Excellencies, distinguished panellists, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you happen to be, and let me add my welcome to this High-Level Policy Session on Digital Economy and Trade/ Financing for Development and role of ICT.
We are very grateful to the excellent panellists we have speaking at this session for sparing their time to be with us, and many thanks to you Rachel Sibande for acting as the high-level track facilitator. And thank you Rachel to your organization, Digital Impact Alliance for its ongoing fruitful collaboration with ITU in key areas like digitalization of government services and digital technology investment in support of the SDGs.
Today’s high-level policy session is focusing on digital economy and trade. We will hear from our speakers about the increasing weight of the digital economy in their respective overall economies which has been greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Like everyone else, almost overnight, businesses had to adapt their business models and use digital platforms to continue operating and serving their clients – customers who were now working from home. It has created new ways of trading and resulted in a surge in e-commerce. Network operators and platform providers must be congratulated for coping with the huge increase in demand. It just illustrated how resilient the technology is.
COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of digital technologies like never before, but of course only just over half the world’s population was able to benefit.
Research from ITU suggests that countries with top connectivity infrastructure could mitigate up to half of the negative economic impact of COVID-19. And that is why it was important for ITU to help to keep digital networks up and running, most notably through the creation of our Global Network Resiliency Platform.
But as we look to recovery, in a global economy set to grow faster than predicted, we must ensure that all economies can overcome the remaining barriers to connection, especially in the developing world where digital services remain too expensive for too many.
In that effort, international technical standards, one of ITU’s core competencies, can help by reducing costs through economies of scale. ITU standards are essential for international communications and global trade. They can drive competitiveness, not just for individual businesses but for the world economy as a whole.
These standards are the result of extensive collaboration across borders, sectors and stakeholders. And this is what the WSIS Process is all about: bringing governments, businesses, universities, international organizations and civil society together to harness the power of digital technologies for sustainable development.
COVID-19 has stalled or reversed many of the development gains that had been made before the pandemic, further undermining progress on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It is now more important than ever for all of us to collectively strengthen the alignment of the WSIS process with the 2030 Agenda and, as said recently by the UN Secretary-General, re-imagine global financing frameworks and put them at the service of humanity.
The WSIS Process is a good example of not only multistakeholder collaboration but also excellent partnership between UN Agencies. I would like to welcome Shamika from UNCTAD who is the facilitator of the WSIS Action line on e-Business and also the co-organizers of the WSIS Forum with ITU, UNESCO and UNDP.
Let me thank you all for joining us. With that, I will hand it back to Rachel and our panel of excellent speakers.
Thank you.