Welcome to the Think Wider Webinar Series, News Perspectives on Domestic Revenue Mobilization. I'm Kunal Sender, Director of Year New Wider. This is the fifth edition of the Think Wider Webinar Series, New Perspectives in Domestic Revenue Mobilization, and the title of today's webinar is, Potential Domestic Savings in the Global South. Now we know that domestic financing plays a crucial role in the growth prospects of developing countries. One of the very important factors we have on economic growth is a country with higher domestic savings tend to experience higher economic growth than others. However, we see a large variation in savings rates across the world. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa's average savings rate in 2022 is 22% as compared to 30% in South Asia and 36% in East Asia. Clearly, this may have implications for economic growth in these regions. So how can we increase savings rates in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa? What are the drivers of savings rates? And what are the instruments that evolve to policy makers to increase savings? What is the role of macroeconomic policy and financial reforms? How can we think of new sources of long-term capital for developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa? So we can try and address several of these questions in the next one hour, and we're going to bring together academia and policy makers, policy analysts in this discussion, and try to get a sense of the real challenges facing developing countries, increasing savings, and what we can do about it. So let's get started. And I'm going to introduce now the panelists in turn as we speak, and then I'm going to ask them to speak for about seven to eight minutes on a specific question and ask them, and then we're going to have time for about 30 minutes for question and answers. So let me introduce the panelists. So first we have Rose Ungugge, who is the Executive Director of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, Kipra in short, Kenya's leading think tank. She's involved in providing technical guidance, capacity building on policy and strategy formulation, the government of Kenya. Prior to joining Kipra, Rose was a senior advisor in the IMF. She's been a member of the Central Bank of Kenya, the Monetary Policy Committee, and she has vast teaching experience in the University of Nairobi School of Economics. Welcome, Rose, to the webinar. We also have Tobias Rasmussen, who's at the IMF and as a resident representative in Kenya, and where he's also been working also in many other countries in Africa and elsewhere. So he was a Mission Chief for Guinea-Bissau, and he's also worked in Ghana and Zambia. Tobias also worked in countries in the IMF's Asian, Middle Eastern, and Western Hemisphere European Departments. Welcome Tobias also to the webinar. And then third, we have Amir Labdoi, who's a Development Economist and Lecturer at the Product Economy of Development at SOAS, the University of London. Amir has worked before at the LSE as a Channing House Research Fellow. Thanks, Amir, for joining us in this webinar. We're expecting a fourth panelist, Juguna Undugu, who's a Cabinet Secretary of the National Treasury, the Economic Planning of Kenya. Dr. Undugu is before that, before he joined as Cabinet Secretary very recently in the National Treasury, he was the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium based in Nairobi, and also held the position of the Government of Kenya Central Bank Governor from 2007 until March 2015. So I'm gonna ask now each of the panelists one question just to get started, and then we're gonna try and have further questions as we have in the Q&A. So my first question is to Rose. Rose, the question I have for you, and this is to link to the overall question with an answer in this webinar, is what are the drivers of savings in the developing world? What are the policies challenges in increasing savings, especially based on the Kenya experience? And what do you think are the instruments that policymakers can use to increase savings in the short to medium term? Over to you. So Rose, you can go ahead. Just a moment, we will, yeah. I think I'm okay now. Yes. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, Professor Kunal. I think the topic we are looking at today is very critical given that for any country to actually see economic growth, need to invest, and for them to invest, they need to mobilize resources. So I'll go quickly through some slides, try and bring out the key issues that I find in Kenya, and that they'll be responding to the questions that you have asked. So, okay. So the first thing that is motivating this one is to say that, as you have observed, the savings levels are very low. And if you try to compare where Kenya was in the 70s and where it is since mid 1990s, you'll notice that we are yet to get back to the levels of savings that we had before even we liberalized the market in 1991-92 period. So this has seen the savings gap actually increase. But over time, we have seen the government put up the various initiative to enhance savings. For example, in various development plans since the independence, the government has emphasized on saving culture. And in the recent long-term development agenda, that is the vision 2030, the expectation is that we'll grow our savings from about 15.6% of GDP. That is just before the vision 2030 implementation started to about, you can hear me? Oh, yes. Yeah, all right. Sorry, I seem like there's a fluctuation. Yeah, to about 26% in 2012-2013 and all that with a vision to reach at 29% by 2030. At the moment, we are very far behind even the 2006-03 levels of 15.6%. In addition, the government has really put a lot of effort in establishing channels to facilitate the savings, including the establishment of the NSSF for long-term savings. Commercial banks, including the National Bank and Cooperative Bank and others, a lot of reforms have also gone into the capital markets and other platforms have also been established. In addition, Kenya actually has gone through the liberalization process for the financial sector, but our interest rate policy has seen a reverse of, we saw one unattended in early 2000s and recently, of course, we had the interest rate stopping, which again has been reversed. Further is the commitment for the government to fiscal sustainability in the aim of mobilizing public savings. If we look at what has been happening in the space of savings channel, you'll notice that since 2006 to the current period, using the data that is collected from FinAXS, you'll notice that there has been a shift across the various sources. Say, for example, the post bank is going down, but there is a heavy increase in mobile money channel that is now being used. A lot of activity also for group and cameras is just social groups that are being used by various members of the society. But in addition, if the motivation to save is very diverse, there are those who are saving targeting to either buy a house, targeting to do ordinary things in the household, targeting to finance education, but there are also others that are saving actually to invest. For example, in the aperture input, as well as in other elements. Significant shock have hit the market. For example, if you look at the inflation element, you'll notice that in 1992 period, when we had a very sharp increase in inflation and also in 2007, these are critical points that you can see also the savings level responding to. And when you look at the deposit rate and the savings level, I tried to get colors, but they couldn't get, but this element here, I have the deposit rates. The deposit rates fell so sharply in 2002 with a new government coming in and the economic recovery strategy being implemented. It fell very sharply and at the same time, you can see also a decline in the savings rate, which has not been recovered since that time. Other developments that are important to note is the demographic dynamics. If you look at the population for Kenya, we have a very big population of zero to 17, over 50%, but over time, you'll notice that the youth entering the 18 to 34 blockage are actually increasing, which means that for us to move forward with enhancing the domestic savings, then we have to cater for that youth that is entering the work level. In terms of the deficit, as I've indicated, there's been an attempt to really tame the increase in the fiscal deficit, but of course, over time, we've seen that there are various demands that have come, especially with the new government structure, the devolution process, and other shocks that have hit the country since 2010. So in the analysis that we have done, looking at the private savings function and using the life cycle model, we tried to analyze the factors that are influencing savings behavior in the country. And what you see in red are those factors that are not significant, either in the short run or in the long term. And for this private savings framework, what you notice is that public or fiscal policy plays a key role in enhancing your private savings. Sharks, even from external sources, measured by the terms of trade, also have an implication as far as the savings are concerned in the long term. Although wealth is having a negative effect in the short term, that effect is not significant in the long run. Inflation is significant both in the short term and in the long term, but in the short run, there seem to be a lag of one with a positive and significant implication on savings. Per capita income, as usual, is a key factor in terms of enhancing a savings. And it's one of the areas that the government, even in the development plan, was trying to focus on seeing that the low income earners were not actually saving a lot. Deposit rates, this is giving us a negative effect in the short run, but in the long run, it's negative but not a significant aspect of how the income effects and the abstention effects playing a part is what is determining the sign for the deposit rates. Further is the age dependency ratio has a positive effect. And as you can see from the demographic dynamics that are in Kenya, you can actually tell where this is coming from. When we looked at the national savings framework, we had a very few factors that were influencing your savings. And of course, the national savings have other aspects in addition to the private savings, we have also the government savings. And the only factors that tended to be significant were the terms of trade, and of course inflation. And the financial development was giving us a negative sign. And age dependency was not significant. From this, the policy implications that you are drawing from it is one fiscal sustainability, given the implication that it has on the private savings. External shocks are very critical and seeing the implication that it has on the exchange rate as the path to savings through interest rates. Price stability to enhance enhancing price stability. And of course, for example, in Kenya, price stability is really determined by food inflation. And that would be the very core area that we need to work on to ensure that price stability is maintained. Quality and inclusive economic growth. It's not just having economic growth. What we found very significant is the per capita income. So enhancing per capita income means that we must have quality, inclusive economic growth. For the interest rate policy, this is crucial. And the reverse in the policy can themselves create uncertainty in the market. So trying to ensure that we sustain the interest rate policy gives certainty to the savers. Job creation to absorb the increasing youth category, as I've indicated, they are all shifting towards entering the labor market. And what we need is actually to sustain them with decent jobs so that they are able to enhance the savings. And of course, finally is looking at beyond the financial savings, the non-cash savings, given that sometimes the targeted savers, they don't, after they have put their savings and they have gotten their assets, they again start again with the targeting for savings. Because given seven million, thanks very much. Thank you, Rose. Actually, I mean, one of the important things you mentioned was on macrocomic stability and price stability. There's an open question that given the high inflation rates you're seeing in Africa and also obviously in other developing countries and also in developed countries, what does it mean for savings going forward? Given we know that inflation can be quite detrimental, high inflation can be quite detrimental to savings. I should also mention, I should have mentioned that earlier that the paper that you drew from in your presentation is on the UNU wider website. It's part of the project on the basic savings shortfall in developing countries, what can be done about it. It's already a wider working paper and we already have a link to the working paper in the chat. So you can, so others can take a look at the paper. It's a very important paper and it's very, very rich. Embrick analysis, definitely worth reading for those who are interested in this area. So I wanna move on to now, I think I've actually now seen Dr. Undugo online. And so actually, I have already introduced you Dr. Undugo because I thought I knew that you might be joining with late. So maybe I think it's important that we move on to you because the some of the implications that came from Rosengu's presentation, mobile money and so on is important for to understand that how important is that for overall savings, not only in Kenya but also of course in the African continent. So the question I had for you, if I can just jump into the question then is what is the role of FinTech in increasing savings in Kenya but also in Africa in Africa? What can Kenya's experience suggest the rest of Africa and what are the challenges on trying to use FinTech for mobilizing savings? Over to you Dr. Undugo. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much. And let me say that I'm very happy to be this part of the program. And I'm sorry because I think my life has become difficult to plan. I kept on trying to defend this time but somewhat I was almost getting I had to chase people away from my office. I think Tobias is not in the same kind of problem or rules like I am in. Let me say this is a subject matter I really quite appreciate and like because I've come a long way with it since 2007. But in actual fact, what we introduced in 2007 has become very, very important. In fact, what we introduced although it is an embodiment of mobile phone financial services platform, it was actually a retail electronic payments platform. And which by the mere fact that is a retail electronic payments platform it talks to itself in a number of ways. Of course the first general conclusion everybody makes is that once you have a retail electronic payments system that is efficient and transparent and effective and also safe, it means that it opens it is going to be a game changer. And for me that is a very, very important concept especially in a world where you have segmented markets. If you have a product like that that can navigate across segments of the market that is actually a very, very important contribution to the whole ecosystem. But then moving further it's actually it creates what we call accessibility but most people don't realize how that solves many of the constraints when it increases accessibility. In Kenya of course the initial should I say achievement as Rosa just said is actually financial inclusion. But financial inclusion itself it was on the services bait. But within no time banks realize that oh here we have a technological platform that can actually help us manage micro accounts whether it's micro savers or micro depositors or even micro rendering. All those things went hand in hand and the developments are quite pervasive. And I'm very happy that I managed after a long struggle in my work to actually come up with a case study of M-Pesa. And I think I've shared it across and it's also in the ARC website which I think I liked a lot. And I made sure that I finalized it even after many years. But within it I've done, I've covered so many papers. But the most important thing is that the constraint, of course, one of those successes one success led to another. Let me give you a chronology of events. The payment system is working. It encourages banks to use that payments platform to actually introduce virtual savings account and virtual reading accounts. It allows us, it allows the banks also to correct credit score so that they can actually change the collateral technology. And finally, you find that then there is space for everyone to participate and even to use that system. Those benefits are quite clear. And for purposes of even that space it also brought in so many other actors in the service that you did not even need to go to look for those services. For example, e-government services work. In 2017, IMF came up with a volume that the title was digitization and the design of public finance. And one of the arguments was that one of the strong conclusions was that the digitization can actually lead to a new design of public finance. One, because even tax payments platforms can be developed but more importantly revenue administration would be very effective and minimize leakage. And for us that's a very important conclusion coming up. So essentially we've gone through that but because I also want to make sure that I save on time and maybe other issues. Let me say that banks developed that very fast but there were emerging issues. In one of my papers and even the case study I actually argue that we need to push this frontier forward. So let me present four points that would push the market. Which also if you flip the other side it would show that there were disadvantages or there are constraints in the market. The first thing is that if this is the game changer if the richer or turning payments is the game changer then it means that we have to widen the physical infrastructure of the fiber optics so that the telecoms can actually ride on that physical infrastructure and create the core infrastructure which is now M-Pesa which is riding on the physical infrastructure. Because no one should be left behind if this is the game changer then it means that we have to make sure that we have widespread connectivity. So connectivity becomes a solution for the future but it's also for countries or even in the same country where regions are not covered it becomes a major problem. So make sure that no one is left behind. The second thing is that I am one strong believer of development of markets but for us to develop the markets we also need to nudge the markets into the optimal path. We have to regulate that market and more importantly we have to protect that market. Most of the time markets fail to achieve the desired goals and especially when we come to savings for example we come to digital adding virtual savings in Kenya and because somehow somewhere we drop the ball. I'll give you an example. One of the things that we did was we were, I praised the whole idea of coming up with credits course generating credits course which could change the collateral technology. But all of a sudden another regulator who regulates betting digital, digital rending and digital betting cannot be good. There could be a strange bet for us was that most people could borrow they could borrow a virtually and go into digital betting. In the end they don't win the bets so essentially they accumulate debts and then the credits course instead of worsening they get into CRBS and they are blacklisted. So you can see that instead of using the credits course positively the CRB uses it as a binary tool. So in a sense it becomes quite problematic. That is something that is an institution of area problem. Let me move to the second problem. Now the second advantage. One of them is that most countries especially in Kenya we succeeded because we had an identity card or an identity number system. But we need to move on to an electronic ID system. An electronic ID identifier is going to secure the market. It's going to be a security to the market. That is something that is quite important. The third one which is an institution of area problem or it can be an institution of area problem it can be a constraint. It's actually thinking about the whole idea of how different payments because this is where most the Reddit telcos developed the idea. The first move advantage can be actually very good but success has its own pitfalls. So you found that especially in Kenya everybody gives the Kenyan example. There is a monopoly but it is a first move advantage. Why I say it's a pitfalls for success has its own pitfalls is that because of that success everybody wanted and PESA we pushed the dominant the first move into providing networks and solutions. In the end that physical infrastructure cannot be replicated by those that come later. It's so expensive to replicate. So in a sense you have to look at it in terms of an interoperability in a different sense. For me the advantage of interoperability across payment system is that it emerges the market and lowers the unit cost and then it means that it becomes sustainable. But for Kenya for example in one of the contributions that I've made recently is to say we need some recent arrangements of the physical infrastructure that can make it very, very efficient. That and maybe more importantly we have to defend ourselves against institutional failure problems in regulatory capacity. Regulatory capacity is very, very important. We want a regulator to know exactly where the constraints are and how to move the market to the next level. If we don't do that then obviously we get to a point where we fail. And when we fail it means that a crack of section of the market may not succeed. I think the issue and the comments worldwide is that we succeeded in Kenya especially coming up with a return on payments platform because the central bank is a regulator of banks and communication authority is a regulator of telcos came together and agreed and understood each other. But there will be an intertwine of other regulators who may not understand that space. And that is where problems can emerge. I've given you examples of digital ending and all that. So these are the issues. But then we come to the main subject matter. Having, if I say those are the issues then it means that we have to go back and say what about the savings themselves that FinTechs have really carried us they have carried us this far. It means also those savings must be dependent very much on how do we regulate institutions or how do we sustain those institutions that are carrying our savings. And the second things are those savings are supposed to also generate investments. And then we have to see the path from generating savings to investments and return on those investments are going to be commensurate. So I'm happy about where we have come from it's a good showcase but we have to watch in terms of an institutional failure problem that can actually constrain the achievement in this process. Those are the points I wanted to share which I believe that I've summarized them in a way that is coming up. But then also before I leave that, let me say finally I always support that the government should tax a booming sector because essentially that is how the government can generate the resources.  When I wrote, there's a paper I developed and was published in Brookings and I argued that when you tax return electronic transactions or mobile financial services you have to be careful that you don't create a reaction that there is a thin line between the sensitivity of those small savers or small transactors when the tax itself creates a wedge. We have seen in Kenya for example in the recent months and the recent years maybe two, three years ago you find that there's more cash now than it was because essentially people are sensitive to the cost of transactions. So that is something that we should watch on and it's a pitfall that I'm seeing coming up. I do hope now that I'm here in this position we can reverse this so that I don't call it a disadvantage but I'm warning in fact the title of the Brookings paper was taxation of mobile phone based transactions and what should African countries run from the Kenyan case? When I wrote that paper the tax, the tax rate, the excise tax rate VAT on the transactions was 10%. It is now almost 20%. You can imagine the pitfalls. So that is some of the things that we should watch and it can actually produce some failure. So thank you very much and sorry for taking more time than was allocated to me and thank you very much for seeing everyone. Kunal, thank you very much. Thank you Dr. Umber actually it was very insightful and I think what you obviously make it's so important for policymakers that to bring about what we've seen in the Kenyan success story with our base and mobile phone transactions there are many other things you got to do including physical structure like fiber optics and so on and the regulatory environment has to be supportive of this. And I think that's something that I think could be something that is useful for other policy makers elsewhere in Africa and on tax session two I think it's a really important message that we're getting the taxation right of this particular sector. So we can come back to that in the Q&A but thank you so much again I should mention that your paper is online on our website and the UNU wider website. It's perhaps the most comprehensive review one has seen of FinTech in Africa. So absolutely essential reading for everyone and the link is then on the chat. So let's move on now to Tobias Rasmussen. Tobias I think follows very nicely from what you've heard from Rose and Guggy and Dr. Ndugo about issues around FinTech around reforms around macroeconomic policies. So I would like to ask you to speak on the role of macroeconomic policy probably defined in augmenting domestic savings in Africa and can financial reforms help in increasing savings rates? And it's so which type of reforms is the most effective because there's been quite a bit of debate about financial liberalization and having not necessarily a positive effect on savings in Africa. So I wanted to you to also reflect a little bit on this discussion of financial reforms and also macroeconomic policy over to you. Thank you, Konal and indeed honor and a pleasure to be here. I have a few slides. So let me try sharing my screen here. Okay, is that coming through? Yes. No? No, not yet. I think Anna might have your slides, right? In case you can't share it, Anna can possibly. So let me just try again. Sorry about this. Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Oh yeah. Yeah, so much of this actually follows up on what we already have heard from both Rose and from the CS. So here's a slide similar to what Rose was showing from the financial access survey in Kenya but more recent data showing the motivations. And I don't think this has changed so much over time but I think our important thing I would take from this is that there was a very large precautionary motive in savings in Kenya and I think in the region generally. So when we think about why households save important to keep in mind that it's not just for wealth accumulation, long-term savings it has a very significant element of precautionary savings, liquidity management, having some funds for an emergency, a medical emergency or simply just expenses that's perhaps lumped up. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind when we're talking about savings. Then at the broader macro level, you spoke about this, Kumaran. I think where savings really are important is that link with investments. So this is really the old famous Feldstein-Horioca result that there is a correlation between savings and investment. If capital was entirely mobile, one might think that there would be no correlation, savings not necessarily influencing investment but in fact, we do see a significant correlation and that correlation is especially strong in low-income countries. So this is then linked to why we think that savings is important for investment and ultimately growth. The chart on the right shows savings rates across countries. We see that in Sub-Saharan Africa, actually overall savings rates not that different from high-income countries, but lower than middle-income countries. And I think some of those countries in Asia that you were also referring to, Kumar. But as Rose also had in one of her slides, we see that the savings rate in Kenya had fallen down below that regional average, recovered a little bit in the past few years, but it's still relatively low. So I think there is a lot to be said here for policies to boost savings generally, but perhaps particularly in Kenya. Although I would also just put in the caveat of what we think about in terms of savings, how we measure it matters. So in the concept of savings, you would not count, for example, spending that households use to educate their children. But in reality that is investment for the future. So in Kenya, it is certainly the case that many families use a very large share of their income on educating their children. So perhaps that Kenyan savings rate is not as low as it might appear. So some caveats to keep in mind there, I think. But on the question of policies to promote savings, so I would distinguish between policies at the macro level, which is very much about ensuring a stable favorable economic environment, I think consistent with the findings in Rosa's paper, things like low inflation, reducing the fiscal deficit. And I would put perhaps also the external, the current account deficit in the same category, policies to promote growth. But then also that link to the precautionary element of savings, social protection is really important. Here, I think there is an interesting example or policy innovation development in Kenya. New government is moving to significantly scale up the contribution rates to the national social security system. So that has the potential, I think to work on two levels that are important in relation to savings. One, increase overall savings in the economy and provide funds for investment that way. But also in as far as that social security system is also providing social protection, you're addressing some of those needs that people have that have caused them to engage in precautionary savings. But how that system is managed is of course also very important. Then the other category, financial reforms here, I think important to look for making an efficient and inclusive financial sector, many of the agenda items there that the CS spoke about, healthy competition, new products and in particular also the scope for expanding the reach of products, financial inclusion through microfinance, mobile banking services and all that. And then the regulatory environment, consumer protection all important to ensure that there is trust in the financial system. Now, as an example of the importance of some of these innovations in the area, I think also instructive to look at a slide that Rose also had, but without 2021, the use of savings by instrument in Kenya. And one thing that is really striking in this data is the columns at the bottom where you see bank financing shooting up from about 10% of savers using banks to save back a decade ago to 58% in 2021. And the growth there is really via these mobile platforms. It's what the CS was talking about the apps that people are able to use linked to bank accounts that are able to save easily. And policy also playing an important role there in 2021 following COVID, we saw the removal of some of the fees that applied for moving money between mobile money accounts and bank accounts. So reduced transaction costs and this presumably has contributed importantly to that surge we saw in the use of bank savings. You also see in this chart savings on mobile money platforms themselves. These are the digital wallets. So that is an important part of savings, not growing as much, but it's been there for a decade or so. These savings are not earning interest. So they're very convenient to use, but they don't have the capacity to renumerate savings in the same way as the bank products do. So overall, I think a lot of role for policies to stimulate innovation, encourage use of savings through these new technologies. And we've seen in Kenya how this really can change the landscape overall savings, the percentage of people that are saving has really increased over time. And I think mobile technologies and the regulatory environment surrounding that has really been important. So let me end there and thank you. Thank you, Tobias. I think one important issue that came up in your presentation, especially your final graph, was increasing use of banks for savings, which is really important I think because banks are a source of loanable funds for investment and that's what they're there for. And I think that's really interesting that we can see the shift over time, quite dramatically actually in Kenya, especially in the last couple of years. So let me move on now to Amir left doing and I'm going to ask Amir to speak about a particular question and issue that I think needs also a lot of attention, which is that in Africa we seem to have not too much availability of long-term capital. And if you look at capital markets, stock markets, they are underdeveloped and yet Africa needs long-term capital. And one of the ways it can do that is through sovereign wealth funds because Africa does have several sovereign wealth funds. And Amir, of course, has written a very nice paper with Presidonia Addison, which is now also on our website, which one again, one should take a look at. So Amir, I wanted to ask you therefore, the question that just, what I want to be opposed to you is can sovereign wealth funds be a source or long-term capital for development in Africa? And then related to that, what do African policymakers need to do to maximize the development potential of sovereign wealth funds? I mean, over to you, seven minutes if that's okay. We need some time for discussion. Thank you, Ganal and thanks for the invitation. It's very interesting to hear those different perspectives shared earlier in the hour. So to answer your question, obviously sovereign wealth funds have become a symbol of national success, but do they really contribute to national development goals, especially in Africa? And I guess the answer is yes, but they can, but their impact depends on a variety of factors and the devil is in the details. So to answer first regarding, their potential contribution to future development, we need to first look at the past, right? And what has been done to date was the track record. And this is exactly what we've done, as you mentioned with Tony Addison in our recent study for Unwider, looking at kind of assessing the impact of sovereign wealth funds and thinking about their future. And several insights or findings emerge. The first one is over the past 20 years, the track record of sovereign wealth funds in Africa is quite bleak, right? The capitalization of sovereign wealth funds in Africa has shrunk by two thirds since 2013, right? So now it's a total capitalization of about $50 billion compared to $170 billion in 2013. And that's the result of the end of the 2010 commodity supercycle and subsequent shock like the COVID-19 crisis where governments had for good reasons to draw savings from there, which led to dissavings. Most of the capital base of sovereign wealth funds in Africa come from commodities, mostly oil and gas, but also mining to a less extent. And that also brings the context of the climate crisis, right? And that's why it's particularly relevant to wonder about the role of sovereign wealth funds as we go into an ecological crisis because this impacts considerably the optimal ways to manage savings on the African continent. And that's because Africa depends to a large extent on agricultural exports, right? Which are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in temperature, in precipitation, which also, and same with fossil fuels, right? These are, they're highly at risk of the global transition where there would be considerable losses of income for fossil fuel exporters. Countries like Algeria, Angola, and Nigeria, which are highly dependent on them. So this really needs to, we really need to rethink, right? The optimal public savings of those commodities and how to use them to faster development. Now, the second part of the answer is that the impact of sovereign wealth funds for development, at least when we think about their future impact. And by the way, one reason why they remain relevant even if they've been historically funded, right? Financed by fossil fuels, right? Even in the context of a decriminalized world, it's expected that mining commodities, the prices will go up and several African countries are key producers of critical minerals. So it really brings back the relevance of sovereign wealth funds for those countries specifically. Then obviously the impact that they have on development depends on the type of sovereign wealth funds that we are talking about. There are different types of sovereign wealth funds and the three that are worth talking about today. The first ones are fiscal stabilization funds are to smoothen government spending. The second type are intergenerational funds and the third types are development funds. And the argument that we make with Tony is that even though fiscal stabilization funds are the most popular at the moment, especially in the African continent, fiscal stabilization and intergenerational funds, they're not very well suited to national development needs and they have high opportunity costs, which is why in the context of long-term structural transformation, it might be worth prioritizing development funds, including national development banks, even though they require strong governance mechanisms. Now I'll briefly mention perhaps the why we think that. Fiscal stabilization funds are basically they aim to provide a fiscal buffer in case of a shock, right? There, for example, that includes Algeria's ponder regulation under a set or Botswana's Pula fund. The issue is that for them to be able to cushion an external shock that needs to be large enough. And what we've seen across the African continent is that it's very unlikely that a fund can be a stabilization fund can be capitalized to the extent that will be effective in case of a massive external shock. And we've seen it with the COVID crisis where countries like where in Nigeria, the sovereign fund was just not equipped to deal with the shock of this magnitude. The other issue is that these have very high opportunity costs. That means that the funding they basically, they involve mostly the acquisition of financial assets like sovereign bonds, right? Which are highly liquid. And that means that less funds are freed up for domestic development projects. And the issue also is that the returns on those investments in liquid assets that are low yielding are typically three, four percent, right? The top of the class in Norwegian fund is about four to five. And that raises another question they have in context because of debt servicing, right? Many African countries face disfavorable terms when it comes to borrowing. And that means that, you know, many of them, the interest rates on debt is about, is higher than six percent, right? Some even pay interest rates that are higher than 10%. And that means that, you know, investing in those financial assets in the sovereign bonds bring back less money than the interest rate they have on debt servicing. So in some of those contexts, this is a very fiscally conservative argument that actually makes more sense to pay down national debts as opposed to invest in fiscal stabilization where you receive less returns. The second point on intergenerational funds is that, you know, the idea is that non-renewable resources don't belong only to the current generation but also to the future generations, right? So you save up for the future. However, there are several issues. The returns can be quite low on financial assets compared to the development projects. Development projects which can benefit current generation as well as future generations. And even if you look at things like education spending and healthcare spending, right? Given high levels of mortality, infant mortality rate in the African continent, you actually benefit future generations more if you invest in maternal care, right? Which ensures that more people actually have a healthy life as opposed to keeping the money in financial assets and paying down future generations in the future. And the other issue is in terms of climate risks, right? Financial assets are particularly vulnerable to climatic and transition risks, which means that spending on development projects offers more resilience as a savings mechanism. That leaves us to development funds. And here the idea is those funds encourage national development by investing a portion of their portfolio in the equity or debt of local companies with a potential for growth as well as domestic infrastructure. And their role is really to address market failures and capital constraints which prevent, you know, industrial development and diversification in African countries. So their aim is really to crowd in private capital. And here are a few things can be said. Some exist on the African continent. I think a few that need to be named are at least the Gabon's Strategic Investment Fund, Senegal's Francis, or the Ghanaian Infrastructure Investment Fund. By the way, Ghana and Nigeria are the only two African countries that have all three types of funds at once, right? And so this helps address also existing challenges of combat dependence, trade dependence, technological dependence. However, something that needs to be stressed is that the success of these types of funds are highly dependent on strong governance mechanisms, right? To ensure the effectiveness, proper public disclosure mechanisms, parliamentary oversight to show transparency in terms of how decisions on investments are made as well as proper evaluation and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. It's also better to have one fund than two. And yeah, and basically just to conclude, it's hard, right? For governments to pursue a consistent strategy when it comes to public savings, political expediency can often win out, especially around election time. But it's important to remember that given the patterns of combat dependence across the African continent, it's extremely important to think about linking public savings with a structural transformation agenda, which is why it's as clear as ever that African governments and their international partners need to take both steps towards prioritizing the right type of development finance to ensure future prosperity. Thank you. Thanks, Amin. Actually, there's a question for you already in the chat, but I'll get to that question in a minute. That's a really good question, actually. But I think before, I wanna know because we don't have much time for Q&A, I wanted to pose a question I've seen in the chat, which is kind of interlinked question that's coming up about Kenya, which is that the question is that we see this decline in mobile money in 2021, quite a sharp decline, which I think Tobi has showed us in the graph. And there's also this question that we have a lot of increase in MFI, it's Microfinance Institutions in Kenya, but also we see in other African countries. So there's two questions, interlinked questions here. One is that why are we seeing this decrease in mobile money if it's true in Kenya? And also linked to that, Microfinance Institutions, how important are they? I mean, if that's, we see this growth in their number and the scale, does it, what implication does it have for savings? So can there be a vehicle for savings or not? Or are they too small and too fragmented to do that? I'm going to now go in order of the panelists. So Rose, did you want to say a little bit about what we see with mobile money in Kenya? If this decline that we see for only one year, is this going to be a trend or not? And also Microfinance Institutions, and I'm going to ask you to speak to the same question and then Tobi is too. So Rose, go ahead, thanks. Yeah, thanks very much for that. I'm assuming that is data that is coming from in access, because if you look at data that is published by the Central Bank of Kenya, that decline is not feasible. So, of course, during the corona pandemic period, we saw quite a significant increase in 2020 and probably it's the perception element that is being reflected in the fin access element. When it comes to the MFI, one of the things that we have in Kenya is two classes of MFI, those which are deposit taking and they are under the Central Bank surveillance, of course, the ones that are taking deposits. And there's been growing activity as far as MFI's are concerned, but at the same time, there are those which have faced some challenges and there is an element of patches of some of these MFI's by banking institutions here. Thank you, Rose. So, Dr. Ndube, the same question to you. I mean, do you see a kind of secular decline in mobile money happening in Kenya as people now shift to banks as we saw from what Tobi has showed us or not? And the other question is microfinance institutions. How important do you think they could be for mobilizing savings? I think for me, thank you very much. And I did raise an issue about taxation of mobile phone-based transactions. And of course, that is in itself because essentially, let's face it, essentially it was for those people who found that going to the banks and even compliance cost was very, very expensive. And once we create a wedge between them and the cost of transactions, you may find that there is a storing behavior. That's one aspect. The other aspect is that, and this is something that we have all had. By the time this current government came, this current administration came in, there were quite a sizable number of people who were blacklisted by the Sierra B's so that they could not participate in that particular market we're just salvaging them. So in a sense, what has thrown is actually an institutional failure problem, as we can see, because the blacklisted, some of them with as little, because there are other products. Let me explain, maybe I need it to go back. And I think, I don't know what the rules touched on it. And I don't know what to buy as touched on it. One of the things has been, there has been other products that have come in. And one of the most maybe corporate in terms of new products was actually a form of overdraft facility. And that overdraft facility became very popular. But of course, when it is popular and easy to get, it can be abused. And at one time, they were close to 13 million customers blacklisted because they were not paying the overdraft facility. So in a sense, what you're really saying is that it is important to bring in also many of these products. But if you don't have a filtering mechanism to see that they are not abused, it can work out negatively. So there's a combination of various factors. For me, I consider them as an institutional failure problem because you need to nudge the market to the optimal path. But if you create compliance costs that are so expensive, the markets, most of the customers leave the market. And that is something that becomes quite critical. And I like to even Tobias the way he rated in terms of why most people save. Most of the time, it is actually to safeguard themselves in terms of future shortfalls. But at the same time, you have to be careful about where savings are. For example, if you look at Tobias, if you look at the time series data, you would see that when there's a bank failure, there's a major problem that takes place, especially the savings or even exodus of savings from banks deep because of the fear. But I don't know whether the data have refilled that, but it's one of the areas. But I wanted to emphasize those two points, one in terms of cost of transactions. And the second one, in terms of an institutional failure problem to recognize, actually, if you create a binary tool, it becomes problematic. We need to get a better mechanism of how you filter the digital-ending platforms because essentially people can vote. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Ndukha, it was very, very helpful. Tobias, I was wondering with you to reflect a little bit on this question very quickly. You don't have the audio a bit over time. Yes. The other thing that's come up is the inflation question. We have seen this high inflation happening mostly because of food prices. Do you think that is coming from your perspective, are you worried about what that might mean for domestic savings going forward? So very quick responses if you can, please. Yeah, sure. Maybe just on the first point with what we've been seeing from the fine fin access survey on savings and the use of mobile money. I think important to make clear that the question is there, are you using your balances on mobile money as a savings vehicle? This is distinct from use of mobile money in general, which definitely has been growing and growing sharply in terms of transaction volumes and numbers during the pandemic. But what we've been seeing in the 2001, 2021 data is that people are perhaps not using those balances as much as mobile bank connected savings applications. And I think that ties in with some of the points. The CS was making. People are looking for convenience. They're looking for reducing transaction costs. And when those fees for transferring funds between your mobile money account and your bank accounts on your phone were reduced, that caused, I think, a big upsurge in the use of savings on those bank platforms. So important to make that distinction, I think, between the savings that numbers we're seeing and use of mobile money as a payment platform. On the other question of inflation, so yes, of course, across the world, if we're looking at an environment where we're having sustained much higher inflation, that is something to worry about. We would all hope that inflation is reduced and comes back into target levels. Otherwise, I do worry that that could have negative implications on not just savings, but also investment levels. We want to get back to that macro stability. Thank you, Tobi, that's... And obviously, once you have high inflation, we can also have negative real deposit rates, which is clearly not at all helpful for financial savings. Let me now go to Amir. Amir, there was already a question, which I noticed that your co-author, Tony Addison, has kind of answered for you, which is the question that a sovereign fund is not just one objective, it's multiple objectives. So is it easy to separate out the separation objective from the generational transfer objective from the development to bank objective? So quick response on that. Another question that came up in the chat is, well, we're moving to this world of clean energy. So what's the future of sovereign funds, which are, as you argued, is very much funded by commodity price for commodities itself. So what's the future then? I think you sort of suggest there's still a future. So maybe you can quickly answer in less than a minute if you can, thank you. Yeah, I'll be very quick, especially as Tony already started to answer. And the first on Santiago's question is true that sovereign funds with more than one objectives or more than one fund exists, like Botswana Spula fund or Mozambique's prospective fund that have both stabilization and intergenerational savings objectives. But the problem is when the purpose of a fund isn't clear, the government becomes harder, right? So, and in a way, if it's a single fund, then the portfolio should reflect that with a relative weight of each objective to policymakers. So running several funds that are separate entails additional administration, but at least it has the merits of having only waiting one objective. There's only one objective against which to match assets. On the second question, that's a very important question. And that's why the role of the fund becomes even more crucial in terms of helping the transition, right? Helping sustain returns, even after non-renewable resources deplete or after fossil fuels that the men drop because of the carbonization. So they should have a climate mandate as well, especially when the revenues come from fossil fuels, which means that the standard policy advice is not suited and turning towards the development fund is perhaps more advisable. Thank you. Thanks, Amir. I noticed there's still more questions coming in the chat, but unfortunately we are definitely out of time, actually. Thanks so much to Rose and Gugge and Dundugud, especially I know how busy the schedule that you have and to give us some time for this panel. Tobias Rasmussen and Amir Levdui. And of course, again, a lot of this will present you back with really good papers that are on our website. So do take a look at that. And thanks so much to the audience for a really nice questions, for a very active participation. And again, looking forward to seeing all of you virtually in the next webinar, which we'll have in March. Thanks so much, everyone. Take care. Bye.


I've got another sample of the .1 molar acetic acid, .1 molar sodium acetate buffer. I'm now going to add one molar HCl. I've added one drop and the pH has changed only slightly, whereas with the water, the pH dropped rapidly, two drops. I've added 10 drops and the pH has only dropped slightly. A buffer does not maintain absolutely constant pH. What it does is moderate the change in pH. I've now added 20 drops of one molar HCl and the pH is only down now to 4.63. Eventually, if I add enough strong acid, I will neutralize all the conjugate base and I will destroy the buffer and the pH will drop. After adding 30 drops of one molar HCl, the pH has started to drop rapidly. I have a new solution of the .1 molar acetic acid, .1 molar sodium acetate buffer solution. I'm now going to add sodium hydroxide to it. Notice that after adding about three drops of sodium hydroxide, the pH is essentially unchanged. The pH would have risen very rapidly with pure water. After 10 drops, the pH is slightly higher. Again, the buffer does not maintain absolutely constant pH. It just moderates or keeps the pH change relatively small. Notice that the pH is going up as I add the strong base. After 20 drops, it's up to 5.3. It will maintain relatively constant pH until I add enough sodium hydroxide to use up all the weak acid. After about 45 drops, the pH is starting to rise more rapidly.


Nothing goes to Anne. Nothing goes to Bob. Instead. Instead. Inside of your living trust, it says when mom and dad pass away, a trust is created for Anne and a trust is created for Bob. These are not living trusts. These are mommy and daddy created trusts. So when mom and dad die, Anne's inheritance goes to her trust and Bob's inheritance goes to his. So Anne takes some of her money in her trust and she buys a condominium. It is not owned by Anne. It's owned by what? Her trust. Then she takes some of her money from mommy and daddy and she buys an investment account. It's not owned by Anne. It's owned by what? Anne's trust. Bob's wife leaves. Bob knows that she's not going to get any of that inheritance because it's in a trust. It's never been commingled. It's never been community property. It's going to go on to your grandkids, et cetera, et cetera. Now I have a question. If you walked into an attorney's office or you have or let's say you have an estate plan in your trust and it says when dad and I die or mom dies or whatever, it goes to the kids. Is that smart? No. No. No. This is not what you said before. I'll tell you what. What I used to do before I was an attorney. I was a kind of art teacher. So really, isn't it more important to have a great living trust where you're taught what it means and you're taught the options. Now you don't have to have that option. You don't have to pick that option. But if you never know about that option, then you're at a decided disadvantage.


Hey guys, welcome back to come again TV the only place on YouTube. We're all geek culture collides. I'm Shannon and today on the show We're taking a look at the Dollar General Optimus Prime. As I said, I got this at Dollar General It was $5 Couldn't pass it up The transformation reminds me a lot of the G1 transformers Very simplistic But it's a decent figure, especially for the price considering most transformers are in the 12 to $15 range sometimes even 17 and up For just a regular transformer This five dollars for this transformer wasn't a bad price As I said, this is Optimus Prime And let's go ahead and take a look at the packaging real quick Alright, so we got Optimus here and then his Truck mode there Autobot Optimus Prime has bro Ages six and up transformers very nice got a nice little clamshell packaging there Heroic Autobot leader. This is an authentic hasbro transformer. It's not some cheap knockoff It is authentic Apparently it takes four steps to transform so Let's go ahead and move that to the side And let's go over articulation for Optimus Zoom back in All right his head Does rotate all the way around His arms Pop off Hold tight a second guys All right, so I'm having an issue here with Getting his arm back on There we go All right, so if that happens What you want to do is come at it from the back push it on this was easier off camera Hold tight a second guys All right got it All right, so you kind of got to angle it up and pop it on from the back But his arms do go all the way around they can lift up about that far and that's on both sides As you can see part of his transformation is in his shoulders his legs Go up to there and they go back about that far Bend at the knee another ball joint and that's also part of the transformation is the knee joint Yeah, that's about it for articulation Now let's go into his transformation mode Very simplistic transformation Four steps, okay, so take the backpack Bring it out and up so you can see there Bring the arms up like that and bring them together just like that all right and then Rotate the leg Take the legs and pop them into place Make sure they get over that latch But there's Optimus Prime in his truck mode as you can see very simplistic You can definitely make him out from underneath the wheels Aim this down a little bit the wheels do move they do spin very simplistic paint job Mainly red and blue Got the Autobot logo there Yeah, pretty nice a really great buy for the price I have to say In a time when transformers figures are very expensive It's nice to find some that have decent articulation decent transformation decent robot mode and Don't cost an arm and leg Now to transform him back pop up the legs and back around Okay, take the arms bring them around and the backpack It's on a hinge It's on an on a hinge, so bring it down I was talking to caveman from caveman reviews about this the other day Shortly after I got it And he asked me if there's any good and it is for the price it is very good figure Comparison size comparison I Had just done a review on cloud raker and wingspan from the Transformers generations line and Here is cloud raker next on Optimus Prime And let's go ahead for comparison. We'll bring in twin furno From the headmaster Titans return line As you can see The scale isn't too bad I Would imagine twin furno to be a little bit bigger than Optimus I don't know if he is or not in the comics or whatever but Since he's a two-headed two-headed dragon, I would imagine that twin furno is larger than Optimus Prime and Since cloud raker is a jet I would imagine him to be slightly smaller than Optimus, but not too much smaller So there you have it guys dollar general I Want to say exclusive Optimus Prime you can pick them up for about $5 when I picked him up I also picked up Megatron, which I'll be doing a review on next They also had Starscream in there. I did not pick up Starscream I've never really been much of a Starscream fan John my former co-host who's now over on the logic He's a big Starscream fan So John if you're watching this head into Dollar General pick you up a $5 Starscream figure pretty good transformation for the price That'll do it for today guys Take care If you enjoyed that video make sure you hit the subscribe button right there so you can stay up to date on all things geek culture Also, make sure you check out one of these two playlists on the side for more videos just like the one you just watched I'm Shannon for coming in TV the only place on YouTube. We're all geek culture collides. Take care geeks


Hi and welcome to ESMCONF 2022, we have an exciting program packed full of interesting talks, discussions and workshops. Find out everything you need to know about evidence synthesis, meta-analysis and R.


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And on that note, let's get our next session started as well. We are talking about lessons from 2017. And joining us, in fact, spearheading this panel discussion where we have with us our session moderator, who in fact is the group CEO, media and OOH with Madison.  If I may please invite Mr. Vikram Sakuja on the stage with a huge round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. Let's bring in some energy from the audience. Well, joining him on the stage are a set of panel members. May I please invite the president of Jhagran Group, Apurva Purohit, to please come on stage as well. The president with Sony TV, Rohit Gupta, and industry director with Google India, we have with us Vikas Agnihotri. So if I may invite our panel members as well on the stage. And can we have a huge round of applause for all of our speakers, ladies and gentlemen. We're having some amazing time here. So let's keep the insights going. And with that, I'm gonna request Mr. Sakuja to take it forward from here. Thank you. Okay, great. You know, we are coming out of a year which has been actually quite ordinary for most people and actually not so bad for others. We started the year predicting about a 13.5% growth and we're coming out with seven and something. And if you have to look at traditional poor and digital 27. So some people are smiling. This man on my left has bucked even the digital trend and his part of the business. He's grown way higher than that. For all the TV that we talk about and say that TV is only grown for 5%. We've got Rohit out here who has probably taken the IPL who are new high and straight on the back of extracting all the money from the market on IPL. He then extracted some more on KBC. So, and of course we have a very rare site in these forums which is the Purva who has probably actually she has extracted fantastic value out of, she's actually created a whole market out of radio and she's been instrumental in the heydays of radio growth and now even on the entire print piece she's actually was taking it into a pretty high level and there have been some road, some overall bumps that we've hit and then it's come to print. But right now between the three of them we've got 20% of the ad-ex represented. So, and you don't, you never waste, it's not a recession of course, but you never waste a good recession or a slight hiccup. So, let's try to find out from them what exactly are the learnings that we are getting so that 18 can be hopefully closer to the kind of 12% that we are projecting. I'm going to break up this panel discussion into three broad areas. We'll start with just talking about the market outlook, what happened really and what we expected to be. I'm going to be talking about the marketing mix. So, how is it the dynamics likely to change between TV, print, radio and of course digital. And the third one is I'm going to really talk about yield or how do we take prices of inventory up. All three I think are fundamental to how the weather or not the market is going to grow. So, Rohit, let's start with you. You, we've seen a market where, okay, what do you think was the reason for a subdued 2017?  But, you know, there is, I mean, we've also been through that, while our growth numbers did come down a bit, but we didn't really get it that badly. I think it's the business model which you create in your organization and how to do run the business. Can it sometimes help you move away from these swings? And I think for us, that's been our learning that the way we've created our journey over the last 10, 15 years. So, while the whole industry went through this and, you know, the numbers came down, we were quite substantially safeguarded out of it. So, we've had 2017, I mean, our FY17 is going to be probably one of the best years that we've had in terms of growth. So, why do you think the others suffered? You know, one is the numbers, we don't really look at the industry numbers, you know. So, when you say it's 12% growth, it's 8% growth, we don't look at it, okay. We look at our own business plan. So, we have our own numbers, we have an MRP which we have to achieve and MRP is over three years, and we go by that number. Once that number is sacrosanct with us, and then we work backwards to it. And then you've just got to dive deeper. It's not that people are, it's not that the whole industry is not spending. If the industry is growing at 8% or 10%, there is somebody spending, who's growing at 25% and there's somebody growing at 2% or 1%. You've got to find the guys who are growing at 20% and go deeper with them. I mean, because everybody's not growing at 8% or 10% or whatever the number of the industry might be. So, I think there are different ways to look at it.  We'll come back to where the growth is coming from and how to tap it. But Apurva, to you now. What has been your sense? Because Radio, I think you saw some pretty decent growth last year, 16, less so in 17, although it started pretty well if I'm not mistaken, but it sort of tapered off. And print overall has had a pretty, you'll also have to take the mandate for English print and speak on their behalf. Why do you think print really sort of suffered quite a lot this year? So I think, let's put it in perspective and I'll break it up into two things. One is that, was this year bad? Yes, it was. On an overall basis, we've seen the muted growth. Why was it bad? I think there are very obvious reasons for that. As people say that the economy was chugging around quite nicely and then someone came and shot a running car. And that's really what happened with Daemon. We thought the impact of Daemon would be lesser, but it wasn't. It sort of stayed till the second part of last year, which is almost in September, October. That's one reason. GST clearly was another reason. Everybody expected GST was to last only for 45 days. They lasted for three, four months. And in many manners, implementation of GST is still a challenge. And when you are every, I think from the time GST launched, till three months later, there were 87 changes or modifications made. So imagine a retailer. He doesn't know. Even now I know people who are struggling and we saw the retail panel earlier. And I know people like, especially in the food retail, suddenly there's input credit, suddenly there's no input credit. And it completely changes their business plan. So advertising comes very, very much later in their analysis. So I think GST was clearly another reason. Specifically for local, and I'm talking about print and radio, RERA was the third thing. RERA itself, real estate is a big category for all of us. And finally, I think government subdued spending. Government for radio, for example, is 17% of our spends. So government went low on spending. So these were really four categories and reasons why advertising was subdued across the board. Now, within that, let's look at different media. Radio, reasonably decent, but I wouldn't celebrate that because the fact is that radio is, the base is so small. And to just grow at the levels of the industry is not good enough. Digital, I handle the digital piece for jargon that grew at 30%. So that's the other side of it. Within, so that's the other side. So there are certain media like digital have grown at 30%. Radio's grown at 89%, but I won't feel too thrilled about that. Then we come to the third bit, and Rohit just did mention that within all these media, we have to look at specific businesses which did extraordinarily well. So, and what are the learnings thereof? That while economically the sentiment is low, the GDP is not growing, are there parts of the businesses which have done well or and why did they do well? And I think that's really what we can discuss. We will definitely take that. That's one clear trend coming out, opportunity areas coming out from both of you. Now, because you have hit the ball out of the parks, because handles probably 60% of Google's business, so is it that you were representing all the high growth categories? Because I don't think, I think you definitely, even by Google standards, you bucked Google's trend, you're part of the business. So, what is it that A made digital, continue to make it the darling, and second, even within digital, what made yours or your categories much more than others? So I think Vikram's being too kind to me. This was a common made over a drink. Google's done well. I won't like to say my patch versus the other patch, but what we've really seen is, I think both panelists really actually did mention about that. There are some, first of all, you've got to set your own kind of, what's your own objective and what you want to do and how do you want to take the business ahead? And fundamentally, you will always find in amongst your clients, there are clients who are very strong on strategy. Clients who are not looking on a quarter by quarter basis, they have a long-term strategy in place. In fact, if you look at their stock prices, they will always be moving up. If you look at their performance, it will always look good. And you've got to start focusing on that. The other is the fact that, are you there in the business to sell ads, or are you there in the business to provide for business solutions or business problems that they have and solve for those business problems? And once you actually take that stand in your own strategy with your own client, you will always find that the client is going to kind of tilt towards you. The other is the fact that I think in Google, what we really look at also, Vikram, is that there is enough and more data that we have and the client has. And we start, we actually work with the client to start moving towards data insights and foresight. As we call it, how do you have data get into insight and then foresight? And foresight is actually going a step beyond. And once you get into a conversation of that kind, you actually find a seat on the table with your particular client. And that's when you start, I think, winning conversations with them. In terms of looking forward overall in a client basis, I still think that there is, and you're right in the sense that there is a world of cautious optimism as far as the industry is concerned, but there will be few who will do well. The others are coming out with all the issues that we've had, but there are economic factors that are looking much better. Commercial vehicle sales are good. Cement is good, which means rural demand should be coming in. It's a consumption-led economy.  If you look at Unilever results, it was 28% up over the previous quarter last year, right? It's an early indicator of, you know, can organizations and companies, CPG companies come back? That's really what it is. So if you focus on some of those things, you will win. Great. In this first round of questions, I'm getting the sense that don't look at the aggregate, whether it's 4%, 8%, you have to have a business plan and you've got to look for growth. The second you said is that start talking business rather than just advertising or whatever, branding. And you also said, you just brought in a thing of use of data to take it from data to insight to foresight. These are three aspects that you did which actually help buck the trend or actually do better. Let's take to the common one of them, which is where do you get growth?  So Rohit, what do you do to find growth? For example, every time we go to an IPL, we always find two, three, four new sponsors that you've never seen before. If I have to see the papers today and they've quoted 11 sponsors that star is likely to sign up, at least three or four of them are probably first time IPLers. So do you have to keep on finding opportunities to use from nowhere? Yeah, any property that size, when you've got to do 4,000 plus growth, it's a tough task. The whole process begins about six months before you've got to plan it, it doesn't happen on its own. We've been in enough meetings together and it's a six, eight month thought out process. You have a strategy behind you and eventually the strategy is about to work. But there's one thing, so obviously for success and when you're looking in a tough environment when everything is tough, you've got to work, one is deeper, which I believe firmly in. So that's when relationship brand solutions come in for us. And what we've seen in the last two years is that by going deeper in some of our clients, we're really taking 80% of the spends on our network. And these are large clients who have options to go anywhere else, all right? And I think that's helped us a long way and that's helped us going. So you've got to look at categories which are winning, categories which are doing well and then how do you go deeper into it? Going deeper is the tough part, okay? Because you've got to have a good ROI and when I mean, it's not at the cost of selling cheap. Actually you're selling more but you're giving him enough solutions for him to get a better ROI in return. It's a lot about relationships because somebody when he's investing 80% of his spends on you, he expects a lot in return. So you've got to, like I said, get deeper to find such a plan. Talk a little bit more about the deeper. Google talked about going deeper by talking data and outcomes. So, okay, I can give you one example of going deeper is like our relationship with the geo, all right? It's one of the most, and we started focusing on it well before they even launched because we knew they are gonna be the, they are gonna break through this category. We started working with them before. Then, and we today, you know, we get a large part of the spends as a network and on KBC, we could, you know, we did an innovation with them, you know, this play along, the geo play along stuff that we did. Now, there was a time when there was a debate between programming and the sales team and them was that if people start playing along the game on the geo app, they'll stop watching TV and it'll affect our ratings, all right? But somewhere we had to take the leap of faith together with geo and say, okay, this is a fantastic innovation because the whole thing about KBC is knowledge and you wanna know whether how well you're doing as your own when you're playing at home, how much have you won personally, which you couldn't do earlier. So now you could actually play life on stream. What happened was 54 million people were playing KBC every day. That meant there was more involvement happening. So you were actually, your time spent went up, the ratings went up, all right? So it was a win-win for all. So initially we thought we'll lose rating but it helped us gain ratings. But that's the kind of stuff which you gotta do. And now you know that that client you haven't forever unless you really screw it up. And this is, sorry to add. This is, I mean, they're making this as a case study and they're putting it to Harvard. So we are trying to find the sources of growth and then going deeper. We've got two examples. Now if we have to look from a print, radio, that entire standpoint, our historical framework has been go category-wise, whether it's real estate, whether it's education, even FMCG, maybe not so much in print. But do you think the classic way of just looking at categories is now changing? E-commerce was a darling one year or two years maybe and then Flatter to Deceive maybe last year in that frame. So how would you look for growth if it's not categories? So I wouldn't discount categories completely because different categories have a different style of selling and a different expectation out of that medium. So you do have to look at categories. Having said that, I think there are three ways that you can get growth in any business. The first way, of course, is the point that was made that it's, I mean, if you go, keep on going to a client and saying, you know, I have a 10 second spot to sell, I have 100 CC to sell, and it becomes a story about your 10 second spot or your 100 CC ad. Beyond the point, when he's under stress, that's not how he's going to buy it. The moment you convert that 10 second spot or that 100 CC to, okay, let me sit and discuss your problem, what are your issues. You also are not getting growth in a muted GDP environment. You are also not getting growth. So let me work with you. Let me try and integrate your creative in my campaign. Let me work on consumers-wise. Digital growing so much today. Because finally, after 40 years of advertising clients today are actually genuinely able to segment and break it up, as you showed in that model. At what is the purchase intention and can I access that guy at that particular intention point? That's the reality why digital is doing so well. Because you're actually able to give some kind of measurement rather than that fuzzy reach and frequency that all of us have been selling for so long. So I think that's the moment it becomes the client story, you see a lot of growth coming at that stage. I think the second bit is, and because it's not exciting, flamboyant, glamorous, people discount it, but I think you get growth if you just do your internal implementation right. So the economy may change by 10%, 5% of it you can neutralize and I have enough facts to show that if you get your internal implementation right, I handled five businesses for Jagran, outdoor activation, digital, English media, Hindi media and radio. And with the different CEOs, I see the different, you know the CEOs who have just focused on implementation. Week on week, do the reviews, do the dashboards, follow that, you know, call report, follow how much new business development did you get? How much market share did you get? Those CEOs have been able to neutralize this impact by 50%. And if you panic, you know, so you have to get the plumbing, you have to concentrate on the plumbing. That's the second lesson. The third lesson is that is above consistency. Vikram again, that is one thing that I see a lot of people suffer from. So, you know, I've navigated Radio City through 12 years, okay? And in those 12 years, we've seen everything. We've seen recession, we've seen good years, we've seen bad years, we've seen years where we were leaders, we've seen years where we were not leaders, we were only player, many more players came, fragmentation, everything we've seen, okay? Why consistently Radio City has been able to beat the market is because of the consistent behavior it exhibits, A, in people. So the concentration on having the same people, and I think that's, Sony is another example of that, therefore 15 years of the same team is running the show. You know, they've seen all the cycles. So they know how to do, they've seen the good days and the bad days. So when a crisis situation comes, they don't get hassle, they do, because they've seen bad days and they know how to get out of it, okay? So that consistency of people, consistency of product, 39 stations, the Coimbatore station that, and you know, the retail team was talking about how difficult it is to have the store behave in the same manner as your central store. Here, imagine we are doing things on, it's on air. I can't prerecord, unlike television, prerecord and send it out on Coimbatore. There's a live station going on in Bombay. There's a live station going on in Vizag. There's a live station going on. If the RJs talk behaving differently, changes the whole, changes the entire brand of Coimbatore. So how do I ensure Reducity, Coimbatore, Bombay, Delhi are exactly the same by excessive monitoring and excessive control on the people. So that bit that you have to put in place with your consistently giving the same product to your advertiser. I think that's the other consistency that we need to focus on. So these are the three lessons. Great nuggets there. Now, because the default option when it comes to demand is a fact that we are living in a derived demand business. If the client spends, there will be growth. If the client doesn't spend, there will not be growth. Now, you guys have probably written the book on this, but obviously, even the gist that we're getting from the other speakers is that agencies, media owners have every right and need to stimulate the demand, and we have absolutely no excuse at the end of the year to say 12% didn't happen because people didn't spend or clients didn't spend. So what is it? Let's not think about clients for the time being, but what is it that media owners and agencies can proactively do to buck the growth rather than be a victim of lack of it? Now, I think it's a great question. It's not always easy for all kinds of media companies, but again, when I speak, I speak on behalf of Google here. What we really look at it is that, how can you, in a difficult situation, it's not always about trying to get the revenues up for the client in terms of how do you get more product sold or acquired board customers for them, but many times it's also about how do you really try and get the cost reduction by things that you're trying to do? So it works both ways, right? I mean, if any one of you are a finance practitioners, you will know when you can either create, generate revenue or you can cut costs, that's called JAWS, and you can actually sit on the table and try and figure it out. We work with telecom companies and we continue to work with telecom companies just as an example to say that, how can we help you solve the problem of churn? How can we help in policy bazaar, for example, how do you help the policy bazaar through moving them on cloud analytics using a assistant to actually solve for their conversion rates, which are completely online to online. Last month, we came up with a case study with them. They actually sold 16,000 policies online without any human intervention through Google Assistant as an assistant. So you need to start thinking that, what is it that you really want? As I said, what is the problem that you're trying to solve for your consumer? And then work towards that. I think when you go yourself with having done a bit of homework and you're a lot more informed, A, about the industry, B, about the particular client, and you go with actually data to support it, as I said, data insights and foresight to me, that is the critical element that actually comes in play over here. You will find clients opening up. And when clients open up, they will always be a solution.  When people go as product sellers, things will not work for them. Brilliant. Let's quickly move tracks to one, what could be a zero sum game? Do you believe, firstly, the choice between TV print, radio, outdoor, digital, cinema, all of these, is it a zero sum game? Or is there enough for everybody? Apurva, start with you with a sobering thing that we've got. This, again, IRS has come with some patchy news. English papers have AIRs which are crashing. And some papers, in fact, you must be happy because in Uttar Pradesh, the AIRs have gone up considerably. So, do you feel, firstly, the zero sum game and from a print standpoint, is anybody raising the fatalistic point? So I don't think it's a zero sum game. I think there's enough for everybody. We know that even now, media and advertising as a percentage of the GDP is just 0.5% where internationally it's around 1.2%. There is still scope for that increase to happen. And for that increase to happen, I think there's enough scope for everybody to grow. You also know that the rates that the CPTs in India are one tenth of the CPTs anywhere internationally. So I think there's enough and more scope for everybody to grow. Specifically on print, I think, yes, English media is facing a challenge as we saw from IRS but I think everybody needs to reimagine. And maybe we will beat that circle where internationally if you see, if you saw what's happening with Guardian and what's happening with New York Times, people are going back to print. And I think the challenge is that print phase there was very different. They didn't get the distribution right. They themselves stopped distribution. Here, when you're getting a paper at 100 rupees, three papers a month, why would you not, and coming at your doorstep without you doing anything about it, I think I wouldn't beat the death knoll for print very much in a hurry. So Rohit, there is a think tank in the US called, she's Mary Meeker, the person who leads these reports about overall media and digital kind of consumption. She releases a report sometime this time of the year. She seems to always say that money's marketing money should follow the time spent on media. By that token, digital should reach 50% of spend at some point in time. Firstly, do you believe that advertising money should follow the time spent on the media? See, not necessarily.  And you need to understand television in India is very different to global television because there, while India's pay TV is really not pay TV, okay? You're paying $3 for 600 and 700 channels, 200 bucks. R for 600, 700 channels. You get to see IPL, you get to see the best shows and 200 bucks. There you wanna see EPL, you're paying 50 pounds a month. If you wanna see EPL in UK. So the model there is very different. So in fact, digital, and I always believe that, is actually aiding television because today, digital in India has more catch up. So if you're going home, you see a bit of the match, eventually you see it back on television. Televisions are becoming bigger. Screens are getting bigger. So as a broadcaster, we gotta be screen agnostic and we gotta be part of every screen. So hence, we have our own OTT platform, Sony Live. But having said that, TV in India, if you really look at it for the next five, 10 years, there's a huge, because TV still, you reach about, you know, close to 600, 700 million people, there's no other, there's no other huge provider which can bring you that. And that's only growing, because if you're adding 10 million homes every year, that translates to about 15 million people are coming on TV every year. So I think every medium is gonna grow in India, because entertainment is just a 15, 18-year-old industry, unlike, you know, Head Start, like the US, which is a 50, 60-year-old or probably 100-year-old industry. That's all.  So the headwinds are behind us. The economy's doing well, if the economy grows at 7%, and also you need to understand the amount of new categories which are gonna come into India. We're still touching the tip of the iceberg. And every time a new category comes into India, television, print, digital are the mediums which he's gonna use. So there's still a long way to go. And I think even in the worst of years, you know, television grew at 8, 9%. And the best of years is growing at 15, 18%.  But Vikas, will that deter you from asking for 100% of the client's budget in your next meeting? No, not at all. I think there's room for everybody to coexist. I think it's, my view is that, you know, media planning should move towards audience planning, right, we should be where the audiences are and people need to start thinking a bit. And it's about advertising that performs and everybody is looking for, you know, I mean, it's not just performance advertising as people used to think in digital, but today branding on digital has become branding for performance. And you have solutions which are there, for example, on YouTube, et cetera, that gets you action, YouTube for action and there are two of you for action, et cetera. So the way I think the customer on the other side is also looking for is that where do you get the most measurable, most effective bank for the buck? They still have the same amount of money. You still have the same amount of people. It's just great that data prices and mobile prices have come down so suddenly people have a lot more time in India to start watching a lot more content. But I think more importantly to me, if I may take another minute, is that the way we see it from a digital lens is that the first 200 million people who came on the internet or the first 250 million people who came on the internet versus the last 200 million who've come on the internet are very, very different profile. Their media consumption habits are very different and we also start, we need to look at that. So what I'm trying to say is that we call it the 3M story and the 3V story. The 3M story really is that the last 150 million and the next 100 million, they will come beyond metros, beyond millennial and beyond mail. We need to understand that because the content consumption there will be very different from the earlier. And the guys who are now coming in, the 3V story really is that for them it's video vernacular and views which are very, very important. It's no longer most mediums. It's obviously, even for digital now, you are going much beyond English. In fact, anyone who can speak English is already on the internet, right? So that's kind of done and dusted. And video viewing is gonna be the most important thing as we go along which is where TV, video, et cetera is. And I just wanna give you one more example and then I'll hand it back to you. I know time's running out. But it's like my daughter actually keeps asking me that every day in the morning, everybody sits in the house. I have my in-laws who live with us.  He will read it. I cry and read it and she will read it and she says, why should the front page look the same? My need for content is different. My grandfather's need for content is different and yours is very different. Actually, only digital can address that, right? Apugna wants to talk on that. But before, I just, I don't want to add one point on this thing, a quick one. I think we've not, we've not touched upon that. I think the big growth is also sports, which is gonna be the big driver for growth, television for sure, and digital. And I think that's gonna be a big driver in the next two to three years to make. Yeah, I can't let the panel go without asking about yield. I think one of, even Sam made this point that we shouldn't be CPRP obsessed. We should be growth obsessed. And to that end, how can we make, what is the learning that we have that we can make the yield story a little bit better? Yeah. You've done this probably the best. So I think brands, you know, earlier, if you look at in the last three to four years when, you know, brands have become so focused on CPRPs that they've, a GRP for them is one GRP. The qualitative aspect of a quality GRP versus a GRP is moving away. And when you really look at brands, brands you use impact properties with others and you've seen the growth happening. Brands who just stuck to buying just airtime throughout the day. And you can see from the results that they're not doing so well. So I think over the last two to three years, impact properties, you know, have kind of taken a hit. We need to come back. Brands needs to start looking at impact differently because that is a qualitative GRP and obviously there's a premium to it. But that's what is needed today. And I think what we need to actually transform is to the CPT way.  One pricing today. So we are calculating a CPM, there is a CPM, CPT that they're on print. At least as a marketer, you know, this is my cost to get one eyeball. Now, is TV better? Is digital better? Today is very complicated. So I think the industry for TV has to move towards CPT to be more transparent. Apurva, any quick thoughts on increasing yield? Learnings, what can we tell clients that will make them? So I think media owners have themselves only to blame because they have ended up commoditizing the product that they sell. So if you sell, you have 10 seconds to sell you and everybody has 10 seconds to sell. So then what do you sell? It's like selling rice. There is no specific differentiator that you can build. So as Rohit is saying that you have to change the conversation to saying that I'm not selling 10 seconds. I'm setting this kind of audience, and I'm aggregating this kind of audience for you, which is different from my competitor and therefore give me a price hike. And increasingly I think the moment you move to impact advertising, which is true, and we are seeing our maximum growth and yield improvements coming when we are able to sell large impact properties. So if we sell Radio City Super Singer and we get two crore auditions, that's what the client is buying. Okay, so just in conclusion, if you have to give one piece of advice to advertisers, what would that be? And we'll just quickly go around the... Spend more on media research. Spend more on media research, okay? The future is the age of assistant. It is you need data, you need companies that who can process data insights and who can combine multiple avenues of data to understand your customers, to engage them and get them act because they need the assistant. Choose your partner carefully, people who understand intent and have the data and understanding to move with data insights foresight. Market research, data, Rohit, you're not a data guy. I mean, eventually I think advertisers need to really see move away from the lowest to see quality because today at the lowest, sometimes they're losing the entire money with no effectiveness. So eventually advertising is all about effectiveness, it's sale, it's very tangible and I think that's what they need to really start focusing move away from the price to effectiveness. Okay guys, that's been a stimulating panel. If you wanna get growth, don't look at the overall aggregate, growth has to be found. You have to find it by actually understanding the client's business, trying to see what the boom areas are ahead of time and then using insight, foresight, data, what have you and also the ability to actually sell a little bit of value in all the kind of extra properties that you have which can help grow that brand. So on that note, let's just thank the entire panel and you've been a great audience. I'm gonna request all the panel members to please remain on the stage and if I may please request Mr. Vikram Sakooja to present a token of gratitude to all of our panel members. Thank you once again.