The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Twelfth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 17 to 21 December 2017. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Hey, folks, we're going start the next session now.
[Silence.]
and I'm very happy to have assisted your attendance here. Again, we hope that you find this a valuable and rewarding experience that helps you in your various endeavors.CLDP first of two gatherings, formal session. And really the only formal presentation session that we plan for the IGF. So even though I've been with almost all of you for the last day and helped you register, I will formally say greetings, welcome to the IGF on behalf of CLDP's>> Good afternoon, all. Hit the right volume there. This is
‑‑ excuse me. We will silence that (cell phone) CLDPYou already know that
[Laughter]
That's an app. I had to find the app to turn it off. Okay. We'll take care of that.
model of the IGF, we have representatives and participants from governments and non‑governments. Fortunately, you've met and have a sense of that. But we're going to try to make this a rewarding experience for all of you.multistakeholder to support tend answer from people if from three different countries this year, we have Afghanistan, we have Pakistan and we have Tunisia. And consistent with the stakeholder, CLDPJust some general placing of what we're doing and again as you all know, we're able at
about some activities in Pakistan.Mansoor about Tunisia and from Mr. Hadre from ‑‑ and a speaker from the International Trade Centre and a presentation from Mr. Tuto on e‑commerce. And so we want to spend our concentration time on that. And we'll have a speaker, Lel programme CLDP we're hoping can say hello, too. We have the room for three hours, until 3:00. We will devote the time to e‑commerce. It's an important issue to every country. It's particularly important to our participants here from Tunisia. This is connected to a Mastercard from Bhardwaj, the Secretariat, said at the session at 10:00 that most of you were at. But Marilyn, I'm sure, has more information and her own take at this. And we hope to have a surprise speaker. Is one coming? Perhaps one. We are expecting Manu AnjaFor this session today, we want to accomplish two things. One is for about an hour Marilyn Cade will lead a presentation and discussion of what the IGF is. Some of it will be similar to what
So that's the foundation. We are a small group. And even though we're facing forward, I think it would be useful for us to all take a chance to introduce ourselves. I think almost everybody here is with us but we have some visitors. Especially on this side. So maybe we can go through and just tell us what your name is, what your affiliation is and if you're not one of our participants from one of the three countries, tell your background a little bit. What brings you here? So maybe Aziz, I'll go this way and do the second row from there.
from Internet Society of Afghanistan.Taqwa>> My name is Aziz
>> ‑‑ From Internet Society Afghanistan.
>> My name is ‑‑ from Tunisia. Ministry of Commerce, e‑commerce.
also representing the private sector, Tunisia.Hali>> Hi, everybody.
, Director of E‑commerce at the Ministry of Commerce, Tunisia.Hadhri Khabbab>>
>> From Tunisia, the ministry of ICT.
an annual international conference on digital economy, and this year it will be held in France in May 2018.organise and also the president and founder of the Tunisian Association of Digital Economy. And we Manouba, I'm a doctor in marketing of innovation. And I was the dean of the Higher School of Digital Economy at University of Jallouli>> Rim
. Director of Communication Afghanistan.Zahou>> Hi, this is
. I have worked with many of you in the Afghanistan and some of the Pakistan for the past three years. And I had been helping Joe with the trainings and other things for a couple years now. And now just visiting with you guys. But happy to answer any questions on the IGF or any history of it.Hellerstein>> Hi, oh, I'm Judith
, maybe even four, because we didn't go to one because the government shutdown, Judith has volunteered her time and worked basically for free to help us get to know the IGF and make arrangements for people to attend. This year she's achieved emeritus status. She's visiting. So thank you for your help, Judith.IGFs>> I should add that for the past three
Maybe we should come back round to the left?
, Afghanistan.MCIT for cybersecurity, Director of Information and Almazyed>> Hi, this is Mohammed
in Pakistan.programmes in Afghanistan and manage our programmes in Sri Lanka and Iran and Egypt and do trade programmes. And I manage Programme>> Hi, Megan McMillan, I'm a senior attorney for the Commercial Law Development
from Pakistan. I'm representing Code for Pakistan, a nonprofit promoting civic ‑‑ ecosystem and ‑‑Jalil>> Hi, my name is Sidra
. I work for the central bank of Pakistan. I hold the position of Executive Director. And currently I'm the Chief Information Officer of ‑‑ also. And my previous assignment included development of infrastructure for e‑commerce and payment system in Pakistan, especially other than settings. Large value payment systems and small value but large volume payment systems.Mansoor Amjad>> Hi, my name is
And in Pakistan, a lot of new, you know, digital companies who are coming in who are actually performing roles which are traditionally in the role of banks. So we are not in the stage how to change our rules and regulations which are mainly focused on large banks in terms of their financial stability. But now the small companies are also venturing into this payment system and how to control the vulnerabilities and stability of the systems.
, I've asked you to talk for a few minutes in our second hour to explain more about your work. Thank you.Mansoor>> And, Mr.
, and I work in embassy, ICT portfolio along with a few other portfolios.Mobasha>> Hi, my name is
>> Just in time, Omar.
. And thank you very much for the support and assistance.CLDP in Kabul, Afghanistan. And Internet Society of Afghanistan. So there's some business and volunteering with the Internet Society. And I'm a member of the team that's coming along with the TechNation. I'm running a company called Ansari Mansoor>> Thank you. My name is Omar
and digital policy issues at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations here in Geneva. I have a little bit of a history with Joe. Joe and I worked on a project between the Estonians and Afghanistan in 2014 when I was posted there. And then separate from that, I'm headed to Afghanistan this summer, I will do an assignment, I wanted to pop in a listen a bit and hopefully have a chance to meet some of the Afghanistan delegates. Thanks, Joe.cybersecurity, I work on Makins>> Hi, my name is Brett
>> Great. Thanks for being here. And we have a visitor in the back?
>> Oh, hi, I'm Lisa from the WTO.
>> You came early.
>> I managed to talk my way in with my WTO badge.
sometime later.programme specialist, Courtney McCarty. Both of them are at the police station right now because I think what you heard happen to her bag, it's very unfortunate. But I hope they can at least join the programme CLDP who is from Afghanistan. She is with our Mansoory Shabana>> Joe: If's a hard thing. So welcome. Two other people that are here but not here are
So with that, let us go into the first and main presentation. To my left, we have Marilyn Cade, I think you've all met Marilyn in the last 24 hours.
>> Marilyn: Or several years ago.
>> Joe: Or going way back. So I'm going turn it over to Marilyn both to introduce herself and also to give a presentation about the IGF and how to get the most out of it.
tell you that?diddy>> Marilyn: Thanks, Joe. My name is Marilyn Cade. Of the top three things you need to know, that's one of them. Not my name, but how I said it. How clearly I said it. And how slowly I said it. Watching that transcript, if you want your comments to be credited to you and not to (man speaking), then you need to pay tension when you go to the microphone and you should go to the microphone, it's one of the things I'm going talk about. Say your name clearly and also I'm going to ask Joe to send the list of all of your names to scribes so that they have them ahead of time. Why
I said that because the IGF is very, very different than the average event or meeting that ow go to, including at the UN. You notice we have no country cards for you to put in front of yourself. You notice that your badge makes it almost indistinguishable about what group you're with. That is because based on the Tunis Agenda, the negotiated language calls for all stakeholders to act on an equal footing. You can imagine how shocked the governments were when they walked into the first IGF in Greece and practically fell apart with anxiety that there wasn't separate seating for the governments and there were no country cards. We have evolved past that. We've evolved to the point now at IGF where ministers expect to stand in line at a microphone to be able to talk for only two minutes. And there's a clock.
So in order to get the most out of the IGF, you need to know a little bit about our culture if you haven't been here before and how different it is from most of the meetings you go to. People expect to be approached regardless of their level, regardless of who they are. They expect to be approached to engage in conversations. They will ask you where you're from. But do not think that it's going to be easy to find people because everybody is on an equal footing.
. So a great opportunity for you to begin to exchange conversation and dialogue.UNCTAD. People from WIPO, the Inter‑Governmental Organizations, have actively participated in the IGF. And we're really trying to change that. And I think at this particular IGF, there's some really unique opportunities. Thursday open forums with different groups from the past that haven't traveled to Geneva, which is really the home of ‑‑ the UN in New York to me is the political home of the UN. The home of the UN and the agencies that are here, it's filled with the experts on different subject matters. And so it's a great opportunity for you. You'll hear from Lee later. You'll also hear from someone from the international trade agency, I think? Centre, sorry. There are people from the ITU. People from IGOs, going to the workshops is a great opportunity for you to begin to build your own network of people that you're interested in continuing to engage in. And the culture at IGF is: Always ask. Always comment. So every session, except the opening ceremony, will have an open microphone session. And please, if you go into a session, a main session in particular, and you're not ‑‑ it's going to be much harder to get a speaking opportunity at the microphone in the main sessions. But the workshops you should really assume there's an opportunity for you to ask your questions of the speakers and also make your statements. Don't assume that the people who are here ‑‑ there's over 3,000 people registered. I would anticipate a 40 percent drop‑off. But that'll be well over 2,000 people. Many of the people here, we're holding this IGF in Switzerland at the Palais des Nations of the United Nations because we needed to really bring the UN community into engagement. Up to now, only five of the programmeSo one of the great things for you about participating in the main sessions, looking at the online
So to get the most out of it, start thinking about who you want to meet with, who you want to be introduced to. From the workshops that are there, which ones look most interesting to you? And if you're in a workshop and it's not working for you, get up and move. All of the workshops are transcribed, captioned. And that means that if you're missing a workshop that you're really interested in, later you'll be able to read the transcript with all of the comments.
The Palais itself is a little challenging to navigate. You picked up your badges. But how many of you have actually been on the grounds of the Palais besides Lee? How many of you have been on the grounds of the Palais? You have. So, good. That's what I was going to say, Lee. Yeah, the map that is on the host web site there's a two‑page brochure, the map is upside down. So one thing you might want to do online is look at the workshops you're most interested in and then look at the building that they're in. The primary number of workshops will be in the middle building, right here, and in Building E. But it takes a long time to walk from one end to the other end, so just keep that in mind.
The rooms are large. And they're set up like this with microphones. So the good news is: In the past, we've always had standing microphones and we've had problems with room space. There shouldn't be a problem with room space. There should be plenty of room.
My second tip to you is: Sit down front. And if you think you're not going to be particularly interested ‑‑ because that way the presenters and the moderator will see you if you decide you want to ask a question.
If you get there early and the speakers are there, go up and introduce yourselves. It's always a contest where I get more business cards at the end of the IGF or one of you does. My goal is to always know 150 new people by the end of any IGF. Let's see if you can beat that.
But there's a lot of experts here from really different places. And you all know how to find the participants' list online, right? So that's a good tip for you. You look at the speakers, you can go check out what their affiliation is. You can't tell what country they're from unless they're from the government. But you can at least tell which stakeholder group they identify with.
The Rule at the IGF is that we can disagree, but we do not do so in a disagreeable manner. I tell you that because for the first three years of the IGF, we sometimes booed each other. But we have really evolved to a culture of expecting that people should be able to disagree, but that they should not do so in a harsh and demeaning manner. So it's one of the things that you should expect is: It's going to be a civil discourse even though there will be a lot of disagreement. That's good about this particular group.
We're quite unique in that we do not negotiate outcomes. But we do create outputs. So what's the difference? Well, one of the things the Tunis Agenda says is that we can create recommendations if needed. But the primary part of our output is to learn from each other, create understanding, and take that into the other expert agencies where a topic may be worked on.
. And et cetera.IVP6. And they're not required to be. They have to evolve toward ‑‑ they have to be inclusive. But it's just that some issues may attract more people from civil society or more people from the technical community than others. Such as rollout of multistakeholderWe're actually creating a lot of intercessional work at the IGF where we have Dynamic Coalitions where individuals who were interested in a particular topic come together and work on a topic. They're more like birds of feather sessions. And they continue working together over time online and by conference call. They are not all truly
is there, et cetera.Cybersecurity that work together continually. They have the benefit of having a paid consultant to help them with writing the reports. And they are actually creating very useful documents that may be particularly interesting to some of you in your countries around certain issues. So there will be two meetings where there's a readout from the Dynamic Coalitions and a readout from the best practice forums. So those would be like the appetizer course of hearing what's going on in one place from those groups, and that may be something that you want to look at and put on your agenda if you see that some of the topics are particularly interesting. cybersecurityWe also have something called best practice forums. Best practice forums are a more sophisticated approach and something that some of you may be interested in. That is a group of experts in a subject matter such as
is done remotely, with conference calls and online participation, and one of the things the Secretariat provides is access to their WebEx and access to free conference calls for the conducting of this intercessional work.intercessionally and IoT. So, again, an area that may be of particular interest to you. And since all of the work BlockchainThere's a debate going on right now about whether we will start a Best Practice Forum in
Take advantage of the host country reception to make sure that you are looking around and seeing who you want to connect to and let Joe know if there's anybody particular, if I know them, I can help do some introductions.
>> Joe: Just to clarify. The host country recession is tomorrow evening, correct? And it's business attire.
>> Marilyn: So Joe's already told you about the need to stay safe. I'm going to hand something out that I want you to just pass around and take a look at because I'm going make a comment about it.
graphic that says that Internet Governance is under construction. When we wrote the Tunis Agenda and we chose the term Internet Governance, certain languages do not translate "governance" into governance. They translate it into government. And there was great confusion in the first few years about whether we were calling for Internet government in certain countries, China being one of them, Saudi Arabia being another, or calling for Internet governance.DiploSo what I just handed out is a
Internet Governance is still very much under construction and very much needs your active involvement. And I think that's one of the things that sometimes people say "but how does eight effect me? And how it's going to help my country? And what is it going to do to help me address the problems and challenges I have in my country"?
You can help to construct the governance rules that then will be adopted. Most of them will be on a voluntary basis or a code of conduct basis. But it is really possible to change the actions both of governments and of companies by participating actively.
engagement.multistakeholder and there will be efforts made to adopt the recommendations or to explain why the recommendation cannot be adopted. That is a major output of organisation, who some of you may get to meet, made a proposal to the Minister that Nigeria change the delegation to the next ITU meeting to include expert advisors. At that time the U.S. government had over 163 participants on their delegation to the UN meeting. And the Nigerian government had 60. And by the time we got to that UN meeting, the Nigerian government had 50 percent private sector experts from civil society and business and academia that came with them. And they have made it now a Rule that all of their delegations to UN meetings must include at least two private sector advisors. That is a major change that happened. The output recommendation from the Nigerian IGF, the Minister has agreed it will be reviewed in his AdumaIn Nigeria, the Nigerian IGF, the Nigerian government had never taken a private sector person with them on a government delegation to a UN meeting. And at the national IGF three years ago ‑‑ sorry, four years ago, the participants who were active in the IGF itself, one of them is a Nigerian businessman who was on the IGF mag. And Mary
, national and regional initiatives, talked about what they talk about on this topic. So they may be another good place for you to also learn about particular topics. What else? Questions?NRIs one of the NRI sessions. I'm doing one on fake news. But you should take a look at these. They are they're not workshops. They are NRI workshops. organising are conducting eight events. They're on the agenda. And Omar, who is trying to leave us, is actually NRIs. The IGFs itself or to the UN. They Work together on a volunteer basis. There's certain criteria they have to engage in in order to be listed. And I'm very please today note that both Tunisia and Afghanistan this year launched their UNIs. The ‑‑ have no relationship to the DESA, United Nations DESA, are an organic, bottom‑up happening that occurred without any mandate. The inner I's don't have ‑‑ the IGF itself, it's our institutional home the Internet Governance Forum is UN IGFs, the national and regional NRIsSo let me just say one quick thing. The
at this point.IGFs longer than I have. And I'm getting to be I'm about 40 percent of all IGFs>> Joe: Maybe we should pause here and see if there are any questions so far? Or Omar? That's a good idea. Would you like to add anything? You've been going to
. So moving conferences where different governments, stakeholders, private sector, civil society, technical communities, they can come together and share issues, problems, challenges and work on solutions.IGFs, the World Summit on the Information Society. It was in two phases. The first one was in Geneva in 2003. The second one was in Tunis. That's where they decided to have annual WSIS called programme>> Omar: Well, I have been involved in the IGF since 2012. That was Baku, my first IGF. But before that, there was another
. Advising on the sessions, workshops and others.programmeIn 2012, when I participated in the Baku event and since then except for Turkey Istanbul which was 2014, I guess, I've been in IGF. And last year, I was appointed as a MAG member. Where I help with the IGF
chapter in the country. So IGF is more about you know, learning, collaboration and building your network and seeing what other countries and stakeholders are doing so it's a great platform for you to connect with others. You know, there could be project ideas that you could, you know, work with different data stakeholders who are doing the same thing. We did in like 2015 at the ‑‑ that was IGF 2015, right? We had a discussion with Facebook, like social media is expanding, especially in the developing world. And people do not understand how to be safer online. So with Facebook we started a project in Afghanistan that's about online safety.ISOC BC, the business constituency with Merrill Lynch, invited me to, you know, join the BC. It's a great platform. A learning opportunity for us. And also we are collaborating with different stakeholders mainly from business. And that's how we started with the IGF Afghanistan to the ICANN 51 in Los Angeles. That was 2014. And I joined ICANN, as well, a few meetings, ICANNAnd when I got involved with the IGF, then I participated in
. One is techwomen.asia. This is a new platform involved there. And there is another one called tech.ef, which is a platform for technology information and resources.programmesThere will be an IGF village where a technician will be showcasing two of its
And there are so many other organizations that will be at the IGF knowledge. Great opportunity to connect with these, talk to them about ideas you have. And also the issues, you know, you might not have been able to find a solution for, you could share those with different other participants and possibly there would be ways you can collaborate around those issues.
as well as IGF. So if you stick around her, you would learn so much. And also connect with so many different people and institutions.ICANNMarilyn is a great resource. I've been honored to be her mentee at the
and had you they work with each other.NRIs. He asked me to significantly improve the identity of the NRIs, the then Chair, he asked me to ‑‑ there were 56 Yanis. When I was appointed the coordinator in 2015, October of 2015, sorry, September of 2015 by NRIs. You know, I'm going to suggest two other ideas to you. In addition to the tech nation booth, there is a shared booth of the WSIS. But in addition to that, I've been at every one of the preparatory sessions for the IGF. And actually we met during the IGFs>> Marilyn: Thank you, Omar. I've been at every one of the
speaking in a main session. So that's another idea for you to kind of get a potpourri of what's going on in various countries.NRIs, there is also an NRI main session on Wednesday, begins at 11:30. And there will be 30 of the NRIs to work with each other ‑‑ for any of you who are interested in learning more about the NRIs, the ability for the NRIsAnd today there are over 100. And we have established an IGF focal point at the IGF Secretariat. In the past, we had intern who turned over every four months. So we are really strengthening the interaction. And the
is really changing the world and how it can help to address the challenges you're facing.digitisation looks like next year, you may want to also start thinking about how you provide ideas and information about what's meaningful in your country and how you look ahead at how innovation and how programme of information and of access. So we're just beginning to launch that awareness in the IGF. This IGF is very different. It has different topics, as I said before. But I think the other thing you should think about is at the end of the IGF, there's a taking stock session. And then Omar will be on the MAG again next year. And in order to influence what the digitisationOne of the things about this IGF this is also different is a recognition ‑‑ years ago, when I worked at AT&T computer systems, I was the first person in Washington, D.C. in public affairs that put the words "e‑commerce" on my business card because President Clinton was launching an e‑commerce initiative. And always having my eye to the political wind, I'm joking, but today you're faced with the digitized world which is changing your economies and it's changing the lives of your citizens. Even the banking as you were describing, the fact that managing money, exchanging money, fulfilling the role of banks, even fulfilling the role of a healthcare provider is today supported by the
So, do come.
, which could be helpful in terms of helping you to reach other people.NRIsAlso, we have the IGF Support Association. I am on the Board and Omar is a member. I would really love for some of the rest of you to think about joining the IGF Support Association. We support the IGF Secretariat. And we provide small grants to the
Also look at the list of the business attendees that are registered. And as Omar said, there may be some companies there that you're particularly interested in. And Omar and I can perhaps help you set up some bilateral conversations with them.
One final comment I make is that there will be an attendee from afghan telecom arriving tonight afghan wireless arriving tonight. He'll be around and be interested in hearing from all of you as they are also very interested in what's going on in the adjoining countries. He will be talking about the work they are doing in Frontier Communications: The challenges that you face when you are trying to provide communications, digital literacy and access on a frontier, which your countries all seem to have a lot of still.
Do we have other questions before we wrap up from my standpoint?
>> Joe: Did you emphasize the importance of asking questions?
[Laughter]
>> The sessions which were done, these have, show the slides and everything. So would we be able to download the slides later from the website?
>> Marilyn: They may not be loaded immediately, but the other thing I would suggest you do is if there's a particular presentation you want, because the presentations are all individual from the speaker, go up and give them your business card and get them to send them to you immediately. Because the Secretariat is very small. There's only four people. And it takes a while. It could be even as late as January to get everything posted. But you'll find ‑‑ go up and ask them for their slides. And you'll find that they're usually very, very willing to send them to you immediately. And give them a deadline so that if you don't get them by tomorrow, you can ask them again.
>> Joe: Anything else? We all know each other so don't be shy.
If not, I want to thank Marilyn for being here. Thank you for your presentation. Appreciate it.
[Applause.]
like this and we'll go on for one, two, three days altogether.programme is handling this event of the IGF is not your traditional workshop or session. Traditionally we will have a CLDPAnd while we're still on the topic of getting the most out of the IGF, I just wanted to probably repeat myself. I think I've said this to each of you at different times that the way that
You will be out with all the IGF participants. And we've tried to prepare you with the agendas. And if not we can make more copies. You have an online account with the IGF. You notice they don't print anything. You've made individual agendas. But we do let you go choose what's most important.
, Courtney and I. We're here to be facilitators. So we will as much as possible look for you, see you, talk to you about what you're finding good, what's missing, where you might want to be, where we can help you be, where we can set up meetings.Mubashar: Megan, CLDPI was saying before the 10:00 session, that's it, I'm gone. Don't get the wrong impression because, number one, we want to send you out to be lost. And we do think if you do this right, you will be very tired. You will go to a lot of things. And if we can get you into recessions in addition to the ‑‑ receptions, in addition to the session Marilyn mentioned tomorrow. We're working on whether it's okay to go to the international Chamber of Commerce tonight. It's unclear still but we can talk to you about it. But there's always opportunities. And we're happy that we have four people associated with
went ahead and reserved meeting space, which is hard to get sometimes. And we're already planning to use that space for e‑commerce discussions. I think we've put it on the agenda already. But tomorrow afternoon I think we will talk to somebody at 2. And Tuesday afternoon there will be a discussion with the two experts on e‑commerce. Everybody is welcome. I know our Tunisian friends are most interested. So that will keep you busy.CLDP
>> Marilyn: I want to make a comment. When you say somebody will say a little bit more about who that somebody is?
>> Joe: This is me trying to read and talk the e same time.
>> Marilyn: You're going hear from Lee Tut hill today and you'll hear from the international trade council?
>> Joe: Centre.
>> Marilyn: Centre, sorry.
. So it will be, I think, a particular interest to all of you. And he is a fabulous person. He qualifies for the rare title of being an FOM. Do you all know who an FOM is? It's a Friend of Marilyn's.SMEs called E‑Trade For All that focuses on programme has a UNCTAD that will be of particularly of interest to you. UNCTAD is the chief of the unit in Frederickson. And toward Rick UNCTAD with you is with bilatThe other entity that you'll be able to speak with that Joe has arranged a
[Laughter]
>> when will we have?
>> Joe: Tomorrow afternoon. We'll give you the exact time.
also that he may be able to tell you about.UNCTAD at programmes>> Marilyn: But there's other
I'm also trying to help Joe get a speaker from UNESCO. UNESCO also has regional offices. They are doing a significant project on indicators to measure the Internet Governance indicators. So if we can get time for you with them, because for all of you, looking at resources of who you work with then when you go back to your country, I think both of them in addition to Lee from WTO and others will be particularly helpful.
will appear again, I believe, if he's available. And I'm in the putting him on the spot, but I think you said you may be around.Toothill from the University of Berne will be here to talk about e‑commerce. And Lee Burri>> Joe: And another important others is Tuesday afternoon Professor Mira
>> Yeah, I'll step in just for moral support.
>> Joe: Thank you. And, Megan, am I forgetting anyone else we've tentatively arranged?
>> Yeah, we're waiting to see if our ITU colleagues might also join us.
>> Joe: Great.
Centre for Innovation. So I will ask him if he might work out a bilateral with you since he's not arrived yet.Mastercard>> Marilyn: One final. Manu is not here. I think there may be interest in. Manu is the Director at the
>> Joe: Right. So evening that's it. Ready to dive in on some e‑commerce issues? This is the agenda that I've proposed in writing and in here, which is it would be most helpful if we were to hear something about the current state of e‑commerce and e‑economies generally in Tunisia.
just to talk a little bit about relative issues from the perspective of the State Bank of Pakistan.Mansoor. And Mr. Hadrick. The e‑commerce from Mr. MansoorThat will be followed by some remarks by Mr.
from the ITC. With that, perhaps you'd like to come up. We've loaded your slides.Fiff and we are expecting one more speaker Mr. OrganisationI've talked to each of you about your presentation. This is introductory. I think I put 20 minutes on the agenda you have in front of you. After this, I will turn the floor over to Lee to give an overview of e‑commerce issues from the perspective of the World Trade
to allow Tunisian participation in. Personally it's my first time that I participate at IGF. Also it's my first thing that I do presentation in English. You know what people say talk about the communication barrier, but it's not a problem.CLDP>> Okay, thank you, Mr. Joe. I will first thank
So I prepared a presentation about e‑commerce in Tunisia about the environment of e‑commerce in Tunisia.
So to give you jugs at overview about e‑commerce. So it's just an introduction. As you know, it is digital technology. So this digital revolution has affected many environments sector. Also several transformation affected the commercial sector in the whole process from procurement, distribution, information, marketing and also doing expert operation.
the telecommunication infrastructure, which should meet the needs of the digital economy. And those are regulatory, from work of the digital economy.modernisingSo some of international forecast that the value of online trade will be about $4 trillion in 2020. That will represent 18.7 of the total of retail sales worldwide. So tune ease assistance 2000, the government has been ‑‑ favorite of creating the favorable development of e‑commerce so he paid special proponent to ecosystem of electronic commerce and the ICT in general. So he has adopted national strategy focused on
on resource through the ‑‑ training. Support and institutions to contribute to the development of Information Society and the information knowledge.capitalisedAlso, the human resource, so the government
.intreatsAnd also government is to create some specialized institution in order to provide business trusted environment. We can talk about the national digital certification agency or the national agency for computer security. And also Tunisia trade need for the single window for
This strategy enables the some digital activity. We have many activity in government, activity, e‑business, e‑commerce, and also e‑banking. So we can see the remarkable development of telecommunication infrastructure. And also the availability of a qualified human resource and the best quality of higher education in the public and the private sector.
companies operating in digital.specialisedAlso, the diversity
Of course, the payment system has evolved.
commercial sector. Also that we have some specific laws that regulating e‑commerce. Law number 14 about related to technique of selling and commercial advertising. So we have special section about distance selling. And we can define in this session the distance selling. Its operation, commercial operation don't use it by telephone, video transmission, radio, the selling with catalog and other means.organisationSo just an overview about the legal framework about e‑commerce in Tunisia. As you know e‑commerce is principally regulated by the same
And this law organized the relation between merchant and consumer in selling. And we have the law number 18‑3 related to exchange and e‑commerce. The digital certification. Also the creation of the national Tunisian national digital agency certification agency. This law was inspired from the model law. And this law is between right of various parties between merchants and the e‑consumer.
So also another law that define distribution, the difference between all sales and ‑‑ and they are a part that specify the when we do this activity online.
So many actually involved on the e‑commerce in Tunisia. We have central bank, different ministry, general direction of custom, Tunisian post for all delivery, money, and different sector from private and public sector.
place. So Tunisia was ranked in 2016 in 73. But Tunisia still maintain its position at the first in Zagreb and the third in Africa. So this evaluation methodology is based on four criteria, the extent of Internet used, the number of secure service, and the use of banking card and also the degree of reliability of postal service.79thSo some indicators, the report said business to consumer e‑commerce, he rank Tunisia
The economic of e‑commerce in Tunisia in different sector. So we have some marketplace like Tunisia. Some website about classified also selling computer mobile bill payment transport companies and telecom operator and bill payment for the government and electricity. And we have the expansion of some e‑commerce website on the deal.
. And also the government was launched money website like the inscription and now in Tunisia, we have the obligation for all students to do their inscription online using the EDR card.Mastercard. So the first is Create EDR created by Tunisian Post. ETR can accept some electronic wallet card and also they can, this payment system can accept Visa and Tunisie MonétiqueSo just about the Tunisian online payment solution. We have two payment solutions. The Tunisian post create a solution of online payment. And also we have the secure payment system of
in the design, integration, operation and outsourcing of electronic payment. More than 21 bank collaborate with ‑‑ also six African began. More than 14,000 payment at terminal. And ATM, also.specialised. It was created in 1989 by Tunisian bank. It is a consortium of different Tunisian banks. It's Tunisie Monétique. It has the secure payment system called the click to pay. Just send a review of Tunisie MonétiqueAnd just an overview about
. And also with PCI, DSS Saunders.Mastercard have national department and international partner. And the solution is verified by Visa, Tunisie Monétique
the continued evolution of the e‑payment and the e‑commerce activity online.realiseSo rapidly I give you just in 2016, some indicator realized through the two platform EDR and the click to pay, we have more than 1,014 e‑commerce websites compared to 2015 we have different services in bill payment, online deal transport, e‑ticket. And in 2016, we have more than 1.8 million transactions payments online. The amount is about 157 million. It is equivalent of 54.$8 million. So we can
So also the Tunisian government has launched the solution of international technology card because we say in the main eye say the main challenges is Tunisia, we can't ‑‑ we don't have access to international payments. So the ministry of ICT and digital economy with the collaboration of the central bank, they launched international technology card. It's a free pre‑paid card for individual and companies. Builds young developer and community active in ICT to develop technology like mobile application to have the possibility to access on international electronic payment platform.
So also we have some initiative of mobile payment in collaboration with the Tunisian post and the telecommunication operator. And also, there are some private initiative of mobile payment.
About the logistic, we have national and the international companies specialized in logistics. But I think its principal activity is by Tunisian post.
So we have adopt a national orientation. Two major orientations for the ministry of trade of commerce, Tunisian ministry of trade for the development of e‑commerce. The first one is expansion of e‑commerce by capacity building. This period also of digital culture. And the second orientation is the development of ex export through electronic channel.
The first one, the objective of the first one is developing managerial capacities through training related of to modern commercial practice and new business model of the digital economy. Also the spreading of the culture of e‑commerce to small and medium enterprise also to the consumer, supporting setup. And last week we have the ministry consul committee was accept the setup act. It's legal framework that allow the setup to create own companies. And they have some barriers without this legal framework will allow this setup for business on international level.
So we have money projects launched for the first orientation. Actually, in processing, we do a new research about e‑commerce in Tunisia to impact this. This will allow Tunisia to have an idea about the real e‑commerce environment and online selling. And also highlighting stakeholder, the first study done by the ministry of commerce about this sector.
And also, this will How the ministry to identify the main obstacles and difficulty affecting e‑commerce development in national and also for exporting market and also benchmarking international experience. And in final, we can establish an action plan for the expansion of e‑commerce activity. And the second project is the commerce trustee, we collaborate with the national federation of e‑commerce and ‑‑
We think that this will establish ‑‑ will provide the guarantee to support consumer confidence. And I think also the European Union, they have a project like this to create commonality, European community.
. So the main objective raising awareness and the dissemination of e‑commerce culture to civil servants, to small and medium enterprise and also to startup. And follow on international best practice.Blockchain of workshops and training on digital economy and the new business model because different administration or some companies to show them what's the new digital model, like e‑marketplace. What's different? New technique in marketing using e‑business and e‑payment. And now we talk about bitcoin and organisationThe last one is the training of capacity and building
. Etsy, like Tradekey, like Alibaba and the World Bank. In this project, in Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. The objective development of small and medium enterprises export through using virtual marketplace like centreSo for the second orientation about e‑export, we have a project launched with international trade
aims to export the volume of small and medium enterprise, virtual marketplace, and create a new generation of export advisors in order to coach small and medium enterprise. Also increase the small and medium enterprises, export using an innovative channel like virtual marketplace. And also support international reform to build platform for e‑commerce. programmeSo we aim this
Also this project, some key results, we have 23 advisors was training to support more than 200 exporting small and medium enterprise to create profile in this virtual marketplace. And they have realized more than 14 export ‑‑ 400 export operations through this VMP. And new destination like especially for the European Union, USA, Australia and golf companies. And also dissemination of new export culture, some advisors, they learn in university all about cross‑border e‑commerce and how they can use virtual marketplace to enhance their ex port. So also thanks to this project, we identified the main barriers to enhance e‑commerce.
. This agreement aims to reduce the cost of sending international e‑commerce parcel, reduction to the 15 percent, and this agreement, we think that this agreement will encourage small and medium enterprise, mainly the handicraft ones to sell their product using e‑commerce and using online channel for any consumer.centreWe have also launched an agreement between the Tunisian post and the ex port promotion
Africa. This project in the framework of the agreement between the Tunisian government and the Universal Postal Union. The project aims to facilitate international trade process and to develop simplified harmonized export service for small and medium enterprise using postal service.DCOMThe last one is the project is the expert and
And the future challenge we know e‑commerce produces an opportunity for Tunisian economy in terms of job creation and export promotion. Despite there's some barrier or some challenge that limited development of e‑commerce. So principally cross‑border e‑commerce approach are negligible, mainly to the non‑convertible Tunisian Dinar. And also we have the main, really it's real problem, the legal framework of exchange rate regime that don't allow more than medium enterprise to integrate international payment, such paper or other solution in their e‑commerce website.
So also we need to diversify the online offer so domestic e‑commerce, retail market will be developed more. And the electronic payment as the secure means of a payment should be more spread among the Tunisian consumer and reinforce the trust between electronic commerce for this, really we need to develop the project of trust still. And intensity the structure that oversee the commerce activity to guarantee better consumer protection. And thank you.
[Applause.]
I think by this presentation to give you an overview about e‑commerce in Tunisia and we need more action to develop e‑commerce. Thank you.
>> Joe: That was a great presentation. Thank you. And if there are questions, we can take them. Your timing was perfect. Because we have a special guest. And I didn't announce the guest because I went sure you were coming for sure. Thank you for coming.
So not on your agenda, but here to give you welcome is Mr. Rob Starr. He's with the United States Department of State. He's a Deputy Assistant Secretary for cyber and telecom issues.
>> Yeah, that's right.
>> Joe: And he's responsible for communications, communications policy, for representing that outside the United States. And we're very honored to have you here. You've just been on the job for.
>> Three months.
>> Joe: So he's experienced. And I turn it over to you. Thank you again for coming.
to you because I understand it's been a great living tool in the past. We want to form greater partnerships with your thee countries. We all want to sort of enhance the quality of life of all of our citizens and the ways that we're interacting with one another, the businesses that they're transacting across our borders and communication that's happening and development of our democracy. So kudos to Joe for putting it all together and keeping this going. Thanks a lot for having me.programme>> Thanks for the introduction, Joe. It's a real privilege to meet all of you. I thinks your first IGF. If's also my first IGF. I think we'll also get a lot of connections out of this week. We will all learn a lot this week. And I really commend this
The you have any questions, I could take a question or two and then head off.
>> Joe: The opportunity's here.
[Laughter]
Marilyn?
>> Marilyn: My name is Marilyn Cade. I'm cheating because I'm of course a speaker, as well, I'm a member of your Advisory Committee at CIP. So I'll undoubtedly be seeing you there. But I just want to thank you for coming. I don't know how much of the e‑commerce presentation that you got to see.
>> I just saw the tend of it. Yeah, it's good.
>> Marilyn: It was excellent.
. We're working with e‑health or e‑education. So I'm wondering if we might pose the idea that they could come back to you with more detailed questions at another time.USAIDI do think that one of the things that is of particular interest to all of the representatives that are here is also their ability to work back home with all of the folks that are supporting the State Department or the commerce department from the U.S. in their country on projects and activities. And maybe something to think about is whether it would be possible to think more on their part about coming back to you with other questions about, okay, e‑commerce is an initiative in our country, but we also have another initiative that we're engaged in that is involving
>> Sure. Of course. And you know we have digital economic officers and there's also commerce department folks in I think probably all of your capitals, all the major ones I think as far as relationship reasons. So you can always reach out. We have a digital information officer I think in all of your capitals. So we want to be closely aligned with you and answer all your questions.
>> From Tunisia representing the e‑commerce and distant selling and the private segment, by the way. I would like to know and my question is both for you and for the IGF. You have seen an overview of the Tunisian market right now of e‑commerce and e‑commerce ecosystem. How do you think IGF can or the U.S. government can help? Whether by ‑‑ through legislation modification or through expertise? What will be the more efficient solution that you can bring to the Tunisian e‑commerce situation?
>> I think the best way we can help other countries is by sharing our best practices. You know, we have a general principle that competition should be the foundation for what we're trying to establish. So good competitive environment, you're going to get more investment, more innovation and more consumer choice. And then the preconditions to get to that competition in our view are a light touch, which is a limited regulatory environment that's flexible and neutral as to technology. That way as technology, new applications keep evolve, we're not set on a particular path that one way or the other with regard to the types of technologies that are going to be successful or potentially would be limited otherwise by heavier‑handed regulation that is choose a particular technology path.
technology.neutralisesSo part of our best practice, sort of east spousing our best practices, we suggest that folks, countries develop the lightest touch regulatory model possible that
And then as you're doing that, you're talking to the stakeholders, the businesses that are investing in those sectors. The telecom companies and the people that are developing the applications for the new uses of data. And that you're building those regulations so that they can help inform you as to where there might be limitations on them if a certain regulation goes into place.
. Good to meet you. Thanks for having me.programmeAll right. Well thanks a lot for letting me come by. Get back to your regularly scheduled
[Applause.]
.Mansoor>> Joe: So Mr.
>> Marilyn: You can put this on while the other person speaks. You can have it available.
>> Joe: You're here.
>> Just trying to follow orders.
>> Joe: I moved it back and forth.
[Silence.]
(microphone turned off?)
>> Marilyn: If you do that, Lee, then this is how the transcript works.
[Silence.]
Just to be clear, it's Marilyn speaking, if you do that, then the transcript, there will be no transcript for your segment.
Joe, it's a daisy, you're free to have off the record conversations.
[Silence.]
. She's here to give you some of the issues as seen from the WTO. With that, Lee?Organisation>> Joe: So introductions. And my tradition of self‑introduction, I'd say that I'm very pleased that Ms. Lee has come to speak to you. She has extensive experience with the World Trade
>> Lee: Thanks. I love ‑‑ I cannot say I've been to every IGF like Marilyn. No way. We don't necessarily have money for going around the world except for technical assistance seminars.
, I do enjoy it because it takes me perhaps out of my comfort zone and to a lot of issues I don't have the think but I get to see more of what's going on in the Internet and Information Society ecosystem.WSISBut when I do go to IGF and
a number of interesting things, data flows on Tuesday that I'm in. One tomorrow morning actually by a group of NGO who is argue that WTO shouldn't do anything. So you'll go there. I'm friends with those people whether I agree with them or not. So this is a very small piece of the picture. And within that economic framework, WTO is a lot less than what you have to struggle with as governments. You have all of the issues to struggle with. What we're trying to find is what we can do within our box. And I'll try to explain what this box is.programme or IGF, the economic aspects are part of that. You'll see a few panels on this issue but not a lot. You'll see the Human Rights issues, you'll see some of the technical issues being discussed. I think what IGF tried to do this year is feature a little more of trade issues than in the past hoping to take advantage of Geneva delegations. Some of them may have left from our ministerial and gone straight home. But I think I've seen in the WSISWTO is a very small part of the picture. If you look at normally a typical
A little warning. I've compressed about three presentations to give you an overview. I have provided your organizers with the slides. So I'll basically provide the highlights and skip over some quickly.
I never know where to start and I know a couple of you are trade people but I'll start with the beginning a couple words that the WTO is primarily three agreements, two of which for us are relatively new. Only 20 years old compared to the goods agreement. The goods agreement was a post war agreement. And there's been a lot of activity related to that. I'll highlight for you as I go along the trade facilitation agreement, which is one of our most recent new agreements. And the information technology agreement as particularly relevant to electronic commerce. The services agreement really has some implications for the infrastructure, the ICT infrastructure, in some of the telecom provisions.
And for a lot of online activity that is done through the ‑‑ in the services area, there's a lot of in domestic regulation in the agreement. And we try to negotiate market access for some of the kind of things that are online today.
And, finally, I know I read a lot about Google fighting with Apple and Nokia fighting with Qualcomm over the patents. And so in this space that is both ICT ecosystem as well as electronic commerce, we have had the TRIPS Agreement people discussing some of the issues that are related to digital economy, electronic commerce.
But all the WTO agreements essentially as their guiding principles have transparency, which means what governments do. The business should be able to find it somewhere. I mean transparency of what the government is. So when you have a new law coming out that it should be easy to find. If you have licensing requirements, they should be easy to find.
We often don't talk a lot about transparency because it seems simple, but I'm always surprised when the businesses stop down. Sometimes they stop down from ITU to see us at WTO, how important just getting their hands on the different rules and regulations is and sometimes they claim it's harder than you might think.
So I won't talk a lot about transparency, but I talk to businesses, they apparently any a lot about it.
related and consumer protection related to at least start out with some of the newer online protections in a nondiscriminatory way. To be consistent with WTO.cybersecurityAnd nondiscrimination, which is incredibly important for all of our agreements. And I see a lot of talk in e‑commerce space about nondiscrimination being important and governments thinking about as they formulate some of the new laws, whether they'd be
We have just had just last week a ministerial conference. We've been having them every two years since the WTO structure was formed. And again you can see the reflection of these three main agreements. But the General Counsel as a trade review body where we do national studies of the overall trade regimes of the WTO member governments. And on the right‑hand side of the General Counsel you'll see the dispute settlement body. The General Counsel's sort of like the managerial body that runs things in between ministerial meetings.
. From their perspective, they're looking at it as the more general issue. From our perspective, I'm watching what our financial services committee looks at from the e‑commerce perspective.unbanked that is going on. And goods, which has been in effect the longest, has lots and lots of subcommittees. Like I said, I'll pick out a few things for you. And services has a few subcommittees, one of which of course is on financial services, which has been talking about mobile payments and financial inclusiveness and banking the programmeAnd then we have goods services and TRIPS council. I come from the services division, in case you determine a bias. But just dozens and dozens of working parties, working groups, right now one of which is an e‑commerce Working Group ‑‑ work
I think the trade people, see, I work ‑‑ because I've been doing ICT with the WTO for more years than I should admit, I have gray hair. I've been doing it 27 years at the WTO. And I was assigned ICT portfolio from the beginning which morphed into e‑commerce. I'm seeing both ICT ministries and regulators I work with being fairly comfortable with e‑commerce and what's going on as some of the new technologies. And the trade people being less comfortable. Hopefully that some of us can be a bridge. And I know some of my colleagues at ITU are encouraging interagency consultations to help bridge some of these knowledge gaps.
So we get, for example, used to be if the word broadband came up, the trade people would sort of run the other way and say let Lee do it. But I think people are better now.
Mobile services are doing things today that even telecom people ever imagined that they would do. And we get calls from ambassadors saying what the heck are these cloud services?
And then I read in my IT newsletters that, you know, some of the computer people don't think cloud is anything new because for 30 years they say remote data processing and remote storage has been possible. Maybe not over the Internet, but it's not new per se.
And data analytics, it's newer to people, not so much into the data processing it does, but the magnitude. The magnitude is raising legal questions. And what's being collected, privacy issues. Trade people are thinking a lot about what is the nexus between e‑commerce and the digital economy and privacy.
.programmeAnd then things like that are even just now coming up, more so the Internet of Things where your watch is connected to WiFi, can tell you how many steps you went. And three dimensional printing, which is making people think that there could be even more implications for goods trade than they had thought about 20 years ago when they started their e‑commerce work
, you have, for example, media and entertainment being one of the number one digitized industries. We don't talk about that a lot at the WTO because we have cultural sensitivities. But then the number 2 is retail. And that's right where a lot of governments are worrying about how to get small retailers online to sell their stuff. Of course the technology industry has always been very online. And then you get into healthcare and travel.digitisationBut just quickly, you can see how both a goods side and the services side of WTO have become quite engaged. Initially even more so the services side we're engaged because we knew that services were information intensive from the beginning and we realized they were going online quickly. But now I think the goods side is catching up. If you look at these industries, you know, and their degree of
So it is very much a combination of goods and services segments of economies digitizing very quickly.
Let me just go now to sort of what I was asked to let you know what we're doing down the hill. Please. Oh what happened? I pushed the wrong button. What did I push? I don't think so. I think I pushed the screen button. What's the button? Just because I do this doesn't mean I know how to do this.
>> Somebody told me green means technical. It's not true for me.
>> Did I accidentally push?
>> The projector button.
>> Help is on the way.
>> I'm just the captioning person.
>> Lee: I think I may have pushed a button that made the screen go from that to that. What's the silly button you push?
>> Control P. The windows button P.
>> I had to look this up the last time I did this to myself. Okay. That should be it.
>> I think it's the input.
>> Lee: Oh that's split up. Okay. My husband's an engineer and his solution to everything is turn it off and turn it on again.
[Laughter]
So it wasn't maybe my fault.
Okay. This means I'm forced to be more articulate. It's okay. So I guess I didn't do anything. What I'll do is ‑‑ where was I?
Need to stand up.
. And the work program on electronic commerce was launched in 1992. Actually, I think the Americans had put in a proposal that we tried to avoid, that we have a decision to try to avoid having taxes on the Internet, okay. There was a huge outcry among the Internet community that Europeans were considering a bit tax. And so it came to the WTO. And it was transformed in quite substantial ways into the Europeans said you know, we don't talk about domestic taxes at the WTO. Beyond nondiscrimination, our domestic taxes are none of your concern.programmeAll right. My next slide talked about the work
So we changed it to an idea that we would try to avoid customs duties on electronic transmissions. And that has become quite an issue that people felt has been helpful even if they're not exactly sure what it is because nobody's doing it. To the extent that we can figure out what a customs duty on an electronic transmission, we have been looking at both the Internet potential duties as well as content.
So the easiest way that people can think of this moratorium is you shouldn't put a bit tax on the Internet, but if you order a book and then you download it, we have this sense that the moratorium means that although there may be a customs duty on the book if you send it cross the border in physical form, if you download a piece of music or book we shouldn't put tax on that. A lot of this is software because a lot of Developing Countries are quite ‑‑ have young software engineers who can export or get contracts for participation in global software projects.
in the WTO is what a lot of government versus been doing is trying to look at national legislation and figure out if some of them were drafted in a way that their commercial legislation might not accommodate electronic commerce or online stuff. And we were going to, our treaties, on goods, on services, on TRIPS, and trying to decide if our treaties not having really envisioned the technologies available today needed some adaptation or had some holes in them.programmeSo the other part is: The rest of the WTO said to the Americans. We don't want to just at degree to do without studying it. So the work program was set up. To look at all the aspects that might be trade‑related or WTO‑related and consider ‑‑ what I think they wanted to do, let's turn what we were really starting to do in a work
So there's a series of issues you'll see when you see the slide that were raised. The key here is most of the issues that were assigned to the bodies related to the legal ‑‑ different legal provisions of the agreements.
Now, by about 19 ‑‑ end of 1999, most of the groups had looked at their agreements and said, "well, we don't actually see there's a problem that nothing in these agreements actually excludes e‑commerce." unlike national laws, which you're going to take people to court, you might be suing them, you might be putting them in prison for violation of laws, you have very detailed laws that sometimes have to specify exactly what was the activity that somebody shouldn't do. In the WTO, you more have principles. So it was easier for us to see that they could be adopted to electronic supply of things and e‑commerce, or e‑commerce platforms.
The problem more is the cross‑border element. If you have a consumer protection law, it might not need to be adopted for domestic e‑commerce but international e‑commerce you might have problems because you have two different jurisdictions with different e‑commerce laws, for example.
in terms of I want to get paid for the moratorium if we'll keep it in place. So we had some of our negotiating politics get in the way. But I think what you got in many respects was a conclusion that was never made public, okay. Maybe I'm saying something a little controversial here.fro'g and to'gWe also had development group who was given some sort of general development issues of what is the potential impact on Developing Countries. And all of these groups really did initially most of their work in the first two years. I think though politically they never made a formal pronouncement that they had reached these conclusions. There was some
So what happened, a couple of issues that were controversial was bounced back to the General Counsel and for two years the ambassadors at that time, this is 1999, were still scared to death about e‑commerce. Many of them don't type at the time. Do you remember when your bosses didn't even use a word processor? They had their secretaries type everything? Nowadays everybody has on their phone and word processor and the Internet. But in those days ambassadors spent two years arguing about how they should discuss it. Should they ask an expert's group to be formed? Or should they discuss it themselves? And they finally developed something they called a dedicated session, which meant like a friend of the Chair, basically, managed discussions on e‑commerce issues that they were assigned.
One of the issues that we had was something where if you look at the list where you said cloud service, Big Data, one of the problems that was bounced up to the General Counsel was classification. And I think that's one of the things people are trying to figure out: How do you take some of the newer services and newer platforms and new ways of doing things and mesh them with, you know, the harmonized system we use for goods or the UN central product classification code we use for goods, which is important because this is how we attach our obligations to certain kinds of things to make it clear what they are.
So this question of a book that's downloadable, versus a book that's sent in physical form. They say well is it covered by the services agreement or the goods agreement?
Just quickly, I think the gap people felt as though you go on a platform, you order something, and once it's going to be delivered physically, there's nothing about the gaps that doesn't just apply at that point. You know, it's going to end up going through customs like it always did. And I think that's true. But what's happened very recently is they started looking beneath the hood on the system and realized that customs officers now are reaching such huge volumes of delivery of small packages that they're beginning to have problems figuring out how to cope, because people that might have gone to a department store or a corner market to buy something can now order it individually from abroad or even domestically. So they're having thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of small packages, which is something they never anticipated.
, to try to make that even more e‑commerce friendly. For example, somewhat controversial, but have higher de minimus so that your small companies can send things without having it have to be inspected by customs officers each and every time.GATTSo people ‑‑ there was a Chinese proposal, interestingly, to go beyond an agreement we just concluded on trade facilitation under the
can do better."SMEs can conquer the world but as how Alibabas are the new trade facilitation agreement that the Chinese are proposing we enhance even further had a very interesting approach to development provisions that we've never had before. We have Developing Countries say "please don't forget that you've got to figure out how not just at the Amazons or the GATTBut I think the things that interest me most about the
So what you have is the trade facilitation agreement, really they wanted to come on board but they wanted incentives to do so. So we have an approach wherein an exchange, technical assistance will be offered by members to help the developing and Least Developed Countries bring some of their e‑commerce‑related regime up to speed before the disciplines kick in. It doesn't work for everything. But it's a new way of looking at how to mesh rulemaking and development concerns.
So many different things. You'll see on the slides. I mean you could even send them now if you want.
I finished that.
The other thing which has been around for about 10 or 15 years is the information technology agreement. Now, what I have been following my colleague who does that and having lunch with him quite frequently because as far as I'm concerned as the ICT person and the e‑commerce person, if you're going to lower the price of information technology equipment, you're either going to do your businesses a favor, your citizens a favor because things will be cheaper. And in fact, one of the reasons that when they started having the information technology in 1996 this, they realized that some computer equipment, some semi conductor equipment and semiconductors had extremely high tariff this is some markets. And I know in some countries I worked with, their IT associations for years have encouraged governments to join the information technology agreement. It's unusual in the WTO context because instead of negotiating sort of progressively to lower tariffs bit by bit, the ITA actually says you join and you agree to lower to zero on certain equipment. For Developing Countries you can phase in the zero rate. So that's how they dealt with development concerns there.
They have now a second ITA that has expanded the number of products covered. It's confusing because they call it two agreements because the new ITA, not everybody from the first ITA joined it. Nevertheless, it's more of the same and over time you'll probably have more people joining it. I have a lot of details in the slides.
Moving just to services, just a few words quickly for those of you who may not be steeped in trade. We have a set of framework articles and then we have schedules of commitment on market access.
Now with the last trade round or most recent. Do what? Development Agenda having stalled, there's not a scope of expanding the commitments recently which is a shame for IT, and a shame for e‑commerce because our market access commitments now date from 1995. So they're quite ‑‑ they need updating quite substantially. But just so you understand, there's these two sides of the coin. Our commitments are sort of like a schedule of tariff concessions. But it's for services. They give market access, for example, under terms and conditions specified under the government, they give national treatment which is interesting because the goods people national treatment is taken for granted. We negotiated in services. And then interestingly, there's additional equipments on ‑‑ usually on regulatory matters of the that's where the telecom and IT comes in.
But just to say there's also a lot of domestic regulatory issues covered by the services agreement partly because we don't ‑‑ only cover cross‑border supply, which is extremely important to e‑commerce. We also cover commercial presence. So by default, because we are giving governments, foreign players the right to come in through commercial presence, the implication is we go deeper into domestic regulatory regimes. Now, that can be good or bad depending upon your perspective, but what I've seen is a lot of governments who want to do regulatory reforms are able to use some of the WTO for leverage in these kind of things.
talked about having to cut a deal with the postal service to help reduce the cost of packages because it's not a competitive sector. I know in most of Latin America, they have laws that require the express delivery companies to charge a certain percentage above the postal service. And the postal service is already expensive. So it's a sector where competition has never taken hold.HadriI'd say if you look at IT ‑‑ I mean e‑commerce infrastructure, in some of the areas like financial services and telecom, we have a great many market access commitments so that players can move around the world and do different things in terms of innovate and financial services, payment systems. And telecom has a very high level of commitments in the sector. In many countries it has become largely competitive. But where we haven't supported the infrastructure of the ICT world and WTO is postal. I mean, I see it's interesting that Mr.
And distribution services is something that a group of developing.
had wand the WTO to take a couple looks at.COUNSELLORTries>>
Things that had emerged sometimes by governments, sometimes by sector. An e‑commerce platform, these are service suppliers even though they tend to distribute goods. And we have very few commitments there. But a group of Developing Countries, when we were negotiating on market access, was really proposing we do more. Because I think they thought that they could do well in these things.
markets, which is where a lot of other markets in the world are selling to. And we may see some issues coming up there.industrialisedOne of the areas that I think will really test online supply and really get some of our principles some jurisprudence moving further than it has already is the computer services area. There's really quite good commitments on computer services, particularly by a lot of the
talks lot about this when he talks about online supply. And I really love the kind of data he has at his disposal.Frederickson. So we're often thinking about can our people get some handicrafts out? That's very important. But there's also the issue of the outsourced services that are provided the online, the business process outsourcing. I know centresDon't forget that the WTO has looked at e‑commerce in such a large, such a broad brush. It includes also outsourcing and call
But we have huge problems in trying to figure out how to help Developing Countries get more locked‑in commitments from their major markets on a lot of the business process outsourcing services.
get set up and get licensed and whatever. And it seems to be that they're viewed quite favorably as job creators, so there's not a lot of barriers put in there.centresSo I watch what happens as call
Where here, but I tell business people when I talk to them, you know, you shouldn't have to know about WTO every day you shouldn't have to think about it. You've got businesses to run. So that's why it's important that the government officials know how to help them understand how that when they do have a problem, when they do face a trade barrier, what is the recourse? What's the leverage of using the WTO?
For example, some of my American colleagues are still in the room. I know there's a number of state laws in the U.S. that are sort of anti‑outsourcing laws, I'll call them just to be brief. And there's never really been one at the federal level.
Well, every year or two, there's somebody who proposes again a potential federal law having to do with punishing companies who outsource their business. I've never really passed yet. But I've had members bring copies of the draft law in and say let's look at this. So it is possible that you may need the WTO some day to try to combat these kind of laws the U.S. or elsewhere. One of the things you need is the commitments to take them.
It's an interesting thing that in the WTO, we have exceptions, both in the good and the services agreement. The e‑commerce people are thinking about a lot. Partly because ‑‑ and let me use services exception as the example. Trade people have said that you can violate the WTO principles for the purpose of protection of public morals, the maintenance of public order. And, yes, this is very important. Also to protect privacy. And this is a big debate in this space for e‑commerce. Privacy of personal data of individuals and their bank account data, that's actually not just a US/EU battle going on. It's in the provisions of the WTO already. That people should be able to violate. They're thinking where's the line between ‑‑ there's a necessity test. So do you really need to violate the WTO's principles, basic principles, like nondiscrimination, to meet privacy concerns. So there's a huge amount of thinking about these issues that is going on in the WTO building.
So weighing in on those kind of things is very good.
that it was reasonable and nondiscriminatory access to the public telecom networks by all the service suppliers who need to use it.ensureIn 1995, the telecom community came to the WTO and sat down in meetings beside their trade people and they did an excellent job of writing an annex on telecom. Now the Annex on telecom didn't worry about whether there were telecom company was a monopoly or an exclusive provider or government‑run or not government run. All it said was that the governments should
how many people would need to use networks, infrastructures of the ICT segment of the economy to do their business. And that was the principle. But I don't think they realized how extensive that would be today.realisingInterestingly, I don't think they realized quite how far sighted they were at the time. Essentially, the word net neutrality did not exist at that time. But they foresaw it
issues and telecom. The second you was they were looking at competition from the point of view of you want to take market access provisions in the telecom sector. And then if you allow the operator to basically frustrate the new entrants. You've allowed them to ‑‑ I'm going over my time.telecommuneThere is additional commitments that the telecom community came to WTO also and helped negotiate in terms of laying out best practice principles for regulation of telecom. What's interesting about this is they ended up with a lot of competition provisions. And competition provisions, I know some of the people who work on competition were extremely envious that they hadn't been able to get this in the WTO. How did you telecom people do it? Well it doesn't take 10 years of legal wrangling to try to determine if the monopoly or former monopoly has a dominant position. Normally it did. You could start in 2 in
I know there's a lot of issues you're thinking about. The WTO doesn't do the practical side. This is why I'm glad Mohammed is coming, which will be good. He really helps people with the nuts and bolts.
But a lot of the practical issues that you look at like e‑signatures, do we need to improve our process? If we don't have a law do we need one? Inscription issues? Are they discriminatory or not? I'm looking at a list that you can't see unfortunately. I'm trying to pick out some of the kinds of things.
, spam. I mean I've pen going to ITU meetings on spam and OED meetings on spam for 10, 15 years. But WTO is thinking about is there a relationship, if they're going to get all this and just annoying kind all the way to the very illegal kind that's going to scam you, are they not going to have confidence in the system? CybersecurityLet me see. I think ‑‑ yeah. We have people who have said well let's try to look at more paperless trading. Paperless trading people think it's perhaps facilitative of trade in general but even more so when you have e‑commerce growing the way it is and e‑commerce that needs more come simplified procedures. Application for input licensing. So they're raising a lot of issues.
principles that help governments resolve these problems? TDAG that the trade principles, have we got the realise to do studies and like the ITC to do its projects that help people try to get over some of these barriers. It's self‑implemented. So we don't tell you how to do it, even. So that's an interesting aspect of all the issues that are now, we've had trade people put on the plate. They don't need to solve the issue. But they just need to UNCTADSo a lot of the kinds of issues governments think what will we do at the national level, the WTO is thinking about these issues but they're not going to do anything about it. That's what you have to understand. Almost everything WTO does, they leave governments to do on their own, which is why there's a role for people like
And go in the right directions of these issues. If not, there are people saying ‑‑ and this is my last slide ‑‑ maybe we do need trade rules. I'm sort of actually I'm literally neutral about this. Some people don't like that. I'm in the sure if we need new trade rules or we just need more jurisprudence on the existing trade rules.
We've ‑‑ interestingly, China, it wasn't taken to the ministerial because I think it wasn't ripe for that. China was proposing, like I said, take the trade facilitation agreement. Sort of do some added value that is more targeted at facilitating e‑trade.
but they put in a proposal on trade facilitation for services. So people who follow e‑commerce are also watching this proposal by India and see what ‑‑ if they bring it back and how it begins to look in 2018 and onwards.programmeAnd India, although it wasn't specifically about electronic commerce was proposing a trade facilitation agreement for services in which much to our surprise, they even mentioned perhaps having a discipline on data flows, which they'd been opposing in e‑commerce work
And, finally, the European community put in a proposal also that did not go to the ministerial. So we expect to see it come back. Of disciplines specifically on online services, how to facilitate them. But also suggesting for the first time explicitly that we improve market access for online supply of services.
And I looked and looked and looked at the schedules, and I think this is where I do have a bias, with a lot of the services that have begun to be outsourced, for example, by big companies to Developing Countries, many of these things used to be done inside a company. And now they're not being done. They're being done as business and trade across borders. So the classification system we use to get those market access commitments from people doesn't adapt very well to things that normally were, when these lists were designed, were never conceived of things that would be traded but would simply be done internal to a company.
in Mexico. Every single time I have called, you can tell a slight Latino accent. And in fact you can tell they've been trying to try to hide it. But it's so consistent, I'm thinking it must be in Mexico. And I know if I asked them, they would say what? Because they probably are afraid to admit it's in Mexico.centre'sEven, for example, personnel functions can sometimes be outsourced. I've been calling lately to a company, an insurance company because I was trying to make a claim. I'm convince that had call
.centre ready for us to go. We may not go in that line of business if we're told we need to duplicate the data centre already had a data centre how it quite fits into the rules yet. And he said you know we had a joint venture partner, a middle eastern partner. And that middle eastern centres of data localisation. We're not quite sure programme outside of Pakistan. And he said is that okay? I said listen, we're on the e‑commerce work centreSo you have this thing about the negotiations as a double edged sword. You have South Africa and some people feeling as though if negotiations get going on e‑commerce, people are going to push people in the WTO to principles that'll just help the Googles, just help the Amazons. And then I'm seeing people who probably need more help them Google and Amazon. I got a call from Pakistan saying you know I was going to go into a new line of business. And I asked the government about it and they said you can't have a data
So I am seeing things where trade rules clarified or perhaps strengthened would help Developing Countries. But if you go to the one on trade tomorrow you'll notice he'll be quiet because I don't force my opinions on anybody. But in an environment like this I'm relatively open with you all.
So I'm sort of gone over my time. The presentation, the long version is being distributed to you. Any questions about how all these things fit together? WTO and on the ground and national laws versus WTO rules?
>> What developed the different initiative taken by the WTO friends of commerce and those who if they will launch the work trade platform?
>> Lee: Those are two separate things, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Lee: The world trade platform that you're talking about this idea that Jack is behind?
>> Yeah.
adopt this initiative.Organisation>> I think it's World Trade
is one company so we didn't want to be ‑‑ what we were talking about then was making sure that the initiative includes many, many companies. Even if it was sort of launched or the idea came from Jack so I think there's a lot of thinking what's the best way to collaborate through this platform and make it as broad was possible.Alibaba>> Lee: Yeah, we're basically signing on in a way, we're figuring out what's the best way to collaborate on that without compromising our neutrality. I guess Amazon is one company. I mean,
I know the DG has started having these business dialogues. I don't think that's a substitute for. We'll see where that initiative goes. We're very, very concerned about our neutrality and trying to make sure that as it's formed, it becomes as inclusive as possible.
lateral group, they won't reject anybody from going, but they'll go ahead and discuss in what room somewhere, informal meetings, what some possible rules could be and then presumably let other people know.pluri lateral versus multilateral. Essentially forming a pluriOn the friends of e‑commerce, they made this announcement at the ministerial because there was no agreement to basically start negotiating on possible new rules in a WTO and e‑commerce, so they made an announcement that they would just form ‑‑ we have this jargon and the WTO got
Now, we can't stop people from doing this. And they're sort of maybe a little stronger than a friends group because friends groups have always existed because they really want to maybe form a proposal for the WTO at some point. We'll see how creative they are. We can see what people did in TPP in their e‑commerce work. We've seen some rough drafts of what was done in TSA. Those are little strange reading because they're outside the WTO and seem very redundant with some parts of the WTO.
If you're doing something that might be done within the WTO, some of that sort of confusing redundancy might fall out and it would be clear where you're trying to add value. If they accomplish something. We'll see if they also work on market access, because the minute they start working on market access, the developing Countries they work at need to start listing the things they want covered.
>> Thank you.
Sorry about the slides.
>> Joe: It's all your fault. It's not surprised you went longer the interruption of the slides. And it appears it just went out.
>> Is Mohammed here?
>> Joe: He went to the WTO.
>> I sent him a text message because I know he doesn't check his email.
>> Joe: Another speaker we have, concerns me just a little. He said "I went to the WTO. That's okay. I'm going the ITU now."
>> Poor Mohammed. Oh my God. I know he does intend to read. This take out. His email. So I used his phone to send him a text. That would be fine.
>> Joe: So let's thank Lee.
[Applause.]
There are a lot of issues there. There's a lot of distractions. I think that will be very helpful to us in understanding the issues in Tunisia and really in all countries, Pakistan, also. And I hope we have a chance to talk to Lee more later.
from Pakistan who is willing to give it a try without a projector.MansoorOur folks here are working on the projector, but we have potentially two more presentations. One here from our own Mr.
who is on his way.centreAnd then we have Mr. Mohammed ‑‑ from the international trade
We have the room until 3:00. So that gives us 40 minutes total. There's another session that follows us so we won't be able to go long.
Do you know if you guys have any opinion on this? Because we were thinking about just using the laptop if not. They're rebooting it. That is a Chinese‑made laptop, right? Looks like.
after hours. So the quick note when people are rushing out of the room. After this session, you're free to go to additional sessions today. Tonight, there is a reception at the hotel by the national Chamber of Commerce. We did not receive invitations to this. We understand you can go. If you want to, if you think you would be interested to go, I would be glad to go with a group and see if they let us in. It depends on your level of embarrassment if they send us away. But I'd be glad to meet everybody in the hotel around 7 o'clock.programme>> We have 30 minutes left. The
will be in the hotel 6:30 or so?SirhanFor those of you that bought sim cards and have not been reimbursed, Mr.
>> 6 to 7. Also for your Visa reimbursements. Bring your receipts.
>> You might want to come down if you want to head down with me.
Hotel. It's about a 10 or 15 minute walk.Propenski>> Reception is at the
>> So it will be a nice night out. If we don't go in there, we will go somewhere else.
>> It is really fancy.
. Go ahead and start.centre. At the international trade Nespi>> Should I start? Come over here. Maybe stand beside. This is our visual entertainment. Since they don't know you very well, they don't know how to pronounce your name. Mr.
>> Good afternoon, sorry. I come straight from the mountain. So I'll try to do a slalom within the subject and share with you what we do from bottom up.
. So on the ground enterprises we see how digital tools can help them improve their trade. Indeed in Tunisia.organisation. WTO is our Mommy agency within the UN. And we are kind of an SME‑oriented centreSo I work for the international trade
So that's one of the projects that we are doing. It's finishing. It's called the bridge marketplace project in Jordan, Morocco, where we assist enterprises to access ‑‑
I think what I can share with you which hopefully can help you leverage the other levels of intervention in each of your disciplines is that we could caricature the problems of e‑commerce in three levels. There is the international level where you cross the border. And then there is another level where we have a lot of problems which is in your own country at the national level. And then there are a whole bunch of self‑made problems. And I think those should not be ‑‑ not the part should be disqualified or underestimated.
So I'll start with the first one which is the mind of our entrepreneurs. So what we have learned is that I think we have to seek a change of behaviors through a theory of change. So it's in the mind. And most of our entrepreneurs, they have inherited somehow a very passive attitude to export or to trade. So if I do it, it's like I produce my olive oil in Tunisia and I sit down and wait for the customer to find me. So I'm not in the active model. I study with the market environment, I learn what is needed to be learned and I come and serve my offering on a silver plate to the buyer. So buyer can be B‑to‑B, B‑to‑C. Family. Restaurant. Anything. So that is the first challenge we have is this attitude to trade. And then the second problem, we can call it the king problem. Because Google says content is king. So the problem is that our entrepreneurs, they don't produce the content. They don't own the content about the product and services. So therefore it's very hard for them to leverage the whole distribution and added value chain up to the international customer.
So the first change we had is for a noted olive producer, for example, is to tell us what is olive oil? So we spend a lot of time in training. It's olive oil. Behind every product there is ‑‑
>> Exactly. And then after the whole session with the gentlemen from Tunisia. He will say okay, I will write it more. So it's olive oil from the olive tree.
[Laughter]
So it's very hard for entrepreneurs to get the data and the knowledge out of their mind. So in French we say ‑‑ we have to literally take it out of their mind. And then in their own language because we need a source and then we need to tell the story, how do you make the product. Why that olive oil. Is it more reddish, more sweet, more salty. The customer you need to educate him or her almost like a kid.
So you need enough content to work the customer, the buyer through your journey, your life. So slowly here we use technology to excite people. We use virtual reality. We recorded, for example, in Rwanda the coffee from the tree. We saw it. So people can put the ‑‑ and can actually be transported to the farm. And then you understand how much work is put in the coffee through fruit. So using technology here, it's more as a motivation. Because 90 percent of the barriers are analog barriers. They are not really ‑‑ when we do e‑commerce, we try to word it in a different way to express the problem is that there is no such thing as e‑commerce. The commerce risk. And then you can use a bit of electronic. And I think that's the right approach to e‑commerce.
>> One of thing I'm seeing when I go seminars, people who are much smaller would not be trying to trade internationally before are being inspired by e‑commerce to trade. So there's a huge learning curve for them to actually be doing international commerce when usually a small company like that wouldn't have occurred to them.
>> I think it accelerates the discovery of problems and solutions.
>> These problems were and an logged but these people never faced them before.
to understand because if they don't classify their offering, then it's very hard to even propose your offing to a buyer. Because the buy certain very sensitive to those details. So if there are other black sock size 32, 5,000 units, you have to have it right. And it's especially more troublesome for the creative handicraft sectors because the food sector bylaw make it hard to come up with 100 ml bottle different they understand it. That's a lot of work we do with the entrepreneurs.SMEs>> Once you try to activate that capacity thanks to Internet, then you realized oh I was not an exporter, oh I didn't have that technology. When we try to do the e‑commerce, we have to walk back through the chain, the production which is another concept which is very hard for entrepreneurs school? SKU unit. So SKU is not part of their mentality. But if you don't have basics in inventory, you cannot work the chain of actors. So we spend a lot of time in what do you produce? T‑shirt? How many models we have? One? I just do one shirt. Oh, okay, but do you have additional colors? Short sleeves, long sleeves? With cuff links or not? Red, blue. So that's actually 300 unique items. And that is also very hard for
to master the data of their own product.SMEs. Then they understand how to use the bar code and why. From there you see it build up. But real at this weaknesses I would say or the shortages are to much more basic level. That's what we're trying to do. So once we come up with all these small solutions to help build up the catalog and then that they own the content, so we have good title, a good description, the ingredients how to use it, how to dispose of it, that product. We also force them to download the so that all the authorities and actors in the need to know. You have to know the producer. Mainly it's known by the transporter. That information is not shared back to the SME on the system. We try to teach the SKUsOnce we have them classify the
And then finally we come up with what we do, for example, in Morocco right now and also Rwanda is that we had them set up a national marketplace. Before going to the Amazons and whatever outcome, the idea is to have an online platform that is shared by a group of enterprises so that we can pull the data over there. We can do quality control and harmonize, increase the rich media so tell a nice story. So that's all the mistakes. We do it. Because if you do those mistakes on Amazon, your future is killed. Because those market places, they expect performance from the small enterprise that is the performance of multinational. Like less than 2 percent returns and all these things. Perfect. Customer support. Reactive. So all these things are very hard for SME to discover. So that is another chunk that we use to improve e‑commerce. From there we discover other problems. And solutions at the same time.
in the market. So here again because now once we know what we are dealing with and we kind of consolidate the content, then we can visualize and consolidate things like payments. So say like Tunisia, and another is sending profits. And we notice we are all exporting every week to Paris. So here we can say wait. Let's do the consolidation at Tunis on Thursdays and let's that becomes two Euro per kilo instead of 20 Euro per kilo. Then we can negotiate or so. We can do one how you call it? One export procedure and we share the cost of that export procedure. So here it's like not avoiding the barrier but trying to come up to a level where the barriers are worth spending on them by consolidating at the level of entrepreneurs. But we have in Tunisia there is very particular problem. And I think there are similar problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Is that we are in countries which are ‑‑ which hyper regulate foreign currencies and movements of money. So that is a problem. But it's not like unchallengeable. I notice in Tunisia is more of misunderstanding of the problem. So for instance you come across entrepreneurs who are confused between foreign currency laws that apply to the individual and the foreign principles that apply to the company. So when a Tunisian cannot have a foreign currency account or he can go to jail, but a company can have. But that's fear from as an individual translating to the business, so now we have a mind of businessman which works with the rules of the private individual rules. And so that is a misunderstanding because the Tunisian company could open a branch in Europe and have Euro account. There is nothing wrong or illegal. Currency exchange controls have two layers of problems. One is from the regulator. The bottom up the entrepreneur. Morocco had the same problem. Even now officially it's supposed to be. So and PayPal got in. But even though they got in, then it's not like the PayPal you have in Europe or America because there are again restrictions within the PayPal system because some things have not been solved yet.noncompetitiveness>> Nothing from the laws and conditions and regulations SME. Because the scale at which it was designed. It was at the scale of the container. But when you work with smart enterprises, they don't think the container. They just think 50‑kilo or 100‑kilo or one pilot. Look at all the export chain procedures. This is kind of fixed cost in terms of time, resources, fees, applications, paperwork to do. For once legal expert. Which is super hard. Once you take it down to the level of SME and turn it into a percentage. It's like 50 percent of the deal. That 30 percent into a
. I have been asked by Amazon to sell some of them. For Dutch UK.Alibaba>> Technically there are some remaining for Europe for a Tunisian company. This is one that we are facing. That I have personally faced was the possibility of sending ‑‑ with Amazon or
Or what you're telling me is really right. Mindset and offer and local champions before, for export. And then ‑‑ who will fix those problems?
is they cannot see beyond the first barrier. So they may think that's it I'm ready for e‑commerce when they have not thought about Tunisia. Well there is a whole ocean of other things.SMEs>> That's the interesting thing about working with
>> In terms of operation, the most effective problem is that if you try to launch an activity of e‑commerce from Tunisia in order to export or to go to the European market. You will have a conversion rate which is probably equal to zero because your IP address is coming from Tunisia. And he will not succeed.
If you try to group with some other operators. You will have another problem that will be the delay of service for the clients. Client in Europe used to receive in 12 hours, in 24 hours. And in two days maximum, four days with those conditions he will probably have to wait for two weeks or three weeks.
>> That's exactly what I tried to say with the first barrier we have with the entrepreneur which is passiveness. So you have a German customer. Germans is the order. Not rich per capita. 20 orders per year, which is quite substantial, right? But then they expect next day delivery. So in their mind when they pay online, they see DHL. They see Euro. This is the worth that they see as a customer. Now if you expect Tunisia to pay in tune ease an Dinar. That's the dollar. You have another problem of monopoly of payment gateways into each other that you have to go get rid of. Or change it or challenge it in some way.
>> Joe: Having [Inaudible]
>> It neats normal that there is only one gateway in the country when in average in every country there is 10 or 15. But that's a competition issue, yes?
I think for your problem and you got it also right is that so if we want to send to the German, we have to speak German, charge in Euro, include the German vat because it's individual.
>> And the general condition.
>> And the German conditions for whatever ‑‑ exactly, yes. So you cannot as Tunisian or Moroccan or Afghani or participating companies fulfill those expectations from your customers. The only way is that you become a German company. So the good news is that in the world, there is about 35, 40 jurisdiction as round the world that will allow you as an Afghani or Pakistani or Tunisian entrepreneur to establish and operate a company. So you can have an American company. You can operate in U.S. Open U.S. bank account. Set the tax for American customers. You can open a branch in the U. K. It's a few clicks. 200 pounds. So you can set up a British company and serve the English and in market you can open company in Estonia. Much easier. Even just we can forget about the E, because it's a corporate and fiscal setup. I think that is another subject.
>> Legal standing, in other words.
>> Yes.
>> Marketing.
>> Indeed. If you want to solve really your distance with your customer, there is a tab you subject. Which is subject. Taxes we don't want to talk about it but it's so, it's a pillar in the middle of the business. So if you don't understand your own fiscal laws in your country and then you don't understand the fiscal laws of your buyer, you're missing a big, you're not seeing the bottom of the iceberg. So how can we solve the tax issue indirect, you become European company, you can apply for European number. And then you can obtain the Euro one number for clearing yourself. So now we start to understand that, wait, Germany has I don't know 21 percent on this product, 8 percent on this product and I am going to settle it on behalf of my customer. So with my fiscal representation in Germany as a Tunisian company. I move my goods. I clear all the things.
>> Local partner.
>> Don't need. That's why I was telling you 35. No. If Germany you need, if you do German company, you need the partner. But if you have German fiscal representation, you don't need the property.
we can do.SMEsSo if you have an Estonian company that applies for a number. You can ply to a German number. PAT number. German partner. Unusual it's unknown it's no secret. What Coca‑Cola happened the national friends are doing. Tunisia Coca‑Cola they don't send it from Atlanta. That's why headquarter is, right? So they move the raw material. Sometimes we change it at the last night and they have network of distributors but they own the brand and the cross‑border movement. Likewise for
>> Just to make sure that the notion of this you say is a little bit different because what you are talking about here is something that could be probably done by groups like ‑‑ or others. But not really the small company that are not really easy. They are really very, very tiny group of people working there. But people want to go to that for understanding of the market. Or even access it. Or have the money to pay for open a branch.
>> That's where there can be a need for it. So indeed, maybe a Rule of thumb. 8 o percent of the small enterprises from the definition, the Tunisian definition they cannot grasp all these things, right? Maybe. But you'll be surprised how many of them understand it. Once they see that they can make money.
>> There is regulations for companies like Pakistan, Afghanistan Tunisia. In Pakistan we have this regulation. Actually fornix change under which it says that each proceeds of export, it's treated as export. And you have to bring back the foreign to Pakistan within one or two days. So there's a procedure you actually seek export form from the bank and is something like that in Tunisia?
>> Yes. Ethiopian Nepal. That's a big problem. Especially in Ethiopia or, for example, Pakistan. So two rules that kind of ‑‑ is that you cannot ‑‑ you have to transform the product in Ethiopia or Pakistan or Afghanistan, and then you have to receive the money and convert it very quickly. But you have bills to pay in Europe and other. But when you make a statement, you must replicate the foreign currency to your national currency.
>> And the other you that's coming up is especially in Pakistan there are lots of entrepreneurs who are providing services overseas. And they are not dealing in physical goals.
>> [Inaudible] providing more freelance services but not granting exchanges.
>> There are lots of, you know, they are doing services, online services like accounting services or data management services. They actually log onto the servers and load the data or even transcription services something like that. That thing is not recorded in any document. And then there are anti‑money laundering issues there and movement of the money. So this is something a very kind of strange in the sense that from the regular point, from the government point of view they want to encourage it also but then they also want to control it also. So what's your advice on this? How should we manage it?
the trend that is happening. Lost facilitation so first about the currency exchange. Of course we have to pressure or your own government to smooth it because it's almost like Internet connection. You cannot download if you cannot upload. Reconstitute it. You have to have some come in so you can bring money to the company.Able so where the flipping content happen is where come and say look. We are bringing to the country. But we need to pay Google and Ireland. We cannot bring money and then request Pakistani. Because in the in and out we lose 10 percent. 10 percent competitive with the others.digitalising>> Thank you. Very important point. I'm try to finish. Make a point of not
>> Pakistan we are not 35 percent retained.
>> That's already very good. That's what we kind of negotiated. 30 percent. So that's already very good. Have to do function. Now you're right. It looks like e‑commerce in the blocking countries is a small flow. Actually it's a big flow but it's informal.
>> Estimated 7 billion.
, they have to earn double or triple what they are right now. If we cannot provide them that leverage, it's better for them to stay under the radar. Because then they have to pay taxes in their country. Then probably they have to pay VAT on their sales, domestic sales so that's often to percent.formalise for an SME to formalise to go to officialise>> I think it's huge. Even in Africa like the cross‑border transactions are happening. But they are not registered. Or even in e‑commerce, you find the customer. And then they pay with western union or pioneer or monies moving left and right. Services are given but they don't come to the countries. That's where also again to translate our gentlemen, it may be complicated for small to do it. But when you group them even as 10. They can open now the good thing is that we hire a lawyer, an accountant. And whoever is professionally needed to have the very transparent change of reactions. Because when you show to the SME that it's worth to
? You're right formalization for small enterprise is very hard. But maybe gathering can be interesting. Another thing that it brings, maybe I talk too much.formalise, you can sell that service as a European entity with all the security whatever certification and so on, that will be $15 an hour. You have a workforce. From that $15 you will lose 7 in European vat. But then you are working at 7 or 10‑dollar an hour in the informal market. So that is what can make the change is how much benefit is there for me to formaliseSo I think the key to really solve the problem is when you have a commodity or service, you show through formalization you can reach the retail level which is instead of charging $2 for that data entry services, $2 or $5 on freelance.com, it will
>> That was great. Please continue that answer. I notice people are coming in for the next session.
>> We have two more minutes.
>> 2‑1/2 more minutes.
and then document all the problems that you have, then we can work on a second cycle which is done.enterprizes. It's very hard to achieve this. It is requires a lot of work. We take small enter prizes 5, 10, 15 they are ready to break through. Then we bring them in one journey, one full cycle. Because unless we go to that trip and we come back with money, the other is we not believe what is happen that, is possible. So we'll very to do it with champion. I think you said champions. Local champions. We have to equip them. Train them. Break the ice and come back with cash on the account but not only cash, come back with the brand known the country. Your original brand known in the country. Customer feedbacks because you're disconnected from the consumers' expectation, but when you real the retail market. They tell you we prefer sweet and salty. So all this knowledge is an asset as well. So if we can put it just once with small group of disababa invest and go out of Ethiopia with they bring it to America. The ratio can be ‑‑ I mean the price tag of your item can be multiplied by 10. Beautiful European scar of that we have had in our caravan is sold locally at let's say between an and 10 just like in Asia. Once they do all this effort and bring it out to the U.S. market and they find a way to put it on Amazon, that is 80 or $100. If you put it on etsy.com, it's $100. Even though you lose half. You are still selling it at 60 instead of 10 in an SMEs>> So it's really about the mentality. Whatever problem we have in a different country, the reward is bigger. So if I take, for example, cotton. It's so complicated to get cotton out of the country. Yet it's like in abundance. And it's like the natural. So if an SME or group of
>> You are afraid of exporting your customer we have this problem.
>> The only problem with such that people would be addicted to your support. And unfortunately you would not have the same cycle.
>> Yes.
>> Like to follow up this company that you created. You with need to see the difference.
>> I mean we dress this. So actually it's not us. We had them to come together as a cooperative. We call it the e‑commerce cooperative. So there may be competitor in the local market and they hate each other in the local market. So there is also matter of trust. But when they see an international market they become cooperate rater. So it's a cooperative that belongs to the SME from day one. So meaning that once we do a first cycle, second cycle, there is a business model to are that co‑op. How can they sustain it? If there is no business then the thing will go down. But also existing. The most challenging is how can you make that union survive until they make enough money to sustain. Sorry. So many things.
[Applause.]
agreed we will find another time. Tomorrow. And we'll see you who need reimbursement between 6 and 7.Mansoor>> I'm really sorry about this. Thank you. And I don't know if you want to rush out or you can walk with us outside? We have only been allowed three hours in our room. We had a little delay.
(end of session)