también dentro de las materias de regulación control fiscalización y verificación a las tecnologías de la información y de las comunicaciones nosotros hasta ahora nos ocupamos de regular lo que es telecomunicaciones servicios postales servicios satelitales y a partir de ahora también nos vamos a ocupar de las tecnologías de la información y las comunicaciones esta ley también crea una autoridad federal de tecnología de la información y las comunicaciones como un ente autárquico que va a depender directamente del poder ejecutivo nacional por eso lo vemos como nuestro nuevo desafío actualmente esta ley está en proceso de reglamentación y será nuestro desafío precisamente el poder armonizar los intereses de los distintos actores y el poder reflejar sobre todo las necesidades de los habitantes también en materias de nuevas tecnologías y de innovación otros desafíos yendo brevemente a la presentación otros desafíos que identificamos que seguramente compartimos con con muchos de los países aquí presentes es el tema de adaptar las tareas de control y regular y regulación que también como mencionamos antes es una tarea constante que tiene que estar en base a las necesidades que se van viendo de los distintos actores y sobre todo de los usuarios la implementación de mecanismos de participación ciudadana tenemos que responder a las demandas crecientes de los de los usuarios nosotros creemos que hoy por hoy las demandas son más de tipo cualitativo que cuantitativo y ayer precisamente se habló mucho de la importancia de la previsibilidad creemos que hoy los usuarios sobre todo buscan que se cumpla con lo que se promete por lo tanto a veces no se trata tanto de tiempo sino de de poder cumplir con con el servicio que se que se quiere o que se ofrece prestar luego el desarrollo económico con inclusión social y en esto queremos destacar algunas funciones que realiza nuestro operador designado que no sólo son los servicios tradicionales sino algunas otras distribuciones como las tarjetas de transporte público tarjetas para préstamos de seguridad social también hacen para sintetizar muchas oficinas de correos encuentran centros de vinculación ciudadana donde se pueden realizar distintos trámites de gobierno y ahora lo que no quiero dejar de mencionar porque creo que es lo más lo más importante ya que estamos en una conferencia estratégica de la unión postal universal es en el ámbito internacional que nosotros queremos ver a la upu también como aliado en materia de regulación nosotros entendemos que fundamental la cooperación en materia de desarrollo de reforma el trabajo coordinado con las uniones restringidas y en este caso en nuestra región en particular podemos dar fe de que se trabaja coordinadamente entre la upu y la upae por eso es que entendemos que hay mucho para para informar y mucho para compartir por eso la importancia de la difusión e intercambio de mejores prácticas la organización de foros seminarios y debates y por eso destacamos este este espacio sobre todo y todos los futuros espacios que se nos pueda dar para hablar de este tema entre otros y obviamente vinculados todos en el ámbito en un en el contexto de la unión postal universal y sobre todo para el desarrollo del sector esto en síntesis y tratando de ser lo más breve posible dado que hay poco tiempo era lo que queríamos manifestar y obviamente que estamos a disposición para seguir colaborando con la upu y con todos sus estados miembros en sobre todo en materia de regulación pero en todos los temas que entendemos que ayudan al desarrollo del sector en su conjunto gracias gracias Maria Victoria so that would like to go straight to the next speaker who is a colleague from Tanzania it's professor John as in coma professor John as coma is currently the director general of the Tanzanian communication regulatory authority he's that since 2004 he is in the family of the regulators a well-known personality I may say he's also regulating telecommunications broadcasting postal services managing the radio frequency spectrum I would say how it should be and all together and the professor in coma has over 25 years experience also in university teaching he was the head of department from nineteen ninety seven to eighty one in the university of that is a lot and then what joined the University of Botswana where he served as the dean of faculty of science and he's a professor of physics and so but always lawyer also physics could be important in the regulation John you have the floor thanks very much begin with I'd like to thank the UPU for organizing the world strategy conference and also average cost for a quarter for chairing this particular meeting my presentation would be in two parts the first part would be talking about Africa in general and wearing my height is a chair of the administrative council of the Pan-African post union and then later I'll shift to regulation within the TTI so to start with the Pan-African post union is a specialized agency of the African Union there are 44 member countries and the vision of of of the Pan-African post union is actually to be one postal network for Africa but not just isolated as Africa but also as a part of the global postal network it has quite a number of noble objectives in each strategic plan the first one is a establishment of adequate and efficient postal outlets and the intra-african mayor transmission networks the second objective is creation of the new ICT products and services and development of the postal financial services I think in the last two days we've seen how important the financial services are we've also seen how important the ICT products are the third objective is to improve efficiency and capacity building at the power secretary and I'm glad that the Secretary-General of the Papu is actually here objective number four is creation of a single postal territory in Africa and then objective number five is the promotion of reforms of sustainable development of the post in the continent and finally objective number six is to promote responsible and positive contribution to the community and the environment now Papu has got quite a number of those noble objectives and actually last week in ban we had a very good meeting where we reviewed the performance of the African countries since the doha postal strategy and also preparing midway towards the next strategy in the Istanbul let me now shift my head to the regulation of in Tanzania first of all I should say that TSA is a convergent regulator so it regulates telecommunications broadcasting and poster there are a lot of discussions as to whether you should have one regulator or more regulators but I would like to say that within the experience of the Tanzania situation I think there are a lot of synergies for example you you have a directorate of postal regulation and director of telecom regulation and director of broadcast immigration but then you share the other services like the legal you share all the legal issues licensing issues you also share the issue of consumer protection and and market study tariff analysis it doesn't matter whether you're analyzing the tariffs for telecoms or for broadcasting for the poster so I think those synergies are important the regulation improves the postal sector governance by primarily ensuring proper operation of the designated postal operator which in Tanzania is a Tanzania post-cooperation the regulation landscape actually goes a long way since 1993 and then 94 there are separate regulators for telecoms for posts and for broadcasting but in 2003 these were mage into a single regulatory body the importance of policy is also important that there is the national postal policy of 2003 which outlined very clearly the drop the importance of competition the importance of evolving the private sector and then the importance of developing developing a national address system which in this case is the postcard the legal the laws we have the Tanzania communication regulatory authority act which is substance regulator in 2003 and then we have the electronic and postal communications act of 2010 from these laws you have regulations like you have the consumer protection regulation of 2011 and this includes all the issues of telecoms broadcasting quality of service and so on the institution arrangements between the government and the regulator and the operators are clearly defined my ministers here who actually heads the minister of communication science and technology and let me say that the regulated services include the Uniform Universal Services electronic services and then courier services there's quite a lot of competition in the courier courier area where you have been the international licenses like DHL TNT you have the national licensees and then you have the East Africa licenses from between Kenya Uganda and Tanzania Ronde Miranda and let me conclude by saying that there are also quite a number of challenges and these challenges include the management of the new financial services in the in the in the post arena financial services be has been very successful for example money transfer by the mobile companies and within Tanzania there's quite a lot of interoperability between one net one mobile apparatus and another there's also a cross-border money transfer for example between Tanzania and Kenya you have the safari come in Kenya and water come in Tanzania you can pay across the border you can also have cross payments between Tanzania and Randa for what is known as Tico Pesa now all these of course have been have been facilitated by regulation to conclude I think the posts in the early years looked at RCTs as a threat when the data sort analysis that were the threat but now it is clearly an opportunity so I think the post sector has to integrate the the RCTs in its plants so that we see applications like e-commerce e-government and all the current applications thank you thank you thank you very much for this statement professor John as in coma I just have a short question and then we go to the to the to our dear friend delegates where do you see be a bit self-critical where do you see a point where we could bring down regulation we have you all find or some these are the the operational side finds too much regulation too much red tape too many obstacles where in you feel in being self-critical you think we could bring down regulation we could deregulate I start with you where could we deregulate in Malaysia just just one one thing you know just a brief answer we can regulate the value added service that's happening already and you as all we have to relax a bit okay Lithuania or probably for whole European Union for once you can speak for the whole European Union as for the Europe actually the regime is very light so the entering is already deregulated the provision of the services is very could you speak up a bit the provision of the services is very liberal already in the Europe so as for the Lithuania I think we what we've done yesterday I mean like in the very short period for us since since some time it's we lightened the universal service up to the natural universal service less yes forward to the natural persons on small enterprises thanks Kenya I think what I've seen is that the more the more you we innovate the less we regulate because most of the innovations ride on on services that are already regulated and if now the innovations are many you don't kind of regulate every other innovation so most of the innovations operate in an atmosphere which is not very much regulated so the more we innovate the less you start getting into regulation and we've seen it even so when you fly back to Nairobi where will you deregulate you go back and say I've been Geneva you want to deregate one point where where do you see a possibility we need to encourage more more innovation because as as as people innovate more they they get into the realm that does not need a lot of restriction and that is really when you start allowing them to do what they ought to do as long as it is not inhibiting other people to play okay Argentina where would you deregulate deregulate be self-critical so you would say better regulation but not less regulation John well you don't know regulate if the market is working for example a good example is the interconnection rates I mean you you allow the market to regulate itself but if there's a market market failure then of course you intervene in the financial services for example we've seen interoperability is not something which the regulator first but I think the market itself people realize that if you have your subscriber locked to one mobile operator it's not good so you don't regret if the market is working okay so that's clearly if it's not really necessary to regulate it is recess necessary not to regulate as I understand I have I would like to open it now to the to the floor to the to you dear delegates I have an intervention already from Cuba Cuba you have the floor please please what I said before be brief after one minute I'll intervene sí gracias por ser en la palabra en cuba estamos trabajando en la actualización del del marco regulator y la política regulator ya bueno con teniendo en cuenta los temas de la flexibilización fundamentalmente en la reforma post al insistiendo sobre todo en la diversificación de los servicios de infraestructura a pesar bueno de lo que ustedes conocen del bloqueo a que se encuentra sometido el país pero bueno nosotros estamos insistiendo en estos temas tratando de combinar las nuevas tendencias de los servicios postales el servicio postal universal el comercio electrónico pero siempre teniendo en cuenta una regulación flexible ahora a mí me gustaría que el señor a dur karim de malasia se refiriere y profundizar en un tema que había abordado de las comunidades rurales como se tiene en cuenta en la regulación propia de malasia el tema de las comunidades rurales si tomamos en consideración que hay poca infraestructura de los servicios en esa y nosotros es un tema que nos viene preocupando también acá en cuba por favor thank you kuba most side up to Karim could you answer regulating the university service especially in rural areas is is a challenging methods not only in Malaysia I think in Cuba as well as worldwide but as let the post is declining which let the post used to be the main finance of the university service system in the last decade for example so the overall model is is changing so what we have done in malasia is how to make sure that our university service is not burdensome so one way of doing it in malasia in particular that what we trying to do is to ask the designated operator themselves to define what is rural service and the service standard that you going to offer rather than the regulator who impose on you but of course there will be some safeguarding measures to protect the consumer I have a question isn't mobile communication you know mobile handsets and so on SMS is replacing a lot of communication which was meant to be before in mail postal mail and that almost replaces a bit universal service very interesting questions I think this is many countries are looking into how you can have a converged universal service for example in telecoms and post but I haven't seen any one in the world has done that even in Malaysia we still have a separate universal service for telecoms and for the post and I think in the next few years maybe in the next decade you never know there will be a converged us yeah we will discuss this in the next panel of course may join on Korea name intervention de la France est-ce que vous donnez la parole mais une intervention après s'il vous plaît merci so much merci beaucoup j'en peux forceville géant en charge de la régulation pour le groupe la poste en France j'ai entendu les les interventions je voudrais simplement dire qu'à mon sens le régulateur aujourd'hui doit être très attentif au service universel à la façon dont il est rendu son financement on sait bien que les fonds de compensation ne fonctionne pas que les budgets nationaux ne sont pas riches et donc peut-être faut-il réfléchir aussi à la demande effective et à la façon de se payer quel est le niveau aujourd'hui de service universel que l'on peut tolérer avoir et donc d'une certaine manière veiller à ce que ce service universel face à la baisse rapide des volumes soit protégé pour ce qui est de l'extension de la de la régulation à d'autres secteurs moi je crois que ça commence par le colis mais aussi les services financiers on en reparlera ou les nouvelles technologies il y a des régulateurs de ces marchés sur les services financiers par exemple ou de toute façon il y a l'autorité de concurrence les autorités de concurrence qui un jour deviendront peut-être les les seuls régulateurs aussi sur le sur le marché postale et puis enfin je voudrais attirer l'attention sur le fait que peut-être aussi faut-il songeé à à protéger les opérateurs postaux d'autres opérateurs qui ne respectent pas les mêmes règles en termes fiscales et sociales merci beaucoup merci beaucoup la france pour cette intervention évidemment la dernière remarque c'est une remarque très important qu'on peut malheureusement pas discuter c'est clair si les les règles sont égales pour les postes les postes dessinés et pour les les new players comme on dit les nouveaux joueurs comme Alibaba comme comme Amazon et là il y a une grande question peut-être on va discuter ou peut discuter ça l'après midi mais à manque de temps nous avons pas la possibilité et la question du financement du service universel on va discuter dans le panel prochain c'est pour ça que je dois pour le temps je dois malheureusement terminer ce panel je vous remercie beaucoup mais monsieur maud saydi abtulkarim de malaysia madame lina rainiene de lituania monsieur madame maria victoria soukenic d'argentin monsieur mutu amutusi de kenya et professeur john s encomme de danzania je vous remercie pour votre vos interventions vos discussions vos contributions et je pris les orateurs du prochain panel le panel 6 de venir immédiatement chez moi ici au panel c'est monsieur torstein olsen monsieur chacramont monsieur younus gibrin et l'honorable dr. depression gabrie michael merci beaucoup et on continue dans deux trois minutes merci thanks very much so thank you very much thanks thank you very much so thank you very much so thank you very much so thank you very much i have such a good memory of it thank you dan and give my greetings to your colleagues thank you very much thank you very much john thanks thanks so i'm fighting a bit with the time nothing should be all right i mean i go a little about four to one one that's bonjour monsieur salutak torstein hello how are you this morning so dear friends dear colleagues we go on to the panel number six the last panel this morning thanks for your enthusiasm to stick to the end of this morning lunch is not waiting yet so we we're looking forward to the next panel the next panel we discuss we also have regulators on the panel but not only regulates representatives of of of the postal pan african union and of course also of of government so it is quite a versatile panel of course this morning it's more about governments more about regulators less with the postal firms that we had very much yesterday and we'll have it again this afternoon the discussion this morning this panel is about universal service serving member countries businesses and citizens through the universal service universal service was already mentioned obviously this morning we can't regulate we can't have a policy a government policy without respecting the universal service because i think everybody agrees liberalization is great opening markets is great doing business is great but it can't be only grabby for the people in the in the privileged areas in the towns in the privileged parts of the towns universal service has to deal has to serve also those in rural areas the poorer people and so on universal service is a demand of humanity i would say be it in postal service financial services telecoms medical services very much so this is an important topic it's a topic for regulators of course for governments because the regulators they have to implement the rules of of universal service the governments have to say what are the roles have to do the definition of this universal service that's not same every in every year country and the designators operators who have usually the license of the universal service who have the obligation to do the universal service they are of course the ones who have to do then the service to the citizen the the definition of the universal service is different in every country and that's good like that that's concerning the needs of the population and also concerning the national conditions for example in the european union it's very difficult difficult to do a definition for the universal service in the postal area because the situation in greece or in latvia is different than it's in germany or in spain and the universal service the definition has to be a bit different from country to country but some common rules there but there are some common rules for the universal service be it financing but be it or being also in implementing i hope we can also discuss which role the integrators have the e-base the amazon's the alibaba's of this world because they of course can pick their cherries they don't have any obligations but shouldn't they contribute to the financing for example of the universal service because it was just mentioned by the french colleague you know what about financing the universal service in many countries this is a problem and we have to face this problem because if you can't finance it anymore it is useless to talk about universal service this is a difference to the telecom sector where universal service usually is easily covered to cost covered by the market not the case in necessarily in the postal markets so i would also like in this panel to put a special focus on the emerging country because we have a national universal service but we also have an international universal service the universal service or the post situation of the postal services in less developed countries is completely different than here in geniva or in paris or in in new york and i think we as a upu family have to really also go into this discussion new ways also their innovative ways could be the way more using modern technologies like mobile payment mobile telecommunication to deliver the needs of the people in rural areas in for example in africa in south america and so on so those are the topics we tackle this morning and it's a it's a pleasure to have my colleagues here i start with the colleagues are torstein olson the director general of the norwegian post and telecommunication authority jack hamont the chairman of the belgium regulator we have you know steeper in the second the general of the pan african postal union and we have the honor to have the vice prime minister and minister of communication and information technology of ethiopia the honorable dr debretzian gabrie michael here welcome gentlemen to this to this panel and i give the floor first to torstein olson torstein olson is since four years director channel of the norwegian post and telecommunication authority he is since the beginning of this authority there he's built he has built it up he has a very active role not only norway but also in the european in the european group of regulators of the telecom regulators of the berek he was two years ago vice president of berek and so he he has of course a big knowledge of regulation general but the postal sector also belongs to this authority so we'll be interested to have your short presentation torstein you have the floor thank you mark and thank you to upu for inviting me here i'm very glad i got this chance to talk to upu also i haven't done that before so this is a great pleasure for me to do this and i will start with my conclusion i will conclude that we need to find a new definition of postal services and that made is not anymore the most important way of communications so i'll show you why and this is happening on all countries in a different phase though but it's happening in norway as many others have said today the declining volumes of letters are increasing and the increasing volumes of parcels are there and it seems quite balanced we have 22 percent less letters since 2005 and 21 percent more parcels since 2005 so it's pretty balanced but you have to remember that we are talking about billions of letters and only millions of parcels so it is not balanced and this is crucial to all postal operators throughout the world in or when our post is the main operator they are represented here so i have to be very i have to behave myself not talking badly about norway post they are a good company so is our ministry they are also here so i have to behave but our government as the one of the last countries in europe they have finally decided to propose to liberalize the postal market in norway and this proposal will be put forward for the parliament hopefully before the summer so at the end of this year we will probably have a liberalized postal market also in norway but as you see the letters are declining the number of letters are declining so there won't be much new things to compete on on parcels there is full competition already this is the estimated development of the number of letters for the next years to come so it's billions of letters are diminishing they are they are gone and there are other ways of communicating because people are still in need to communicate but there are new means of communications and we are facing this severely in in norway and we have a digital population we call it a digital population because now the figures are from last year more than 80 percent of the households have access to internet and one third of the households have actually internet connections with more than 32 megabits per second and almost three fourth of the population not the households but 75 percent of the population have smartphones so they are communicating via smartphones instead of letters and they are communicating more and more via these smartphones and via internet actually 90 percent of the population use internet banking so the bank branches are closing down also and since two years ago the majority of the population is actually reading the newspaper digitally and not in paper anymore which is a tremendous challenge to the to the newspapers and the news houses and as of next year our government have decided that all communications from the public sector to the inhabitants and the citizens of Norway will be done by email this is very severe for norway posts and others that are conveying a mail but we have to adapt to this and this shows that mail is not important as a means of communications and anymore but mail and especially parcels is still very very important the implications we see from this is that we need a new and clear definition of postal services i will come back to that and and ask the upu to to start looking into a clearer and better definition of postal services but we still need a minimum level of universal services especially when it comes to parcels there we need in in all the countries of the world we need an efficient network for distributing physical items the electronic communications have come to stay and people will switch to electronic communications for the normal communications but we need better and more secure physical networks to convey parcels and physical items and as we see we have seen yesterday and we see today that there are huge differences between the different countries in the world but there are also differences within a country or within especially within Europe it's a huge difference and that is a challenge because the the needs in the different countries are very different between the north and the south of Europe it's a huge difference and we need also to start a new discussion on the right to communicate because that is what we are trying to regulate not the let this also as such the government of the world need to ensure the right of the citizens to communicate whether this is by mail or by electronic means the right to communicate is what we are striving to achieve and we have to start this discussion in a new way we have to look into the universal service obligation within the telecom sector and within the postal sector because the way we communicate changes and the universal service obligations within these two sectors have to melt and we have to have to regard them together but to enable us to do that we have to start we can start with the postal sector and we need a clear definition of what is post in many countries we don't need posts anymore to to communicate but we need posts to ensure the fiscal conveyance of items and I would like to start with this the yellow circle is what somebody called the postal services it's include conveyance of all fiscal items whether they are addressed or not it's included in the yellow circle and a part of this yellow circle is the universal service of obligation that should depend on national needs within this yellow circle this is a white circle that is the registered and unregistered addressed mail that is smaller than the postal service as such as many define it but we are talking also about the basic postal services and what is that it's not registered and unregistered addressed items as such because in these circles we have not put in any limitation when it comes to kilos for example and that is the main lack of the definitions we find throughout the world today it's it's a definitional universal service obligation it's not the definition of postal services as such and when I was leading a working group within CERP many years ago we were trying to define what is the the real postal services what is the what is the the source actually and the funny thing is that everybody knows what post is until they are asked to define it and it's like time everybody knows what time is until you have to define it then it's almost impossible so that's why we are striving with this definition and the core element of postal services is actually the red circle it's unregistered addressed items that is the unique thing that postal operators throughout the world does registered mail can be passes or all ordinary registered letters but they are all registered and they are based on an individual agreement between the the operator and the sender but the core thing that nobody else is dealing with is actually the red circle unregistered addressed items when you need a postal operator as a third party that you trust and the trusting thing is this very very special thing for postal operators throughout the world and still there are only the designated postal operators that is dealing with this red circle unregistered addressed items and I think we have to start with defining more clearly what is postal services and then we have to start to discuss and how to ensure universal communication services including the electronic services yes thank you very much thank you for saying also thank you very much for this very interesting reviews and food for thought about universal service and I give the floor to another colleague of mine Jack Hammond he's the chairman of the council of the Belgium Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunication Jack joined the BIPT the Belgium regulator in 2013 and before he has quite an interesting curriculum vita he worked for Disney Corporation and for Verizon business he was in Cisco so he comes from the private sector and then he changed to join the public sector as director channel for personal and organization development at the FPS personal and organization he is by by profession has a master in organizational psychology and has an additional degree in management and is now the as I said the chairman of the Belgium regulator who is also regulating telecom and postal services together and he was last year vice president of Perak track you have to flow but merci mark permette moi tout d'abord de remercier la Côte d'Ivoire en tant que pays haute et de remercier bien entendu le directeur général et le directeur général adjoint de UPU pour l'organisation cette conférence dire excellences but first of all I know that I have a challenge because we have the lunch afterwards then I have two questions for you please answer quickly first of it did you get a parcel home within the last three months show me your hands last three months okay thank you and did you send a person on mail or postcards within the last six months six months okay they still work to do you know when I was a young boy I enjoy a lot to the postman of course because I was getting a nice presence from my grandmother but also because when you think about postman you think about every time all the weather is it a letter is it a parcel they are just coming to your home to deliver it it is incredible and for a long time but I have to sorry about that mark to talk about my holidays because I was on leave last week and I don't know about you but when I'm traveling the first thing I need to do is to find some post office and to find posts and mailboxes and it's so attractive and you know interesting for me that whenever you go you will find in the middle of nowhere mailboxes this is just incredible that you are a small company you are in a small farm far away you will get your letters you will get your parcels but as you know we we told that's already for the last two days there are changes in the postal environment we see a fantastic grow of the parcels and in the panel six of course we have to address that because or PMEs SMEs small medium business enterprise they need of course postal services to be successful in the e-commerce and we see the transformation the transformation based on four pillars first of all dryful changes are based on new kind of competition secondly new kind of demands from companies and citizens last but not least collaboration trends between market players and of course a number of changes like Thorsten said between economical situation social situation and technology evolution but of course what we see and I don't want to discuss too much about that very exciting products emerging for example postal e-services but we see also some changes in behaviors like community mail and we see also that in the transformation of postal players they change the way they are delivering all mail and parcels for example in boxes home or in pick up points and we can even dream to get your lunch later on delivered here by post companies at ERGP we knew that it was the right time to think about what will be the USO in the future based on the existing European postal directive and then we first had to look on what's going on in Europe of course and what we see is that there are different trends like Thorsten said we don't have one single model fits all we have changes enlightenment coverage reduction different trends and that we need to understand but also in the world we have in Canada New Zealand or in the US different ways to think about postal services coverage and universal service obligations then we continue the exercise IRGP with our consultation and stakeholders meeting first of all we see that when we look about quality of service we see about number of postal access points or registered mail we have difference within Europe member states and then we decided to go through five questions first of all what could be the common minimum scope of USO including essential elements that should be guaranteed secondly who will finance that and how do we need to define a new SP provider what will be the relationship and impact on USO and competition effects and last but not least thinking about professional or private users we have of course to think which user category should be targeted by the USO ladies and gentlemen I don't know if we have to talk about evolution or we have to talk about revolution if we look to the first preliminary bottom up feedback we got from all the players and governments ministries attending to a stakeholders meeting few months ago what we can see about US definition is one we have to discuss about reduction or at least review the scope secondly we need to introduce more flexibility three we have to consider potentially some specific user groups and needs regarding designation we have to rethink about the way we will designate some USP providers public auctions tendering a lot of questions do we have to do that question mark about financing different way to do it self financing public financing or even compensation funds we still have to discuss that further about competition also leveraging what will be the impact on the current competition and the future of it ladies and gentlemen is the time to go to the next level I invite the whole audience to help ARGP and UPU to rethink about the future of USO because it's the time now to think about the future and I'm dreaming about a time in the world when I will order something from another country from small companies and getting delivered to my home independently when I'm living in the middle of nowhere like I call it and I hope that Belgium is not in the middle of nowhere but I really would like to invite all the members to a call to action to think about that I invite also you to have a look at the end of 2015 about the report and I would like to say thank you very much for the future thank you thank you thank you Jack Hamard for this presentation and I go immediately to the next one Mr. Yunus Gibrin his secretary general from the Pan-African Postal Union Mr. Yunus Gibrin was inspector of general of Cameroon's ministry of post and telecommunication chairman of the anti-corruption unit of post and telecommunications and ICD sectors in Cameroon he brings a lot of postal experience I think you are since 30 years I didn't think you're that old but think 30 years experience in postal development in Cameroon and in other countries he's also he was also representative of Cameroon to the council of administration of the UPU so he knows UPU very well when they served there as a chairman of the technical corporation and postal reform protract group in UPU but now you present represent the Pan-African Postal Union Papu that's also where we met in Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast recently you have the floor Yunus Gibrin from the Swiss authority that allowed this meeting so far from Africa but not from Africa before starting my brief exposure I just wanted to highlight that we have observed I just noticed that we have a convergence division with the UPU in relation to the theme of the conference to bring innovative solutions integrated and inclusive the African Union for its 2063 vision of development its first inspiration is a prosperous United Africa thanks to an inclusive growth and based on sustainable development and the UPU last week organized a conference on its 2020 vision which is the pro-active post-African post to develop innovative solutions integrated and inclusive for the satisfaction of the clients and all of the pre-established parties whose term inclusion inclusion comes back in the three institutions very quickly I don't want to waste time for you to talk about in detail you have our aspirations of the Agenda 2063 of Africa that we want that is displayed on your screen it was purchased on the Pan-African Postal Union and the 44 member country it was created in 1981 it is a government institution specialized in the African Union and a few indicators that are displayed on your screen are sufficiently eloquent to tell us please I can't see my laptop there because I can't see it well here is the second what is my laptop here I thought I could read the screen but I can't read it from far away it's not okay it's me there is electronics even at the post so we have we have here nearly 76 percent of adults are not banking in Africa more than 20 percent of post offices in Africa have no electricity and even less connectivity almost 12 percent of the population has no access to post services at all which gives us at the level of the Pan-African Union of posts to this strategic vision and its missions which consists of promoting reforms in view of developing the post office in physical, electronic and financial Africa in all the countries members and encouraging cooperation between the current parties for reasons of time economy I don't give you the details that are displayed on the table it will be in all cases in the documentation that will be distributed but what I would like to emphasize is the challenge we are facing which concerns the rapid evolution of the market and the acceleration of technological innovations, more and more clients demanding in terms of quality of service a drastic drop in the volume of the courier with degradation of results and the reserving of investment reserves which with on the other hand an organization of service in constant evolution on the one hand we have requirements for the post office simple, accessible, of quality and affordable and in Africa contrary to the black that has just been presented by one of my predecessors in Africa this demand is more and more comprehensive and with concerns for the development of the post office market more and more open to the competition. So how in these conditions prepare the universal post office tomorrow? So there is a need to define a post office service to adapt to the needs of our time and to be able to take into account their evolution being heard that in one of our, one of the titles of our panel, what concerns me, we are talking about the dichotomy of development towards the evolution of new technologies I said dichotomy maybe but not antonomy because the technology is ours it depends only on us and only on us to use it in good health since even the criminals use it when they want it and we therefore have four major axes in the improvement of the quality of service diversification of physical, financial and electronic services the improvement of infrastructure and the post office regulation which are the major axes with an improvement of quality service to run it as well as the international interior, a diversification of services in a wide sense that touches as well the financial inclusion than digital because the financial inclusion theme has become currently the major theme of our organization Mer l'Union africaine which aims at an integrated development as I mentioned earlier at the horizon of 2063 quand elle fait tira son centenaire l'amélioration des infrastructures est l'autre part de marche de marche la plus importante parce que les faiblesses, les frais au développement en afrique est constitué de l'insuffisance des infrastructures et de l'absence d'adressage et de la vétisité de moyens de communication ce qui au niveau de l'Union africaine nous a conduit à retenir une priorité la priorité de priorité grâce à une collaboration étroite avec l'Union possède universelle et l'Union panafricaine de poste pour mettre d'abord non ne voulait pas mettre la charade devant les bs parce que la la connectivité est l'inclusion que nous voulons pour l'ensemble des citoyens africains ou qu'il se trouve quelle que soit la taille de l'air portefeuille nécessite une infrastructure de base en termes de connectivité connectivité qui elle-même est ribiteur de la mise à disposition d'une électricité permanente et fiable au moment où on en a besoin ce qui a fait de ce projet un projet phare qui va donner lieu à l'organisation au siège de l'Union africaine au mois de doute prochain d'une conférence mondiale des barrières de fonds pour le financement de ce grand projet qui permettra à tous les africains de pouvoir être connectés de faire partie du monde et d'être tout simplement des citoyens du monde et également l'adressage qui est un autre fact