Welcome Address by the UPU Director General at the Ministerial Conference 2021, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, Tuesday, 10 August 2021, at 09.00
Your Excellencies ministers in charge of posts,
Distinguished delegates and participants,
Dear friends and colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to address the 2021 Ministerial Conference, an event that has now become a permanent feature on the UPU Congresses agenda.
This is the fourth in the series that started in Doha Congress in 2012.
The Ministerial Conferences offer the UPU fraternity unique opportunity to listen from our policymakers as they discuss the future of the international postal sector. Personally, I take great pleasure attending these events and listening to the real captain of the posts. And every time we have this conference the ministers share with us unique insights and help us develop new and better direction for the future of the post.
Together with the ministers, we also invite high-level personalities, mainly from international organizations and specialists in areas of interest to postal business, to share with us contemporary issue that define the post within the global economy.
In every edition, we choose a topic of discussion that resonates with the prevailing circumstances surrounding the postal industry and business in general.
At the first-ever Ministerial Conference that was held during the Doha Congress in 2012, the theme was “the role of communication as a driver of trade facilitation and socio-economic development”.
In 2016, leaders attending the second Ministerial Conference, held in Istanbul, Turkey, focused on how the postal sector could better serve their nations and citizens, promote economic growth and drive development.
The UPU also held a special Ministerial Conference during the 2018 Extraordinary Congress in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. During this event, government ministers and other senior global decision makers considered the best policies, investments, regulations and partnerships that would enable the postal sector to unleash its full potential in terms of service delivery and profitability.
It also paved the way for the preparation of the Abidjan Postal Strategy, which the 27th Universal Postal Congress will discuss later this week.
The theme of today’s conference is “COVID-19 and the postal sector – what has and hasn’t changed, and what needs to change.” This is an opportune time to hear our national policymakers tell us the lessons learnt from the pandemic, the effects it had on our business and what, going forward, needs to change to make the post more resilient to natural calamities.
Through four unique panels, the UPU’s Ministerial Conference 2021 is an opportunity to take stock of the transformations brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to reflect on what needs to remain the same and what needs to change in order to bring about a sustainable future for the industry.
The first panel sets the scene. Panelists discuss the effect that the pandemic has had in their respective countries, and what solutions were found to address the challenges they faced.
The second panel considers those factors that have remained more stable over the past two years, despite the ravages of the pandemic. Panelists will reflect on which areas have remained unchanged in the face of the pandemic, taking into account national, regional and global perspectives.
After the second panel, there is an intergovernmental section for ministers to make statements. This is followed by the third panel, which delves into the question of what needs to change. Panelists consider which changes would have been desirable and should be pursued in the international postal sector and beyond.
All of this is undertaken with a view to building a more sustainable and prosperous future for the post business.
Last but not least, the fourth panel, will be the chance to draw some key takeaways for UN agencies and for the UPU in particular. Panelists will take stock of all previous analyses and discussions in order to provide guidance to the UN system and to the UPU on the way forward.
Speakers at today’s conference include ministers, chiefs of regulatory authorities, heads of intergovernmental agencies and other high-level representatives of organizations interested in the benefits that the international postal sector can bring to societies and economies worldwide.
Let me take this opportunity to thank Côte d’Ivoire for hosting this conference and to thank the Ministers who are also participating.
Your voices are crucial within the UPU family as they reflect not simply the views of related ministries, but also the very views of governments as they look across the full spectrum of industries that, combined, make up national industries and economies.
As I conclude, I wish to call upon the ministers in charge of posts from our respective member countries to create more interest in the UPU. We do not see you very often in our meetings apart from at the Congresses. Being frequent in UPU’s forums would serve one big benefit of giving you the opportunity to make follow up on some of the declarations that you entrust on us to implement.
Finally allow me to thank my team at the International Bureau that has helped plan this event.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to fruitful deliberations.