A seminar on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) was organised in Kathmandu for driving innovation in the digital economy with a special emphasis on India-Nepal digital connectivity . The seminar was organized in association with UNDP Nepal and Institute for Integrated Development Studies with the support of Nepal Rastra Bank.
Drawing from India’s best practices and other global and regional experience with DPI, this seminar provided a detailed overview of use cases of DPI to more than 200 government officials, industry, startups, academia and other stakeholders from Nepal.
Addressing the opening plenary, Naveen Srivastava, Ambassador of India to Nepal, highlighted the emphasis on DPI under India’s G20 Presidency and the G20 Framework for Systems of Digital Public Infrastructure, a voluntary and suggested framework for DPI. He explained how digital technology can help countries leapfrog development milestones.
Rekha Sharma, Minister for Communication and Information Technology, underscored Nepal’s commitment to adopting digital technologies and advised officials of India and Nepal to cooperate in the field of technology.
The keynote address by Dr. Pramod Varma, Co-chair, Center for Digital Public Infrastructure and ex-Chief Architect, UIDAI, outlined the DPI approach to creating inclusive and sustainable economic development with examples from India such as Unified Payments Interface, Digi Yatra, DPIs for tax, Account Aggregators and Open Network for Digital Commerce.
The panel discussion was a confluence of ideas on the use cases of digital credentials and data storage: with a focus on concrete use cases, the discussion underscored the potential for robust, secure, and interoperable data sharing systems to interface between the public and government bodies. Shanker Das Bairagi, National Security Advisor, Government of Nepal, highlighted the importance of digital connectivity between our two countries.
Neelesh Man Pradhan, CEO, Nepal Clearing House Ltd. and Anubhav Sharma, Head International Business – Partnership, Business Development & Marketing from NPCI International Pvt. Ltd highlighted the MOU between NPIL India and NCHL for facilitating cross-border digital payments and emphasized the potential of digital payments to catalyze economic growth.
Bam Bahadur Mishra, Deputy Governor, Nepal Rastra Bank, outlined NRB’s initiatives to promote digitalization and reaffirmed NRB’s support in taking forward digital payments infrastructure, including cross border connectivity forward.