26. 06. 2018 taking up of office by the governor of the banco de espana pablo hernandez de cos governor honourable ministers and authorities, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends, i believe today calls, above all, for a round of gratitude. first, i wish to thank ministers calvino and montero for their presence here today. may they rest assured i am firmly committed to maintaining the close and loyal collaboration traditionally offered by the banco de espana to the ministries for the economy and finance. i also wish to thank the previous minister, roman escolano, for his presence at this ceremony, and for his proposal and defence of my appointment before the parliamentary committee for the economy and competitiveness. and my gratitude extends to the representatives of the committee accompanying us today. i undertake to make every effort to improve the capacity of the banco de espana to face the challenges addressed during the parliamentary committee hearing. ministers, as i am surrounded above all by colleagues, i trust you will allow me to continue in a more informal tone. as you know, including a three - year tour at the european central bank, i now have two decades behind me at the banco de espana. professionally speaking, this is, then, my home. it is a real honour for me to have been appointed governor. but, above all, i feel a great responsibility at having inherited the enormous legacy of an institution with the history, functions and position in the spanish economy of the banco de espana. i wish to begin this new stage thanking those people who have steered my career over the years. i have learnt from all of them and their teachings have been a source of wealth for me. my sincere thanks to all of them. thanks, of course, to jose luis malo de molina, under whose leadership of the research department i have pursued most of my career, and, among others, eloisa ortega and jose maria bonilla. they were most forthcoming with their trust and have, at different times, been a major source of guidance and support for me. thanks also to fernando restoy, above all for being a point of reference in terms of competence and dedication to public service. thanks especially to jose manuel gonzalez paramo, who oversaw my ph. d. and took me to frankfurt. that experience gave me, early on, a first - hand view of the work of the european central bank and of the banco espana ’ s potential as a member of the eurosystem. naturally, my greatest gratitude is

, in less than a decade, levels of financial inclusion that would have otherwise taken several decades or more. dpi spurs market innovation by reducing transaction costs, democratising access, maintaining competition through interoperability, and attracting private capital. dpi offers a path to 1 / 7 bis - central bankers'speeches effectively manage critical national infrastructure. in times of crisis, as during the covid - 19 pandemic, india and a few other countries were able to leverage digital infrastructure for vaccination programmes and targeted transfer payments. notable examples of dpis in other countries include verifiable digital identity systems such as colombia's cedula digital ; nigeria's national id or bank verification numbers ; the philippines'philsys ; rwanda's digital identity system managed by their national identity agency ( nida ) ; saudi arabia's nafath digital identity management platform ; singapore's singpass ; the united arab emirates'uae - pass ; and the like. the g20 digital economy working group ( dewg ) developed the global dpi repository ( gdpir ), which is a comprehensive resource hub, pooling essential lessons and expertise from g20 members and other participating countries. its primary aim is to bridge the knowledge gap in the choices and methodologies required for the design, construction, deployment, and governance of dpis. the final'report of india's g20 task force on digital public infrastructure'was released on july 15, 2024 which has, among other things, contributed to acceptance of the definition and framework of dpi. this agenda will be taken forward for implementation during the subsequent g20 presidencies. india's experience with dpi let me now turn to india's experience with dpis. india's dpi journey is a unique model, wherein the base technical infrastructure is built, operated and managed in the public sector, while the private sector accesses the dpi to create innovative customer facing services. the advantage of developing dpi in the public sector is that typically private sector would be averse to capital investment to create infrastructure with uncertain returns. privately created infrastructure may not also be amenable to democratised access or interoperability. the unique approach of india is conducive for designing services and products which are competitive in the open market. 8. in the area of finance, systems that facilitate digital payments, digital money, digital identity and digital processes are the key components of dpis. india has carefully crafted