As a Chairman of ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC), I hereby congratulate on the official establishment of the Dialogue to materialize ASEAN-Japan Economic Resilience Action Plan.

On June 26, ASEAN BAC has the Dialogue with ASEAN Leaders and we has submitted our report, which includes the ASEAN BAC Legacy Project this year, the Digital STARS or Digital Startups Towards ASEAN Resilience and Sustainability, aiming to develop ASEAN-wide digital start-up network for resilient and sustainable business in this region. Towards the Dialogue, I would like to raise two key words here; the Digital Transformation (DX) and MSMEs. In our joint survey with JETRO, we found that digital technology has been rapidly adopted among ASEAN companies after COVID-19 in a non-returnable way, and that tendency is especially higher among MSMEs. I hope there would be significant synergies between the Dialogue and our project, especially from the viewpoint of facilitating MSMEs’ businesses and enhancing their DX capacity. We are here to contribute to the Dialogue.