United Nations:

United Nations General Assembly President Dennis Francis has praised India for using digitalization to help achieve financial inclusion and poverty reduction, stressing that it has given the country a “comparative advantage” and its lessons can be shared with the international community.

“Let me start by saying that since I’ve been to India, every time I think of India, I think of ‘Incredible India.’ I mean it…I saw it while I was there. Specific examples I can refer to It is India’s use of digitization,” Francis, the President of the 78th United Nations General Assembly, told PTI in an exclusive interview here.

He mentioned the country’s tourism slogan “Incredible India”. Francis paid an official visit to India from January 22 to 26 this year, during which he held a bilateral meeting with Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in New Delhi and visited Jaipur and Mumbai.

During his visit, his interactions with government officials, members of civil society and think tanks focused on issues such as sustainable development, multilateralism, accessibility and digital public infrastructure.

The UN leader praised India for using digitalization to alleviate poverty and integrating millions of people into the formal economy “just by using mobile phones and digital models”. He stressed that digitalization is important because it is “productive, it reduces costs, improves economic efficiency and makes things cheaper.” He cited the example of digitization, which has helped Indian women and farmers across the country and in remote areas negotiate prices, deal with banks and make payments without leaving their homes, fields or regions.

“All of this helps to improve the competitiveness of the Indian economy. So I think India clearly has a comparative advantage in this area and has lessons that can be shared with the international community.” Francis also pointed out that during his visit to India, India He was impressed by the level of investment in infrastructure development everywhere.

He emphasized that infrastructure is one of the areas of economic activity that is known to boost the growth of any economy as it creates huge demand for materials, labor and inputs and provides employment opportunities.

“Growth is really taking off because of the multiplier effect,” he said.

“I noticed recently when I was in your country, India, that I was impressed by the scale of investment in infrastructure, not just highways but even railways and monorails,” he said.

He said countries invest heavily in infrastructure because infrastructure integrates markets and brings people together, but it also has direct and indirect effects on growth.

However, Francis stressed the need to build infrastructure sustainably during the current period of extreme climate events.

“If infrastructure is built in a sustainable way, if it is resilient and therefore able to withstand external shocks and pressures, that means the economy is able to bounce back from that event faster, with fewer job losses and less demand on the economy .a way of investing to get the economy moving again,” he said.

He said using sustainable materials and methods and investing in sustainable infrastructure makes sense because it minimizes overall disruption to the economy.

Francis will convene the United Nations’ first “Sustainable Development Week” from April 15 to 19 at the world body’s headquarters, which will focus on sustainability in key areas such as tourism, infrastructure connectivity, transport, energy and debt. develop.

He said the goal this week would be to “make progress on the 2030 Agenda towards a more sustainable future – and also prepare us for the Future Summit to be held in September 2024 on the sidelines of the High-Level Assembly” meeting.

Last year, Ambassador Ruchila Kamboi, Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, highlighted the impact of financial inclusion on the social and economic empowerment of the Indian people at the world body.

She pointed out that in 2009, only 17% of adults in India had a bank account, 15% used digital payments, one in 25 people had a unique identity document, and about 37% owned a mobile phone.

These numbers have grown exponentially, and today, teledensity reaches 93%, more than 1 billion people have digital IDs, and more than 80% of people have a bank account.

By 2022, more than Rs 6 billion in digital payment transactions will be completed every month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)