A Coming Jobs Challenge in Emerging Markets?

[SAADIA ZAHIDI]
I'm absolutely delighted to be here with you, and I apologize for our very un‑Swiss start. We will do this opening segment with two very distinguished speakers, and then I will hand over to Stephanie Flanders from Bloomberg to run the whole panel. I'm Saadia Zahidi and absolutely delighted to invite two members of the Forum's Board of Trustees, the President of the Republic of Singapore and the President of the World Bank Group, to share some framing thoughts from everything we have been hearing this week — technology, geopolitics, geoeconomics — all of it ties down to one key thing that we really care about, which is livelihoods and jobs. And that is what we're going to focus on now. So I'm going to start with the President. Banga, you've, of course, placed job creation at the very center of your strategy. Please tell us more.

[AJAY BANGA]
I thought you would start with age before beauty.

[SAADIA ZAHIDI]
I will let the two of you decide which way you want to start.

[AJAY BANGA]
President Tharman is my hero in many ways, and one of the reasons that we're having this conversation of jobs is because he was kind enough, despite his real role in Singapore, to make the effort to continue his drive towards caring about jobs for young people. That's actually the real framing. It's about jobs for young people. We have, over the next 12 to 15 years, 1.2 billion young people in the emerging markets. This is where I'm coming from on this topic — will become eligible for a job in the sense they will come to the age of 18.
And yet those very same economies are currently projected to produce around 400 million jobs. Now we could be wrong. AI could change something, something else could change something. We're unlikely to be wrong by 800 million people. So the issue is we have a real challenge here in terms of getting the right impetus for that growth, while at the same time, the real opportunity that hope and optimism and employed people, whether working for someone or entrepreneurs — that drive, that energy, that optimism, that hope, what it means for our grandchildren. That is the topic of the day.
And when I was thinking my way through this in the early part of my time in the World Bank Group. I've had the chance to work with President Tharman in his prior roles, in my prior jobs, and I went and asked him if he would help me. And he thought about it, came back to me very methodically, as he has, and said, I will, on the condition we really do this with a drive to put effort and energy and money and capital to work. So the Jobs Council that he's heading for us has come back with some thoughts, and we'll come to that topic. But the principal topic is you need infrastructure, both physical and human capital. You need the right policies for business to flourish, because it is in the private sector the jobs get created. Government enables — even an outstanding government like Singapore — enables the private sector in Singapore to create jobs. And then if you provide the right catalytic financing for that private sector, particularly micro and small enterprises, which is where the majority of jobs get created, then you create the virtual flywheel, the positive flywheel that you want — infrastructure and people being educated with the right policies, with the right financial services — and you start getting the job engine going. That's what we are here to discuss, the importance of that opportunity. Thank you very much.

[UNCLEAR SPEAKER]
A very rapid follow‑up question — specific sectors that you are focusing on.

[AJAY BANGA]
So the Jobs Council also — we deliberated a great deal about going to sectors where two things can be kept in mind. One, we do not rely only on the outsourcing of jobs from the developed world to continue to be the primary source of job generation in the emerging markets, because I think the political and the trade model of the geopolitics that you started your commentary with plays in that space. So we're making a conscious decision to not get into that situation. And then the second aspect was places where the impact of AI — the way it is being discussed as in big AI, large language models, as compared to the way we are discussing it, which is small AI delivered at the edge on your computer, phone, my local computer — which can help farmers and healthcare workers and education workers do a better job. Those two criteria were in our system.
We came back to five sectors. The first one is infrastructure — it's construction, but then what it enables. The second is primary healthcare — you know, the creation of a distributed network of physical and digital clinics with nurses, medical diagnostic technicians, midwives, connected to doctors, connected to regional hospitals. Think of that like a pyramid which allows resources to be used efficiently with technology, to identify things by a doctor that a nurse could not do.
Third is agriculture for small farmers, and this is a topic that matters to both of us greatly. He's done a lot of work in his life in this topic. I have grown up in India — you know, I'm a sort of son of Punjab, even though my father was an army officer, and I worked in Nestlé for the first few years of my life. We were based in the Punjab collecting milk from farmers. The tragedy is, farmers today don't want to be farmers. If they're micro‑sized, they sell their farm. They end up urban poor. The objective — to make them access scalable pricing and commodities and technology and markets and get them the benefit of scale, which otherwise they don't have — is our third category.
And the fourth category is tourism, which done well, creates the most jobs per dollar invested. And the fifth category is value‑added manufacturing — by which I mean no longer just extraction, but a degree of local processing to create quality jobs in those countries. Thank you very much.

[UNCLEAR SPEAKER]
And President Tharman, you have — you're of course co‑chairing the Jobs Council at the World Bank, and you've also been a very strong champion of this entire work around the future of jobs here at the World Economic Forum. Your perspective on this topic to set us up for the conversation.

[THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM]
Well, I think just to follow on from what Ajay said, we think of the largest problems we face globally — security, global health, addressing climate change, addressing all the disruptions we face. And instead of asking geo‑analysts, instead of asking people like us, well, what are the problems and how do we solve it — if we instead just ask ordinary people, what's on their minds, right?
What's on their minds for most people now is they would like some security in their careers — not necessarily the same job, but the security of a career. They want dignity — the dignity of knowing that they are able to contribute. And they want growth — they want growth through their lives, not just growth while they're in an education system, but growth through their lives.
Increasingly, in older societies, they're very concerned about their retirement years, but their retirement years depend on the years at work, so jobs have to be the centerpiece of addressing a multitude of challenges we face. Start with what's on the minds of ordinary people. And there's so much more to be done, because first, we haven't replicated and scaled up what has already worked in some parts of the world. I don't want to oversell the East Asian story, but some things have worked reasonably well in East Asia. Human capital development — and I don't just mean schools, but I mean starting from early childhood development, starting from in utero. Nutrition is critical, and what India is doing now with its aspirational districts, its anganwadis for maternal and child health, is critical — that's going to have the largest multipliers over a lifetime. And all the studies show that.
Coming a little downstream into the school system, we still have — and East Asia itself needs reform — we still have an overly academic education system, and this is true for the most advanced countries as well. And it shouldn't be an either/or. It's not a binary question. It's a question about providing pathways for everyone to ascend and excel through the pathway that matches their capabilities. Reduce that hierarchy that exists. Frankly, there is a hierarchy all over the world between those who excel at the academic stream and those who are sort of doing the technical and vocational path. But that's because we haven't provided enough pathways to excellence and mastery within the technical and vocational and applied stream. And we've got to develop that — actually, that's the Singapore strategy, right? So reduce that binary and that social hierarchy that currently exists across the world, but especially in Asia.
Downstream, the job — the growth strategies that Ajay was talking about are critical. Some of the strategies that we adopted in East Asia are still relevant for South Asia, for Africa, but have more limited potential. The fact is manufacturing is now a story of technology. It's increasingly about advanced robotics and AI. But it hasn't disappeared, because if you look at China today, if you look at a set of middle‑income countries today — Vietnam, Brazil, Malaysia and some others — there's still a lot of manufacturing being done there that's not top‑end, higher‑skill manufacturing. It's middle‑end, and China is still doing low‑end manufacturing using equipment.
Now, if part of that can be decanted to Africa and South Asia — and it's already being decanted to places like Tamil Nadu in India — some small portion of that can be decanted to Sub‑Saharan Africa. It's a big lift in manufacturing employment. So the scope exists.
So I would say this: as China addresses its domestic imbalance between production and consumption — its over‑production of manufacturing relative to consumption — as it addresses that structural issue, there is scope for decanting of production to other parts of the developing world. Second, all the sectors that Ajay mentioned — but I do want to highlight in particular the green transition — because it's an opportunity for job creation in the developing world. It so happens that the developing world, Africa in particular and South Asia, are rich in solar, wind, hydro and thermal, and they should be the sites for energy‑intensive production for the world, apart from their own market.
And all the studies show that the job multipliers coming out of one dollar of investment in renewable energy are at least three times higher than in fossil fuels. So this is not an ideological question. It's not a question of the fossil fuel industry versus the renewable industry. It's a question of economics — where can we generate the most jobs? And this is a real opportunity that didn't exist at the time that East Asia took off — the opportunity of creating jobs, unskilled, semi‑skilled and high‑skilled, through the renewable transition. And I just add that to complement what Ajay said about all the other sectors — healthcare, agribusiness, tourism, and so on. Thank you very much.

[UNCLEAR SPEAKER]
Thank you for laying out the challenge, and also, thank you for sharing some inspiration before we get into the conversation on meeting this 800 million job challenge. Thank you so much to both. Thank you.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
The boss, okay — with just a word of apology, along with the other constraints that President Trump has put on these debates, he's even cut the time available to talk about these very crucial — at least right here — this crucial issue of global development, but we're going to go for quality over quantity in our contributions.
So because of various time constraints for people on the panel, and we started so late, just so everyone here knows we are going to have to finish at five.
So I'll be asking the panelists to be extremely focused in their contributions. We have the Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy of Nigeria, Wale Edun — very good to see you — and Tengku Muhammad Taufik, who's the CEO of PETRONAS; Nandan Nilekani, who's obviously co‑founder, Chairman of Infosys, and also of the structure — well, anyway, list all these other things, no time — and the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Harini Amara Surina. [UNCLEAR / POSSIBLE HALLUCINATION]

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Dan, let me start with you, just because we were just having a conversation. And I know Tharman has talked about many aspects of this challenge. If we look at somewhere like India — obviously a lot of growth is happening, has happened — but this challenge is probably more evident there than it is in any other country, of combining economic success with the jobs with technological change. So what do you think are the critical things for that?

[NANDAN NILEKANI]
No, I think just as we are confronting the impact of AI, which is the technology which will impact jobs, I think we also have to think about what is the technology that will enable systematic creation of jobs and systematic creation of entrepreneurs. So there are two things which I can talk about which we've actually done. One is: how do you create structured opportunity for a billion people?
And, for example, today in India, somebody gets an ID. With that ID, they get a bank account, they get a mobile connection. They can start a small vegetable vending location, borrowing some money. They can start taking digital payments for what they sell using UPI. That data can now be used to get a loan to grow their business. So this is a structured way of creating an escalator of opportunity. And you do that for a billion people — then you're actually creating pathways for people to both become entrepreneurs and maybe tomorrow create more jobs. So that's one way of doing it.
The second thing is: how do we aggregate small producers virtually, using digital networks, open networks? For example, how do you take a lot of retailers and make them into a bigger force, give them access to credit systematically, market systematically, and so on. So I think these two ideas are very specific — they use technology at scale, they can make a big difference. And that's really how we should think about using technology to deal with the implications of AI and things like that.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
And I was struck by Tharman’s comments about needing to get rid of the social hierarchy. In the UK, we talk about parity of esteem — that the vocational and academic training should be considered the same. I think as we see technological change, then maybe we will need to increase the dignity attached, the standing attached, to some jobs that involve very intensive contact with other humans as other things get automated.
But Prime Minister, even today, there is a challenge there of parity of esteem — of valuing work that is not currently valued. How do you see that as contributing…

[HARINI AMARASURIYA]
No, absolutely. President Tharman pointed to one disparity that we see — the vocational pathways and the academic pathways. But I think there's another area where little attention is paid, and that's the importance of unpaid care work, and how much unpaid care work actually sustains our economies, and the fact that over 70% of women are located in unpaid care work, which often doesn't get accounted as work, doesn't get counted in our GDP, and yet it performs a really important role.
So when we talk about job creation, particularly in countries like Sri Lanka — developing countries where women are concentrated in unpaid care work and in the informal sector — it's not just a problem of creating jobs for young people. It's also about making sure that the job creation is equitable in every sense, and that we are valuing this kind of work that often goes unrecognized, but yet has a crucial role to play in the economy. And economies would not be able to sustain themselves if this unpaid care work didn't happen. Yet we don't have the ways of recognizing this or organizing it, or redistributing it in ways that makes it more possible for women to enter paid work.
And I think the other important factor that we need to really look at is the fact that we have pressures from two ends. One is the young — the young people entering the job market — and we have aging populations at the other end, where our demographies are changing, particularly in countries like Sri Lanka, which experienced the youth bulge in the 80s and are now having to deal with an aging population who also want to be productive and be part of the economy.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Minister Edun, sitting in Nigeria — how are you thinking about this challenge? Because there is, I'm sure, an equally millions‑of‑jobs challenge in Nigeria too.

[WALE EDUN]
Well, certainly. I mean, when you look at the figures, by 2050 I think there will be 400 million Africans and 25% of the world's workforce will be Africans or the people of Africa — Africans will be working‑age. So essentially, the world's workforce — 25% of it really should be Africans.
Now in Nigeria, we're focused on rapid, sustained, inclusive growth. And when we talk about the inclusive, we're talking about young people, we're talking about women, and we're talking about ensuring that the whole ecosystem — just like President Tharman said — it's about dignity and about human capital development. So we're focused also on catching them very early and ensuring that those first five years, they get the nutrition — the young people get the nutrition. And it's a signal for Africa; I think as Nigeria goes, perhaps Africa will also go.
So we are focused on — as we heard earlier — the technology dividend should allow us, for example as Nigerians, to do what has been done in Asia, which is empower our young people with technology, with automation and with data, such that they can stay in Nigeria, provide services, provide support services, training, consultancy, etc., over the internet.
At the same time, we are going back into a situation where manufacturing — you may call it low‑scale manufacturing — we have raw materials now being produced in Nigeria by petrochemical plants and so forth. So that allows us to go back into that manufacturing, creating jobs in basic manufacturing.
But most important of all, the metrics say that 84% of employment is micro, small and medium‑scale — maybe up to $300,000 a year turnover. And it is in that metric that we have to go down and empower them — empower them with finance, and empower them with information and, of course, technology. And that is what we are concentrating on in Nigeria with what we call — it's called the World‑Based Development Program. So it goes right down to the smallest political unit, the smallest administrative unit in the municipality, identify those operators and empower them to increase productivity, thereby increasing employment.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
The minister talks about getting the dividend of technology, but of course we also know that there's also going to be disruption and displacement. How do you see that? How do we make the dividend of technology be not just for a small part of the economy, and actually be a job‑creating force for all employers in Southeast Asia?

[TENGKU MUHAMMAD TAUFIK]
Let's give it a go. Yeah — 680 million people, last count — amongst the youngest demographics. But technology and innovation is the great equalizer. I think you've seen this evidence right in front of you, in Singapore, in Taiwan, where the adoption rates are high.
But this is a region with vast differences. We've got internet penetration 80% in some regions, 35% in others. The rate of digital adoption is later — it varies. It's painful as a region to see that you want to pursue the dignity that comes along with urbanization and middle‑income status.
And as policymakers struggle to do this — and I do say struggle to cope with this conundrum — we are seeing, industry by industry, this is the second level — but industry by industry, and I can speak from my context: I'm a state‑owned agency, I'm an institution created by law, but we're also tasked to perform a commercial task of delivering energy security.
But it's not just that the job market has changed — the nature of jobs itself has changed because of the rate of proliferation of something like AI. Something that used to take six months — seismic interpretation — I'm going to geek out on an upstream terminology here — but it now takes a matter of days.
The processes that were usually associated with delivering upstream development — where you had to deal with the logistics of deploying vessels, people — that now can be assumed by agentic AI.
Now, if you're talking about a company like — in my context — 50,000 people, we took a long, hard look, and we were accused of being quite merciless in pushing through what I called right‑sizing. But people still said it was a very, very poor excuse for retrenchment. It's not retrenchment — it is literally the jobs that used to be there are no longer there, or had to be delivered differently in order to remain competitive and relevant.
This is very difficult to do in a region where you're going to have to deal with maintaining the societal order, so to speak. So policymakers were looking at me and saying: Did you necessarily have to do that?
Yeah — answer as a company, as an enterprise: yes. But also we've responded by saying, in order to prepare the next intake, everything structurally — from the sources of human capital that we're going to receive — needs to change. The way they're educated, the way they're prepared, the way they're equipped needs to change, because the next generation of employment is going to be so vastly different from what we see today. It's going to actually be a complete departure from the standard employment‑for‑life, clear career path. It's going to be a mixture of knowledge‑based offerings, gig economies — rather, gig‑based economies — rather than the kind of staples you see today.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
President Banga — I mean, you're listening to this, and you’ve spent the time on the job challenge, and you discussed it at the beginning. When — I have to admit — when we first had a sort of prep call for this session, I thought it was slightly odd to be focused on the jobs rather than the growth, because we're so used to thinking about: if you support successful rapid economic development and rapid growth, then you worry about the jobs after. Why — what is it that we would have to do differently to make this growth of the future more job‑creating?

[AJAY BANGA]
I think growth is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient condition for job generation. That's the big insight that's coming out with this technology kind of revolution. That's why — yes, you need growth to get jobs, but growth alone will not do it.
Let me just go back to what all four of them have said for a second. For you — I went through this very quickly in the opening, but when I said infrastructure, I sort of very quickly said physical and human capital. And in physical assets — bridges, roads, airports, power, digital — it's all there.
What we talked about — digital public infrastructure — is one of the critical infrastructures in enablement, but electricity is even more basic. So let's talk Africa, where Wale is from. Africa has 600 million people without electricity. I'm not talking brownouts — I'm talking no electricity.
So you fly over Africa at night, you think it's not populated. That is not true — people are living the way their great‑grandfathers lived. That cannot be right in the 21st century. It is a travesty to think that electricity is not a basic human right.
So if you want to build a digital public infrastructure, try doing that without electricity. Alexa, how do you plan to charge your phone — connection to the sun with your finger? This is not going to work.
So very basic commitment is electrification. So we've talked about getting to 300 million people by 2030 with electrification. And I'm not talking about one solar cell with one fan and one light in the house — that's not productive. I'm talking about the ability to have a computer, the ability as a chemist to have a fridge for your medicines, the ability to open a hair salon, the ability to do those kinds of things — that's kind of one thing there.
In infrastructure — bridges, roads, airports — everyone understands. Digital and power tends to get ignored a little. In the world of AI, power is going to become even more important because, as we all know, the consumption of electricity currently in the current models of AI is very large.
Now, it will improve over time, because they're busy trying to figure out ways — people like Nandan. Nandan is an amazing technologist. People like him are caring about reducing the consumption of electricity per quantum output of AI. But today, it's a real issue.
Human capital — I don't mean only college. At the point raised about dignity — let me give you a real example. The jobs of the future that will not get impacted by large language models of AI, even in the developed world, actually require hand reuse — nursing care, long‑term care, physical trainer, dog walker.
Come to Manhattan and see it — you can meet people walking six dogs at a time. It's a gig thing. They run — they make $5,000 a month on dog walking.
Now, we taught our children that STEM education was their future. I would argue that the first place the impact in the developed world of really good work on AI will be in STEM jobs. Nandan and I are familiar with the banking industry — he from Infosys, me from being a recovering banker. And this kind of banking is different — I'm talking about recovering banker. And if you had 15,000 people in audit and compliance and risk, with AI, you need a fraction of those.
So I think these are challenges of different types in the developed world and the developing world. And I'm not trying to make one size fit all. But I am trying to make the case that in the developing world, we still have a chance by focusing on those three pillars of infrastructure, the right business‑friendly policies and the right catalytic capital, combined with those five sectors — we have a chance to allow the next 15 years to be good years for people in these countries. Through DPI and platforms, through the right kind of jobs — we do have a chance, and we should not let the fear of technology make us think that this is not an opportunity that exists within our grasp.

[NANDAN NILEKANI]
Briefly — yeah, I just want to add something which both President Tharman talked about: that energy — new energy — will create jobs, and the electricity. I think one way to think about it is: can we create millions of energy micro‑entrepreneurs?
Because if people are going to invest in having that rooftop solar, battery, and all that — they can use it for themselves. Today, under the grid, they can sell it to the grid. But we can now do peer‑to‑peer trading.
So if I can sell power to my neighbor, or if I'm a farmer with a system, can sell to a shopkeeper — energy trading in micro amounts at variable price will be much bigger than any other market.

[AJAY BANGA]
So just to build on this for a second. In Nigeria, we're doing distributed solar energy — that's how we're going to reach large numbers of people in his country for power. When you're putting up that distributed solar energy plant, if you plant a cell‑phone tower at the same time — if I reach 25 million people in Nigeria with power, I now reach 25 million people with the internet.
Now, Nandan’s idea becomes real — you see what I mean. And when we're talking about reaching small farmers with open platforms — this is out of the real experience in a number of countries, but started out in Uttar Pradesh in India, where we took a platform that Google has built for us. And it's an open platform where you connect farmers and cooperatives on this side, and you connect — here — fertilizer, insecticide, crop insurance, better water practices, better seed practices, people. And I, even as an illiterate farmer with very simple language, can learn how to get scale which I don't get otherwise. That's the kind of stuff that I want to get.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
It’s the social infrastructure that goes with all the things that you've talked about. Because if you think about the kind of jobs that you've described, in many countries now, they are the least well‑paid, the least valued, the least secure — possibly the dog walkers that you see in Central Park.

[AJAY BANGA]
I'm not — I didn't want to divert you. I was talking about the developed world. What I'm really focused on is jobs in the developing world. I'm not creating low‑paying jobs.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Yes, no, I get that — but I think it's still an equivalent thing, that we have to think about: what is the social contract that goes with these jobs in infrastructure, in healthcare, in power, in skilling, in tourism, in agriculture? These are as good jobs as any other. This is — don't get me wrong — we are not talking about creating poor‑quality jobs.

[AJAY BANGA]
We're talking about creating excellent‑quality jobs. I was giving you that example in a different context, where you talked about the dignity of labor and the dignity of jobs. And I said, in the developed world, in response to that, you will find some of the jobs that will stay unimpacted by AI may actually be jobs that in the past we thought were not high‑quality. That's the development. I'm a developing‑world‑focus guy. I don't belong—

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Isn't that also true—? I don't see why it wouldn't also be true in many developing countries. Yes, you're pointing to the core jobs in electricity and other areas. But as you pointed out, a lot of those jobs will also have gone. Some of those white‑collar jobs — or future white‑collar jobs — that might have been created in the future in the developing countries may now not be created.

[AJAY BANGA]
And the five sectors we've talked about are very specifically chosen to not get the same impact. Think about the sectors — we talked about infrastructure, talked about healthcare, talked about agriculture for small farmers, talked about tourism and value‑added manufacturing. Where do you see business‑process outsourcing and back offices? I'm not talking about that. We're trying to create really good‑quality jobs in sectors that are relatively insulated for the next 10 to 15 years — not for 50. We will have to play that game — but not today.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Okay. So, Minister—

[WALE EDUN]
Yes, thank you very much. But I think what we must not miss out is — yes, we are looking for jobs, we're looking for employment, but a lot of it is informal, so we do have to go down to that informal sector. And I would like to mention here that we do count a lot on the fact that we have to provide power. We have to provide electricity.
And the Mission 300 World Bank–AfDB initiative to provide 300 million Africans with power by 2030 is a key component of building up that momentum — to provide the resources, to provide power that will increase productivity and create jobs. So yes, we do have the formal sector, but there's a big informal sector that just needs to be empowered.
And by the way — I said 400 billion Nigerian — 400 million Nigerians, 2.5 billion Africans. Otherwise it would be impossible.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
That would be a bigger, bigger panel. We need a longer panel for that, I think. Thank you, Prime Prime Minister, I'm interested. I mean, we, we have got to the informality point which I know that we, it was also in the future of jobs report. Is there a change in the social contract or, you know, how do we make these informal jobs, which will be a big part of the future jobs?

[HARINI AMARASURIYA]
I mean, I think it also involves recognizing that people's lives involve lots of different aspects, which often get undervalued or devalued and are and are put into sort of the informal sector or the care sector and as and are not regarded as important. You talked about dog walking and dog walking is going to continue as long as people, unless you get a robot, but that's not going to have the same impact. But kids need to be cared for. There's food that needs to be cooked, clothes that need to be washed. All of this is also part of peoples lives and there are people who do it. And how do we make sure that that's recognized, that's factored into how the economy is planned and how we think about jobs? I think that's equally important because some of the hierarchies that we talk about leave out many of these critical aspects of people's lives that are essential for the sustenance, sustenance of human life and human relationships. And I think we need to bring a focus on that as well when we talk about job creation, because what is why do we create jobs? We need jobs to make people's lives better. Then let's account for all the different types of jobs and the work that people do to make our lives better and not just focus on particular sectors.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Thank you, Taufik.

[TENGKU MUHAMMAD TAUFIK]
I'm going to give, I'm going to give you the last word, but partly because I know you also, you're one of the people who has to try and go through the Trump traffic to get out of town. But what is it that that governments in your country, but also across the developing world, how can they support employers like you in this challenge? I think the president has already addressed, I think there if to me the two biggest priorities, one of the energy security. As an energy executive, I think looking at energy security and affordable energy, unleashing the potential that is in the context of ASEAN, the 680 million people is going to be absolutely critical. So the first thing they need to do is make sure that they create policies that enable the large scale investments, whether it is cross-border grids or the enabling of flexible smarter grids that will unleash SM ES and by the way, SM ES-80 to 85% of most of the economies, at least in our region. And this is where a lot of the informal economies I see a mirroring being mirrored in Africa. The second I think is preparing human capital for the cut. It is we we tend to hold on to traditional beliefs that STEM is resilient, it's a bulletproof career. But eventually what is going to be routine, what is going to be repetitive is going to be dealt with by something else, whether that's automation.  We've seen that whether it's robotics, whether it's now going to be AI agentic or otherwise, we've got to prepare the workforce for that. And I think in at risk of sounding ominous, we cannot allow the jobs debacle to even widen the inequity gap. But I think that's that's exactly what the president bankers is is referring to. So even as we preserve as an employer our ability to remain competitive, that we're remaining mindful and we're trying to start as far back as possible in that human capital funnel. We're working with government to train them to be AI literate. We don't necessarily believe as Petronas that AI will displace people, but companies without AI will do damage to its own people as we move forward. So these are things, these are things that we are that weighing heavily on our mind. Sounds ominous. Sorry to to end it on a bit of a downbeat tone, but I'm given hope by President Banker's remarks. And I think technology as a great equalizer will need to be a lever.

[STEPHANIE FLANDERS]
Thank you, thank you to all of you. We did not have enough time, but we did have some very valuable contributions. Thank you.