Good morning, good afternoon, good evening and welcome to ITU’s 9th Economic Experts Roundtable, which today will focus on the economic and fiscal incentives to accelerate digital transformation. The session is organized within the framework of the WSIS Forum 2022, specifically under Action Line C6 on Enabling Environment.
We have seen how the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the pace, scope and importance of digital transformation. But the challenge is to bring the benefits to everyone, including the close to 3 billion people that are still unconnected.
Most of these people are in the developing world and especially in the remote and rural communities where the return on investment is so much less than in urban areas. So at least in part, the answer has to be in creating an enabling environment for investment in these areas.
As the UN Secretary-General’s Common Agenda report notes, “a reformed international tax system is needed to respond to the realities of growing cross-border trade and investment and an increasingly digitized economy.”
And the G20 has now agreed on a new international tax architecture that addresses the tax challenges arising from digitization, and introduces a global minimum tax for corporations.
The telecommunication and ICT industry has itself advocated the critical need to reduce its tax burden and various fiscal contributions, such as spectrum licence fees, due to their having a negative impact on the amount of capital that can be invested in deploying and modernizing the networks.
Civil society organizations have also argued that taxation of digital devices and services such as smartphones and broadband subscriptions can raise the affordability barriers for socially vulnerable groups.
So we are meeting at a critical time, with the rising global challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and conflict. The humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine are already devastating, and according to the IMF the economic damage will contribute to a significant slowdown in global growth, and increase in inflation.
It is against this worrying backdrop that we need to accelerate digital transformation for all in support of the UN SDGs and explore the creation of a taxation framework that:
- promotes equal access to digital technologies,
- does not hamper capital spending in network deployment,
- reduces asymmetries across the digital ecosystem,
- whilst ensuring that governments receive the resources needed to deliver public services.
We are fortunate to have with us today a panel of leading experts in this field and I am sure the discussion will contribute to increasing the collaboration and partnerships necessary to address these difficult issues in the critical weeks and months ahead. Many thanks to all the panellists and I leave you in the good hands of my colleague Sofie who will moderate the session.
Thank you