World Dialogue on Regulation

The forum kicked off on the 17th, with introductory remarks by WDR Managing Director, William Melody, and Rohan Samarajiva, director of LIRNEasia. Melody highlighted the need to create regulation that would reduce, rather than increase investment risk, and foster technology market developments, as well as investment and growth in network economies. He pointed out that policy and regulatory priorities need to be shifted to include demand for investment in ICTs, rather than supply of their infrastructure alone, as well as creating opportunities for more diverse sources of investment to emerge. Samarajiva added that Sri Lanka, just one example of what is seen across South Asia, has over 300,000 people on waiting lists for phones.  He illustrated the demand for investment by reading from a needs-assessment of the telecom sector in the post-conflict North and East of Sri Lanka, submitted to the Tokyo Donor Conference for aid to Sri Lanka:

If we again make the modest assumption that the North and East must have the same teledensity as the country as a whole, we would require a total of 786,000 connections in this region in the coming five years.  This would require the addition of approximately 700,000 connections in the next five years.  On the assumption of a cost of USD 500 per connection, the required investment would be USD 350 million over the next five years.

Nobel Laureate Michael Spence spoke of the growth that effective ICT implementation can engender, and to the enormous benefits this can bring – especially to the poor.

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Suman Bery, Director of the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. In his address, he spoke of on the infrastructure problem in general:

In many ways the infrastructure sectors got into trouble because of a combination of populism and patronage. Regulators have not been given the tools to cut through this knot, and things are not very different from the decade before. What is the way out? I would have to say that I find it difficult analytically to point to any sharp set of scissors. I think it’s going to be a slow and patient process. Unless we get it right the investment flows will not be forthcoming, and getting it right will be a great feat of political economy.

To this end, Dr. Bery recommended that resource-strapped regulators receive as much support as possible from a broad range of researchers and experts, like the expert forum assembled at the Mount Lavinia Hotel.