 I want to say thank you all for coming. My name is John Hamery. I'm the president here at CSIS. I have the great fortune of trying to keep track of what this fabulous staff is doing. And one of the most exciting things we're working on right now is this new initiative on development. Now, I'm going to say something that's outrageous. So forgive me for that. But, you know, historically, we've kind of, this town's divided. You know, Democrats got USAID, Republicans got OPIC. You know, I mean, it was kind of, we both were doing development, but we had just very different views about how to do these things. And honestly, you know, these are both essential and necessary if we do them right. And, you know, the private sector is not going to be in a position to create a court system, a rule of law, credible currency. You know, all of those are things that governments have to do. And, you know, and governments helping in aiding and directing that. But the governments aren't going to create sustainable jobs. That's in the private sector. I mean, there's a natural partnership between the government and the private sector. I mean, after all, the government can't function without taxes and corporations have to be profitable, you know, so they can pay taxes. I mean, there's a natural partnership. But it doesn't feel like that. It doesn't feel like that in our community. We really are kind of loggerheads. Our goal with this new effort on leadership and development is to try to find the common space that unites everyone in the development agenda. And it's about really, it's, development is about creating healthy people, healthy communities, healthy nations. I mean that in its largest sense. And the private sector plays every bit as much a vital role in that as does government. Now, there is a large part of our government that is active in the development world that's not known. I realized this in working with Rob Mosbacher. I mean, this was when he was with OPIC and he led me to realize there's this development, development financing world that's out there that most of us don't understand and don't appreciate. And so it's a huge opportunity for us to bring this forward. And we're doing this because we have this paper that Dan Runde has just produced, which is on development financing tools. And I'm very grateful for that, Dan. Thank you for leading us in this direction. Now, this brings me to Senator Isakson. This is an unusual Senator, because he is willing to take on issues for which there's no domestic political benefit, but because it's the right thing. And he's had his own personal experience and his own personal commitment has led to a much broader interpretation of leadership than we are seeing on the average these days in the Congress. And so when we asked him to do this, he said yes, he would, because he saw the importance of it. And we're all very fortunate that a man of his character and commitment to a wider American leadership in the world that he's willing to take on an issue like this. And so I shouldn't take any more of his time and we need to hear him. So Senator Isakson, thank you so much for coming. Please welcome him this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very, very much. John, thank you very much for that kind introduction. Actually, I'm the warm-up act for Elizabeth Littlefield, who is the CEO of OPEC and does a tremendous, tremendous job. We had a good time chatting a minute ago. I think the title of this, and by the way, I have to admit that I'm rear only because Ashley Chandler asked me to come. Ashley's dad is a great friend. That's really not totally true, but if somebody that pretty asked you to do something, you usually do it. So she's a great lady and I appreciate you very much, Ashley. I think the title sharing risk in a world of dangers and opportunities is probably one of the best titles I've ever seen for a symposium and for a thematic study. And I wish I could be here all afternoon, but the Senate, believe it or not, is actually gonna be doing something at 2.30. And so I wanna be there when we actually do something. I'm usually there when we're not. I have my interest in overseas, interest in overseas development is kind of really unusual because four years ago, when I was asked to go on the Foreign Relations Committee, I didn't ask to go. They asked me if I would. They couldn't have any Republican to take the last seat. So I said, well, I'll do it. And then about two months later, Dick Luger came to me and said, I can't get anybody to take the Reichen member on the Africa subcommittee. Will you do it? And I said, well, yeah, I'll do it. And then that got me into one trip to Africa, which I took in 2005 and I fell in love with the continent and the people and also the opportunity for those people as well as for our country as a partner. So I have spent a lot of time in places like the Sudan and Darfur and Kenya and Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea and Ghana and places like that. And I can tell you a lot of stories about the value of improving the climate for overseas investment in Africa in terms of American business and enterprise, also at the same time, greatly helping the people of that country. The most, probably the most developed democracy in Africa, certainly on the Gulf of Guinea, coast of Africa, is Ghana, the nation of Ghana. And there's a company there called Global Mamas, which some of you may have actually visited Global Mamas, but Global Mamas is an example of how U.S. textile industries helped empower women in Ghana to make petite and they exported around the world now and America supplies the cotton, much of it at a less than cost amount. They produce the petite there and then sell it around the world. It helps their economy, it helps the improvement of their country and helps the plight of their lives. I love to tell the story about the National Basket Company of Rwanda. Rwanda is a country that the Hotel Rwanda movie was made about. They had a terrible genocide, butchered a million people. Kagami came down out of the mountains, became president, changed the official language of Rwanda to English and got the Hutu women and the Tutsi women to start talking to each other and created the National Basket Company of Rwanda where they weave the baskets that are now exclusively sold through Bloomingdale's. And the only rule and employment in the company is if you're a Hutu, you have to weave baskets with a Tutsi and if you're a Tutsi, you have to weave baskets with a Hutu. And if you go in the National Basket Company of Rwanda, they have these 10 foot squares chalked in on the floor of this Butler building as far as you can see and there's one Hutu woman and one Tutsi woman in each square and they're sitting there weaving baskets and they're talking and they're getting to know each other and two things happen. Rwanda ended genocide and began prosperity and two warring factions, ethnic diversity, are now partners in the greatest economic enterprise that that country has for women. So there are a lot of things that business can be the catalyst for but we've also got to do, what we've got to do in America and what I think one of our overseas responsibility is and companies that have danger and have challenges is help them in the development of institutions and practices that are meaningful in the attraction of business. I know OPEC is getting ready to work with Nigeria I think on the banking and finance system. That's Nigeria is a country of 150 million people and a plethora of natural resources, oil and natural gas but it's right fraught with danger. This election recently where good luck Jonathan was elected was the first election they've had that really the opponent that lost didn't try and kill the one that won and they had some sort of a generally successful election and they have a hope and opportunity to expand like Ghana has and become more of a functional democracy and a safer country for the people that are there and they had the wealth that they have in petroleum and petroleum products and crude is a goal mind for the country if they can get the institutions of that country in such a way that they're functioning in a right way to be hospitable and places for business to invest and come. USAID is an important part and I appreciate John's remarks. OPEC is a private initiative that pays back to the Treasury of the United States it's a business proposition that's great for our country and great for those that invest but there is another role and that's the institutions and that's why USAID is so important because they help build democracy and the principles of democratic institutions that make those countries work and really the glue that I think is helping the virtue of OPEC and then the virtue of USAID come together as the Millennium Challenge Corporation. It is remarkable to go to the pineapple fields of Ghana and sit in a gazebo in the middle of 16 plantations and look at a 40,000 square foot refrigerator, 40,000 square foot refrigerator that USAID, the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation in partnership with Ghana built so they could take a very perishable product and be able to process it, store it and ship it in a much more profitable manner and basically taught the principles of US cooperation and agriculture that we've practiced for years in rural Georgia and rural Kansas and wherever it is but those principles and institutions once you teach them and once you give them the platform and once they understand how they work capital will flow to them to invest in what they produce and in turn the rising tide lifts all boats and Cotino Benin where unfortunately a citizen from my state was murdered a few years ago a Peace Corps representative that I have fought hard for forever since but a country that is basically poor and basically developing in their Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement they've expanded the port of Cotino and now on the Gulf of Guinea and the coastline in terms of the Gulf of Guinea they're gonna be one of the most active ports both in terms of receiving and shipping of any in Africa Tanzania is the same way so economic investment in developing countries even though fraught with danger if we on one side are investing and on the other side are helping develop democratic institutions it's a win-win proposition. Africa's single biggest problem that thwarts economic development is corruption and China is all over Africa because corruption doesn't bother them very much. I mean $10 to get the truck from the next stop to the next stops okay with them it's something that's foreign to us in the United States but helping countries like Tanzania and like Ghana and like Benin and hopefully Nigeria which is terribly corrupt in a lot of ways as we can show them the value of US and business investment in partnership with their country to raise the economic prosperity of the country but understand it's conditioned upon a system that respects the right business practices and does not respect paying off people and having corruption and crime then Nigeria grows as a more prosperous country and its people do as well and those who invest have a return on their investment or not paying somebody off to do something but instead people are prospering from the business and the investment that went there so this is a critically and I'm sorry my focus is so much on Africa but that's my experience and I haven't been at this but as I said four years I got into this by accident fell in love with it and gonna continue to work on it as long as they'll appoint me to the committee which hopefully the numbers get bigger maybe that will be possible I hope it will be because I really enjoy working on foreign assistance that has a payback to the taxpayers of the United States. I'll close with this the investment in foreign assistance is miniscule in the United States as a percentage of what we spend but the results of the benefits that come from foreign assistance are difficult to quantify because they are so great and for the very few times you have a foreign investment that looks like a lost cause as far as US dollar investment I can show you one that's paid huge dividends in terms of a friendly nation in terms of an economic partner and in terms of a nation that was crime ridden with crime ridden with corruption ridden with disease to become a prosperous democracy and a very difficult part of the world so we have some great challenges around the world but America has always ultimately been the leader to help people improve and we don't go in a country and ask for anything in return but to become a partner with them rather than somebody that consumes their natural wealth and resources and that's where OPEC that's where Millennium Challenge that's where USAID and the Peace Corps and other institutions and the NGOs like CARE that's based in Atlanta, Georgia that's the payback that comes to us from that so I thank John for having me today I thank Elizabeth for asking me today I thank all of you for coming today and I apologize I got a run out but I get to go do something on the Senate floor so I can't miss it I mean I have another chance this year thank you very much. Thank you very much Senator we really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be with us it's a real pleasure for me to introduce Elizabeth Lillefield the country is very fortunate to have such a capable public servant running OPEC I think that Elizabeth gets it she understands that the private sector is the engine of development and she brings many years of private sector experience having been a banker in a previous life and then more recently she was at the World Bank Group where she ran what I have described as the Major League Baseball Commission of Microfinance which is called CGAAP so for those of you in the microfinance industry you know what I'm talking about but for those of you outside of it think of it as the Major League Baseball Commission for Microfinance so Elizabeth has led OPEC since 2010 and really we're very fortunate to have her here today and I'm gonna cede the floor to Elizabeth, Elizabeth. Thanks very much Dan, Senator for welcoming us all here today I have to say Dan I'm very very grateful first and foremost for this report I think the whole development community is really very very fortunate to have such an articulate and powerful and ardent champion of all of the development finance institutions and all the development agencies around so thank you again for that report. Obviously I loved and agreed with most of it and could well sit down right now and just say that but I'll go on and say a few more things so I just wanna also thank the committee that I know has been working on these recommendations for the better part of the year I see Miltred Khalir here and Rob Mossbacker my predecessor at OPEC and I know you will put many hours into the analysis around this report so thank you all for that too. I think you all know from having read the report if you didn't already that OPEC is we're describing ourselves as the US government's development finance institution. I think you know we make loans guarantees and provide insurance to US businesses, small businesses, large businesses, private equity funds, entrepreneurs and NGOs and as the senator said we're very proud to have a profitable portfolio or 14 and a half billion dollar portfolio generates income every year for the taxpayer. I know you guys know that I just can't ever miss an opportunity to say it in case there's one person on some budget deficit commission in the room that hasn't heard the news I'm gonna keep saying it so thank you. As the report also noted we are much smaller than our peers. Our peer development finance institutions we're about half the size of the German one, DEG we're about a third the size of some of the other larger ones and of course we're a tiny little mosquito compared to the 3,000 staff at IFC. We have only 200 and some odd staff and so we're much smaller. But we like to believe that we punch above our weight. In 2010 each OPEC employee made did 12 million dollars in new business and generated 1.7 million dollars in income for the taxpayer. So we like to think that we're a more even more efficient and punchy institution than many of our peers. I thought I would just make just one or two comments about the report and some of the observations in it and then cite a couple of examples where such collaboration such as it's advocated in the report has worked very well in the past touch on why it seems to be so hard and make a couple of suggestions as to what we can do to make some of the recommendations in the report come to life. As I mentioned OPEC fancies itself to be quite nimble and efficient but we're actually more constrained as the report notes than all the other development finance institutions. We're constrained as I mentioned by staff which is our number one biggest problem if we could double the staff we could probably double the revenues and the impact we're having on the ground as well. We're also constrained in different ways that we can handle. Most of the other development finance institutions are not required to involve a US or whatever their respective countries company in all the transactions that we do. USAID doesn't have that restriction for example. We're more restricted in so far as we can't do any transaction that might potentially threaten even one US job. So those constraints we have they do impinge upon our ability to be effective as a development finance institution but we fully recognize the political realities and as the Senator said in this environment we recognize that those are not statutory requirements that we have any interest in tinkering with right now. But the other areas in which we're more constrained than our peers and our competitors are ones that the report did cite. The first of course being that we are not authorized to exist but more but months at a time in some cases and some cases years at a time. In 2008 our authority to operate lapsed and for nine months we cost the taxpayer money but we were not allowed to do one deal. So the door is shut and we sat there without an authorization for eight whole months and we don't wanna see that happen again. So we're very excited that by hope today, tomorrow and next week the Senate and the House will be negotiating OPIC among many many many other things but the Senate has I think for the first time ever proposed in its bill a permanent reauthorization of OPIC which would be superb. The House is silent on the topic so we're hoping they'll find a compromise somewhere in the middle that might be a multi-year authorization. So that's one of the constraints that the report addressed and we really can't acknowledge more strongly enough how important that really is. Of course the other things that the report cited which we would welcome indeed is the authority to spend some of our income every year on equity, on first loss and on technical assistance. This is something that would enable us to round out the tools that we have and make us the same as other development finance institutions most of whom have those authorities to accompany their lending authority. I just made a presentation to the board our board this morning as we presented a number of transactions and one of the things we were showing them was how the life cycle how deals process themselves through the life cycle of OPIC and how decisions get made and it's extraordinary because most people don't realize we get about 2,000 deals come in the door every year and out of which we only do about 100. That's just how selective we are. But the most interesting thing and relevant to this topic is of the 2,000 deals that come in the door roughly half of them fall away before we even start structuring or negotiating for want of, in order of importance, lack of equity, lack of first loss, lack of technical assistance or a business plan that's not yet ripe. So those are the top reasons why from 2,000 deals that come in the door only about 1,000 go on to even considering structuring or negotiating and your report addresses those top three biggest constraints. So it's very, very, very relevant. So in sum, we at OPIC would absolutely welcome those authorities at the report sites and we also welcome though the strong urge for us to work more collaboratively and more intentionally and strategically together with our fellow development agencies in the US government. We share the same objectives. We have very complimentary staffs and tools and instruments and complimentary resources. We have no local presence. For example, AID and MCC do. So I think it's important to note though that as the report does, we'd love to have the authority to do these instruments in a small way on our own but that shouldn't obviate the need to work more collaboratively with other agencies. We're never gonna have the same kind of expertise that AID has developed over the decades. We're never gonna have the same kind of expertise that TDA has. We have huge respect for one another and I think more intentionally and collaboratively working together is much better than each one of us saying we wanna do it all ourselves, by ourselves. So what are a few ways that we've seen in the past where this kind of collaboration has worked and there are a number of really great examples. In fact, I think in the back of the room we've got a sheet that shows, that we're very proud of which we've developed that shows how AID and OPIC have worked together over the years, so I'd draw your attention to that. I'll give just a couple of examples from some of the key foreign policy priority countries because that's of course where the impetus has been greatest to work quickly and efficiently together. I think one of them was cited in the report but I'll mention it again here. In Afghanistan, the Afghan Growth Finance Company which was started with a $25 million loan which OPIC made via the Small Enterprise Assistance Fund run by Mildred Kulir. We wanted to expand it so it could have more reach throughout Afghanistan. We were ready to put another $30 million into it but we couldn't do the $30 million of debt into it without some equity alongside. So AID put the $10 million of equity in alongside our $30 million in debt and together if you consider the leverage that we had from other funders that came alongside the Afghan Growth Finance Organization which funds small businesses in Afghanistan is an analysis has shown that they support 68 jobs per million dollars lend. If you take all the money that AID and OPIC put together in that, that's 3,400 jobs for just $10 million of USAID money and $30, $50 million of OPIC money which by the way will get paid back. So the math I think speaks for itself aligning these kinds of capital together for the right purposes in the right place is it can make a huge difference in terms of impact. Another example, a similar example of this is that as you may know, President Obama and Secretary Clinton both announced that in response to the Arab Spring, OPIC would be committing a billion dollars to Egypt to help spur entrepreneurship and job creation in Egypt as well as an additional $2 billion for the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region to stimulate private sector investment. Well, the first thing we wanna do is figure how do we get to the SMEs and how do we get to SMEs fast? Within three months of that announcement and from concept all the way to board approval within 90 days which we think is very fast we've approved $250 million SME facilities for Jordan and another one for Egypt wherein we'll be partially guaranteeing loans made by Jordanian and Egyptian banks to local SMEs. This thing could not have happened at all without a small amount, 5 million in one case, 10 in the other of AID money put in to help create the implementing agent on the ground that was gonna carry out those loans because it's a loan by loan guarantee not a portfolio guarantee. So there's no way this money could have flowed without AID having put in the TA the grant money to set up the institution that was gonna implement this thing. So that is just another example where we're stymied without the access to those kind of resources. USTDA I think is here as well. TDA, the partnership with TDA has been terrific as well. The Egypt Forward Conference that they so brilliantly and responsively organized very quickly after the spring began has caused us to have a number of different businesses that we've met at that conference come forth and look like potential clients for us to really help those US businesses invest in Egypt and Tunisia and elsewhere. So it works when it works. But there are so many transactions that I can't tell you the go undone for one or $2 million in equity. Cook Stoves in Haiti, Housing Programs in Haiti, Renewable Energy Projects in Rwanda in Pakistan, deals that are sitting on the drawing board for want of a couple million dollars in grant money, in TA money, in equity that would then unlock dozens or even in some cases $40, $50 million of our debt financing. So I can't emphasize how important it is to align these things together. So why is it so hard? Why are those deals sitting on the drawing board undone for want of this kind of money? Well, it's because our processes, our decision cycles, our systems, and our incentives and priorities are not at all aligned. They're not aligned in time necessarily. They're not aligned in terms of what the priorities are. For example, with the AID, AID staff at the mission level come up with their plan for that country for that year with the government well in advance whereas we respond to incoming requests from businesses as the year goes along. So if we come along in October and say we've got this fantastic business that just needs a little bit of money and then we can do this financing, AID's already pre-committed the money to somebody else or in some other priorities. So it's very hard to get that together. Priorities may be different. MCC and AID and others may have a priority as they do in health. Well, there's not that many private sector investments in the health care sector. We're very focused on climate change and climate finance. That isn't necessarily a top priority of the other agencies. So it is very difficult to align these processes, cycles, procedures and decision trees, but it can be done. And I just want to mention a couple of examples outside of the US government where we have been able to successfully harmonize and align these things. So one of the examples comes from our work with our peer development finance institutions. It's very interesting when one thinks about our complementary, our complementarity was an organization like the IFC. OPIC has no capital, we're not capital constrained at all. In fact, we have 29 billion in headroom. We're only using 15 billion of it on our balance sheet. We're not capital constrained, but we're highly human resource constrained. But we have a strong risk appetite and we can do very long tenors. The IFC on the other hand is very capital constrained. They're not particularly human resource constrained. They have a local presence. They can't do long tenors, and they have less of a risk appetite than we do. So that feels like a very good fit, right? But to work together, we've had to align some things, some processes and policies and others. So for example, our environmental and social and labor policies now are very much aligned with the IFCs which enables us to work more closely together. They're aligned with the other development and finance institutions as well. We've now aligned our underwriting policies as well. In addition to the reports that we request our clients to fill in on their development outcomes. Having aligned those things, it's now much more easy for us to work more closely together and more efficiently together. Similarly, with other US government agencies, we've aligned, for example, our definition of what is a US business. We've aligned what is our definition of a small business with SBA, which enables then a small business to know that if they go to SBA, they're gonna get the same, they're gonna have the same criteria applied for them as they will if they come to OBE. So these are just the ways that I think we can work together to harmonize and align our policies, procedures, and decision-making so that that more intentional collaboration can be possible. I would say in addition to these alignments, there's a couple of other things I think we all need to do to make sure that that work does proceed and does happen so that we can all have more impact. We can have a far greater reach and work more efficiently with US companies. So in addition to aligning those policies to take action to put the report into motion, I would say there's three other, four other things we need to do. One my colleague refers to is pronoun myopia. And by pronoun myopia, we mean we have to redefine the definition that we apply of the word we. We does not need to mean OPIC, or we doesn't need to mean AID or USTDA, we can easily meet all of us together. So pronoun myopia needs to change. The second thing I think is something the report alluded to as well, which is a much more open-minded and deeper understanding of one another's constraints, a deeper respect for one another's skills and expertise, and a deeper recognition of how we can work together by really understanding the agencies, each agency's own particularities and cultures. The recommendation I think was made for more secondments, which I think would address this. Third, I think we have to recognize our comparative advantages and really focus on those opportunities where working together does produce efficiencies. We don't need to work together on every single solitary thing, and not all of us has to do everything. But I think once we recognize those complementarities, it becomes much more clear where the efficiencies lay. And then lastly, of course, we need to recognize that incentives drive everything and for agency leadership to acknowledge and appreciate and reward working together, I think is one of the most powerful things we can do. As one of my favorite quotes, which I'll mention in just as a last comment in closing, comes from Harry Truman, I'm told, which is that there's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit, which I think should be our motto for the whole development community working together going forward. The only trick to that quote, however, is that it has been attributed to many, many other people as well, like Yogi Berra and Winston Churchill. So it seems like there's a lot of men taking credit for that observation. But anyhow, I would leave you with that and just say, thank you again for the really terrific report. We look forward to working with all of you in the development agencies around town, and I can't say how much we look forward to that. So thanks a lot. Thank you, Elizabeth. We're really very fortunate to have a high level panel that's gonna talk about the report and also talk about from various perspectives. We'll have someone from AID, we have someone from TDA, we have two former heads of OPIC who are with us that bring a real wealth of perspectives. And we're very fortunate to have Terry Weier who has an affiliation here at CSIS but also brings significant experience in the field having worked in Africa and Indonesia and Eastern Europe at the intersection of small medium enterprise as well as in the agribusiness sector working at what's called providing access to finance to institutions all over the world. So I'm gonna ask Terry and the panelists to come up. Thank you, Dan. And let me also take the opportunity to thank everybody for coming today. It's a real pleasure to have a nice sized crowd here for this very interesting topic. And I would also like to take the opportunity to at this point thank our distinguished panelists as Dan has already said, we have representation here from many of the agencies that are part of the recommendations that we're making in the document. And so I will just introduce each of them as we go. And we've got Rob Mosbacher Jr. at the end of the table. We've got Benjamin Hubbard from DCA next to him. We have got Mr. Tom Hardy from US TDA and then Mildred Kallir from CIF. And so I have some comments prepared that I was gonna make but I think Elizabeth has made some very excellent comments on what we're trying to accomplish here today. So I will leave my comments towards the end and I'll bring those comments in in the form of questions. And so with that said, I will ask if Mildred, maybe you can either stay there or come up here and make some comments. I think I'll stay here. Excellent, I think Elizabeth, I mean first the Senator led off with I think a really wonderful overview of how all of these pieces fit together. And I think something that too many people but inside and outside the Beltway don't understand this whole idea of what a small percentage of the total budget picture the foreign assistance programs are and how much bang for the buck you can get with very limited resources and how central what these agencies are doing even though many of them have now many decades under their belt, how today the current realities that we're living and make what they are doing more vital than ever. And so it was a pleasure to join with my colleagues on working on this report, a subject near and dear to my heart having spent quite a few years at OPIC and now more than 10 years in the not-for-profit sector working in this same space in terms of where is that intersection between development and the private sector? How do we take really first class tools that are spread across multiple actors in the US government and through the US government support of the multilateral institutions? How do we make all those moving parts work better together? And I will say when I look back now many years and see what the changes have been and the improvements, we have come quite a long way. And I think we've come from a period where the focus at least in OPIC's case coming out of the Marshall Plan was getting war-torn Europe back up on its feet and using that economic development tool and seeing how that has managed to through the decades continue to really fit the need of the moment. And whether it's the Arab Spring that Elizabeth talked about, whether it was the work that these agencies did in the post-conflict environments of Iraq and Afghanistan, whether it is now challenges on really what had traditionally been viewed as the humanitarian side of the equation and now seeing how the private sector role can be critically important. So I think what this report has done is shown how all of these pieces are coming together. You have agencies which were not really mentioned but that has been a big focus here at CSS in terms of how the whole national security and defense infrastructure has come into play in the development space, learning to work complementarily as Elizabeth mentioned in some of these challenging environments and bringing a new set of tools, a new perspective, but taking some of those methods and adapting them as needed. So I think all of the things that were said earlier, all the ways in which the programs do work now, how they can work better together, obviously getting that long-term authorization for OPIC is it would be huge, getting some of those tweaks in the authorities, whether it's the ability to integrate technical assistance with the investment capital, whether it's the equity authority. And I think a really critical point is the staffing, the human resources and that's a purely artificial constraint. There's nothing in legislation that controls. That is simply a budgetary decision that the US government is making to limit the staffing and when you see that per person benefit that an OPIC or a USAID, UTDA, MCC is able to achieve, common sense tells you that that would be the first place to look to gain some more leverage in this fast-changing environment. At Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, we've had an opportunity over now some 25 years to work with all of the players in this space. And as I say, I think one of the areas where we can all help each other in terms of making more efficiencies is really re-examining the tools that do exist, figuring out how you can use them a little more creatively. So USAID has grant authority. That's a terribly flexible authority in terms of the ability to be a pure grant vehicle, to be an equity vehicle, to be a first loss or a backstop kind of feature. So that it's flexible and it's, again, it's a question of the willingness of the players at any point in time to really stretch and use the flexibilities that exist to achieve very, very valid objectives. So we, for example, had our start after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Poland and we realized that in that environment, we actually grew out of care. Care thought that their traditional humanitarian approach was probably not the right approach in an environment where what was missing was that private sector component. So their experimentation was to take a view toward investing into the private sector, the nascent private sector at the small end in Poland. Our first partner was OPIC. They gave us a loan commitment. Now, it all goes back to this issue of equity authority because a loan commitment was a wonderful catalyst to get other parties to the table. We got EBRD to come, we got USAID to come, some Polish institutions, but at the end of the day, everyone agreed that what was really needed was equity and we never drew down on that OPIC loan commitment. If OPIC had had that equity authority, it would have just jump-started a little bit more, but over the years then, we worked with aid with its grant capability being used flexibly to be able to be used as an equity tool and then we began to work with many of the other multilateral development banks and then more recently with Millennium Challenge, doing a similar kind of SME investment fund focused on enterprises in the rural areas of Georgia. So the tools are all here, some of them are not in all the places they need to be as integrated as they could be. OPIC actually had equity authority written in statute for many years, but never was funded. So one piece of this is the budgetary piece and I could never say it when I was at OPIC, but I think OMB needs to take a step back and also look at how the existing authorities could be better funded to utilize all the skills and talents across these agencies. So I think I'll stop with that. Thank you. Thanks, Mildred. Excuse me. Next, why don't we just go across the table? Maybe Tom, you can go next. Sure. Thank you very much, Terry and CSI and for all of you here today with us. Today I'll speak very briefly about USTDA and our mission, cooperation among agencies to strengthen development financing, which is at the heart of this report. And lastly, USTDA's role advancing the administration's foreign policy priorities as it relates to development financing. As many of you know, USTDA encourages US businesses, US business involvement in priority development projects while identifying ways to open those markets for exports of US manufactured goods and services. We accomplished this through two primary means. One is international business partnership program and the second is project development program. Under each program, whether the IBPP, which is bringing foreign delegations to the United States to meet with US companies and see US technology goods and services just prior to a procurement or the longer term project development program, which is funding feasibility studies, technical assistance and pilot projects. Our goal is the same. Opening foreign markets for greater US exports and in some cases, investment. The results, I think we've talked, everyone's talked about results. For every dollar we're investing in projects overseas, we're generating over $58 in US exports. However, before I go any further, I want to talk briefly about development financing and the sequencing of project development that is somewhat woven throughout the report. USTDA is often seen as the catalyst for development projects as it serves as the first piece of the puzzle for implementation of infrastructure projects. Importantly, our development projects help foreign project sponsors define their infrastructure needs and identify sources of financing that oftentimes include OPIC and XM financing. Well, we have long worked with our so-called sister agencies. A deeper engagement was identified with under Rob Mosbacher as he was president of OPIC and our current director, Lee Zach, that continues through today. As a result, our staff regularly meets with their counterparts at OPIC to discuss the scopes of work that we're funding, the terms of reference, to make sure that what we're investing in has opportunity to lead to financing from OPIC and XM. Similarly, we work regularly at the senior levels to share projects that have been concluded by USTDA that hold the potential for financing and work very closely to highlight those to our sister agencies at OPIC and XM. For example, I'll give you a couple of examples of where we've worked well. Over the years, we've had some successful projects with OPIC in Botswana, working on power generation development, working with OPIC and MCC that's highlighted in the report on economic development and El Salvador, again, with Rob's leadership. And most recently, as Elizabeth mentioned, working to tie our programs in Egypt to the fund that OPIC recently announced under our Egypt Forward Initiative. With respect to foreign policy, USTDA is unique and has a somewhat unconventional role. As I prepared for today's remarks, I think back to Ambassador Sushwab, the former US trade representative. She regularly said that USTDA's programs are kind of a non-threatening way for the administration to promote foreign policy. That's as true now as it was then. Back then, USTDA worked side by side with USTR to identify programs to help our FTA partners, countries develop market opening reforms and developed infrastructure for trade. Today, we're working with state, energy, and the private sector to assist countries deploy commercially sustainable clean energy solutions around the world. These efforts have seen the positive returns that we would expect working with the development finance agencies. Under the leadership of former director Aski, USTDA concentrated its work in Colombia and CAFTA countries. Many of those investments have now come to fruition, leading to sustainable economic development while utilizing US goods and services financed by the Export-Import Bank. Similarly, under the direction of LISAC, we're seeing significant success as positioning US companies in the clean energy sector to take advantage of the investments by the public and private sectors overseas from energy efficiency projects in South Africa to smarket projects in Brazil to solar projects in the Middle East. USTDA is engaging countries to advance US foreign policy and development goals while opening markets for US goods and services. I will conclude by saying we wholeheartedly agree with CSIS's recommendations. USTDA is a proven model of cooperation between agencies, but there's certainly more we can do, has been discussed. For example, as identified by CSIS, as countries continue to graduate out of USAID programs or as AID is shuttering operations, USTDA will have an important gap role to play as these countries move to commercial development and commercial sustainability. Similarly, there's more that USTDA can and should be doing with the MCC to make sure that US companies are positioned to win a larger sort, slice of MCC funding in these countries that's supporting the important work that the MCC is doing in the markets that they've got compacts. With that, I'll keep it short so we can get to the questions, but thank you very much. And, excuse me, thanks, Tom. What I would like to do is maybe take a break and actually ask some questions of the first two and then we can move on to the next two. So we break up the speeches, if you will. And maybe, Tom, we can just expound upon what we talked about yesterday and what you've just mentioned in regards to the relationship with MCC and how we could maybe see better cooperation there or more deeper cooperation. Sure, I think that we have good cooperation across the government and USTDA, similar to being non-threatening to our foreign partners or similarly non-threatening to other US government agencies. We are often seen as kind of the catalyst, helping spur projects on for OPEC financing, XM financing. With respect to MCC, I think there's some unique opportunities and some that we've taken advantage of and some that we need to do more of. One of them is that we've talked to MCC about is doing more of reverse trade missions once the compacts have been signed, making sure that the procurement officials, the decision makers that are going to be implementing the MCC financing, MCC compacts are brought to the United States, are introduced to US companies, so they understand US goods and services technologies available as they go to invest in the major investments that MCC is making possible. I think that's really an easy and clear way where USTDA is not requiring MCC to tie its funds but simply creating a market for US companies to identify future buyers under the MCC compacts. Similarly, as MCC is developing its compacts, it's something that we've worked long and hard with, with Jerry Jensen, who's here, making sure that USTDA is involved with our project development program that MCC is taking advantage of the work we've done as they develop their compacts and understand where the investments have been made, where there's opportunities already in play. And thanks, Tom. And just further on the middle income countries and the exit strategies for USAID, do you see, is there discussion at this point with USAID to build in with their exit strategies, the benefits that the TDA brings? USTDA certainly has focused much more on the middle income countries over the last couple of years. I think right now we're operating in 20, we have 20 priority markets and the vast majority, if not all of them now, are middle income countries that are going to be key markets. I think that AID, over time, will be moving out of, and we are in select markets. I think there are certain markets we work closely with AID and there are certain ones that we don't. It's, the CSIS report does make the good point though that it's something that we need to be considering looking forward as AID starts moving out of countries, that we need to be more engaging with them going forward. It's probably going to present many opportunities, even with the budget constraints that are coming. I think you're going to have many opportunities to collaborate on the middle income exit strategies. And just to back up and ask some questions of Mildred. Mildred, I know Seaf very well for my days out in the field and it would be very interesting, I think, to hear some of the success stories that you've had, especially with relation to what's talked about in the paper in regards to investment plus TA, and then also maybe talking about the seed network. Very good. Yes, let me turn that on. Yes, I think one of the really universal truths of working in the SME space is that capital loan will never be the full equation that you need to build a successful company. There's always going to be the need for technical assistance in various forms. And depending on the stage of that firm, they will be able to self-finance some of that or maybe an equity investment can cover some of those costs. But there are some things that are just sort of generic to this space in the continuum of business that really makes it appropriate for technical assistance that may be in part funded by grants. And one of the difficulties that we have had traditionally is that institutions who are able to provide equity or debt financing often don't have TA available even within the same organization sometimes as in the case that Elizabeth was discussing with OPIC, what a challenge that has been to put some of those pieces together. But even within organizations that do have it, Terry, you know from your experience at IFC, yes, there is a TA capability, but there's stove piping that goes on in large organizations and getting those two arms to work together is often challenging. One success story I think on the IFC front has been with this SME Ventures initiative that's been begun over the last couple of years where some target frontier markets were selected, a competition for selecting managers to work in those markets and a pledge by IFC that at the same time they were putting equity in to create financing vehicles for SMEs, their TA group would come alongside. And I think in the case of Bangladesh where we're now operational, I'm not going to say that it was an easy simple process, but it did get done. And so now as we're making these investments in smaller companies and the challenge there was to focus on investing 500,000 and below that we would have the technical assistance to come alongside. And another successful avenue or opportunity that we had was with Millennium Challenge Corporation in the Republic of Georgia and there as well as the compact was designed. They had a lot of kicking and screaming about putting an SME equity fund component into the major compact. And quite frankly, it was a lot of pushback from Congress who said there are already equity funds, AID has enterprise funds, OPIC has its funds, why should MCC get into the SME fund business? And the point was that the government of Georgia in this case said, look, yes, we need major infrastructure, we want MCC support to build the roads and to have water treatment systems and so on, but we also want that infrastructure to be used to spur economic growth. And so we would like to take 10% of our compact and focus that on investing in the kinds of SMEs that will be able to take full economic advantage of that infrastructure. And it did, it was a big battle and I think still to this day, I don't think any other compact yet has another SME component. Hopefully now, five years into this, we can demonstrate that in the case of Georgia, it was very successful. Despite the Russian tanks coming across the border and crushing the apple orchard for our juice plant, you know, they're back up and running. So, but the point was, you know, if we had not had the staying power, the ability to come in when things like that happen and provide that technical assistance alongside, you know, it would not have been as successful. So hopefully now that is a model of having the TA alongside the investment capital that can really make a long-term difference. And then finally, the Afghanistan example where OPIC came in first, they were the leader. They took that risk. Three years later, showing success, AID was willing then to come alongside and provide the TA that Elizabeth mentioned. So that means now that we can really expand that portfolio on a much firmer footing because we can provide support on the technical side. Can you just touch on seed? Oh, yes, seed. Very interesting example of what happens when you use a grant in a leveraged way. Those early SEAF funds in Central and Eastern Europe, we had, you know, I think, you know, probably 10 or 15 in individual countries had each of them a component of USAID grant funding that was contributed as equity into those funds. And we used it to catalyze a lot of European DFI partners. And in a couple of cases, we even got some private sector investment in, or in the case of Peru and Columbia that Dan Rendy knows well from his time at USAID, we worked with the Global Development Alliance then to get some grant funding and to leverage pension fund investments in Columbia and Peru and to actually change the regulatory structure there so that pension funds could invest in private equity funds. But when those flows came back from those AID grants, the funds actually invested and the investments were exited successfully. The grant funds then have now been used to launch a series of centers for entrepreneurship and executive development throughout Central and Eastern Europe. And today we have eight operating centers that are networking venues, they're training venues, they are entrepreneurs training other entrepreneurs, they're linking them up across borders now because we have, you know, these really high charging, mostly younger entrepreneurs in Bulgaria who wanna talk to their counterparts in Romania who are all gonna go now with us to Turkey to have more cross border, you know, wheeling and dealing quite frankly and a peer network that has proven to be very effective. And how did that get funded? It was seeded in fact by those reflows from an earlier AID grant. So this idea that, you know, a grant if used properly can keep on contributing to the economic mission of these agencies is a really important one. Excellent, thank you. And, you know, as I look around the room, I see many people that I've either had experience with from my days at IFC or that have direct experience with IFC themselves. And the example that you give of TA investment is very key and to bring that back to the document and the recommendations that we're making, I think it's imperative that OPIC is able to have TA alongside their investment because it does work at IFC. There is stove piping as you say and it does in some cases and I would say in many cases take longer than we would like, but in many cases it does work. It takes time to get there but it works. And so I think again bringing it back to the document and the recommendations, I think it's imperative that we're able to do that as well through the US government agencies. So thank you for those examples. So we'll move on next to Ben Hubbard and then talk about investment vehicles and some of the new things that DCA is coming up with. And Ben, thank you. Sir. Thanks, Terry. Hi, everyone. I was actually laughing when Elizabeth mentioned the Truman quote because Elizabeth is a leader in modeling the collaboration that we all talk about and don't often do as much as we should, but she actually came out to our Global Mission Directors Conference to lead a discussion on that very topic. And she mentioned the Truman quote and mentioned that other people may have said it before and our deputy administrator and sort of in-house historian Don Steinberg leaned over and he said, give me your iPhone. And he Googled the quote and he pulled up the Wikipedia page and it was like 25 people who are which I would say. So if you keep saying it, you actually may show up on the Wikipedia page. So I have lots of thoughts and comments. I think the best thing actually to do is just talk a little bit about some of the changes we're making specifically with the Development Credit Authority, but maybe first broadly, how development finance fits strategically in the kind of modernized reformed USAID that Administrator Shaw is now leading. And the first comment is just that it starts from a recognition that we now have, which we may have been slow to wake up to, but is that the utility and effectiveness of our aid, of our ODA is increasingly gonna be judged by its ability to attract and catalyze other types of capital and resources and skills. And that's just a reality that we face in a changing landscape and aid scape. Last week was Busan, the Aid Effectiveness Conference and this was sort of the flavor of the discussion and there was a really interesting statistic that was dug up for the Secretary Clinton speech, which is that in the 1960s, ODA comprised 70% of capital flows to developing countries. And today, it represents just 13%. And that's after several decades of large increases in ODA, so just 13%. So we have to just recognize that's the sort of resources we're dealing with. And I don't think it's an argument to say that aid no longer plays the outside's role it did. It's just that we have to think more strategically how we can do things. And there's actually more opportunity because of that. And so for USAID specifically, I think that requires a bit of a mind shift for us because the things that aid was traditionally used to substitute for things that private capital wasn't able to do. And now capital can do many of the things that aid once did, whether it's pre-harvest financing for farmers or financing health enterprises, that stuff that was traditionally the domain of official development assistance. And so for us, I think the way we traditionally approach a development problem is to say, what's the budget I have allotted and how can I expend that money to solve this development problem? And USAID, we are the best in the world at doing that. But I think as going forward, we recognize that approaching a development problem is gonna take more of a blended approach. And it's gonna require looking at the budget we have, which is increasingly scarce. And then going to the private sector and sitting down with them and saying, here's the problem, how can we finance this? And how can we do it together? I think that's the flavor of what a lot of us are saying. And that's gonna require just a change in the way we do our business. And it's not a switch you flip, it's something that will take a little bit of a while, but something we're building towards now with USAID. And so that's why I'm evangelist for the program I'm running, the Development Credit Authority. Because it does just that, it actually puts the existing local wealth of a nation or a community and puts it work for its own development at little or no cost to the taxpayer. And it's not a new tool, it's not a new thing at USAID, but it's one whose time has really come. And I see in the back, John Vashlesky's trying to be anonymous sitting in the back, but I have to acknowledge the founding father of the Development Credit Authority, John Vashlesky, who really built this inside an agency where originally it wasn't a natural fit. And now has really sort of solidly found its way into the DNA of the development enterprise. So a few things that we're doing with Development Credit Authority as part of our broader reform agenda called USAID Forward. You know, we spent a lot of time this summer thinking about what does the Development Credit Authority do, we're sort of 11 years old, we're facing this changing landscape. We have an administrator who believes fundamentally that development needs to begin with the private sector, what's our role gonna be? And so we've made a sort of highlight for general changes. One is we are gonna tailor our approach much more around the priority sectors and the specific development and market needs of each of our regional programs. So first and foremost, that's agriculture and health, it's Feed the Future, our flagship agriculture program and the Global Health Initiative. Just for example, with agriculture, which many people in this room know, many of the countries where we work, it's 80% of employment, it's a third of GDP, but then you actually look at how much of lending to the agriculture sector of all lending and it's one, two, three percent. And so it just doesn't match its developmental and economic importance to the country. And so that actually tends to be a sweet spot for USAID and for the Development Credit Authority, so we're really gonna be focusing there. A lot of the countries, we've heard a lot about exit strategies, so we are looking at how we can make exits from the countries we've been in for a while that are developing and that's just a smart thing to do. We think development credit theory actually is a huge role to play in doing that, along with these other agencies, but frankly, if we can just get the agency to start thinking about using the Development Credit Authority, that would be a huge victory. And we just did the first ever municipal bond in Serbia, raised $10 million for local water infrastructure, changed several laws in the process, got pension funds and insurance companies to be able to invest in municipal securities for the first time and that's the type of thing. If we wanna make an exit, let's help them fund themselves and so we can do that in a lot more of the countries and so that'll be a focus for us going forward. Second big change is we're gonna be doing more of, we're calling strategic transactions but more of the multi-country, multi-partner deals that tend to take a lot more work, a lot more time and more financial sophistication. So we recently announced a $25 million capital raise for a private equity fund focused on SMEs in East Africa called African Agricultural Capital Fund and that was with a group of impact investors and then we guaranteed a JPMorgan Chase loan to the equity fund who's gonna be on lending to agricultural SMEs which is private equity for ag SMEs is fairly non-existent. So setting up those really sort of high-value development transactions as proof of concept is something we wanna do more of and we're gonna resource appropriately. Second, and this is a change I'm particularly excited about is we're just gonna embed ourselves much more into the agency and we're doing that in a couple of ways. One is DCA inside USAID as seen as we're the product people so you need to guarantee you come to us, we do that. It's a tremendous resource to just be on the product. We have financial expertise that isn't available across the agency. So we're gonna be there as advisors to missions and help them think through some of these development problems from a financing perspective. Along with that, we announced recently, the administrator announced in October, the creation of what we're calling field investment officers. So we're extending development credit to the field and we'll be deploying total of seven investment officers to sit in our regional platforms in every region where we work which is a really big deal for us and they will be there to be advisors to missions on some of these questions and to be originators and to be looking out for those types of opportunities where we can leverage our assistance. And then fourth and finally, we're gonna hold ourselves accountable for really scaling up this type of approach. So we're currently doing about $1.7 billion in active guarantees under portfolio. We think we can do that much or more around $2 billion over the next five years. We're developing mission level targets for commercial leverage across the agency, every single mission in the agency, no matter where you are, whether it's Afghanistan or South Sudan or Peru, will be held accountable for developing a leverage goal. And that's a big deal for USA to sort of make that step and we're gonna be the sort of key intermediaries for them. But we're excited about it and I think that's the kind of shift you can expect to see from USA going forward. So I'll stop there for now. Thanks Ben, that's great. Some of the investment vehicles that you're coming up with to move into agriculture, SME are excellent and I can speak from experience because I'm using them in South Africa as well. Sorry, Rob, can we move on and talk about some of the experiences you've had with OPIC and your current experience? Well, thank you, Jerry. I don't wanna repeat much of what's already been said or much of which has been memorialized in the report. I completely support, as you would expect, the new tools and my role as former head of OPIC, I saw day after day deals that didn't get done because of the absence of these things. One of the things that I tried to do when I was there that I'd like to think we're building on and Elizabeth and I have conversations about this is to accept OPIC as a frontline development player as we approach a government, an economy, a situation and not simply be a transactional agency that somebody decides to call at some late point, particularly when somebody's going there and they're looking for a deliverable to an ounce. And I think we've made that large step forward. So the next logical step is if you think of OPIC as part of the solution and multifaceted solutions to countries that are suffering from humanitarian issues as well as economic meltdowns, then you need to think about, all right, how do we make OPIC more effective? And that's where all these tools come in. And I think the question of the capacity to take equity in deals has been spoken to more than adequately. I think the importance of technical assistance that's readily available on a programmatic basis rather than a project specific basis. I think the importance of coordination among the agencies as a start and then among the agencies as it tries to attract more private sector participation in going forward on development projects. Most of us, and I've spent 25 years of my life in the business world, we just don't have the time to go around 15 different agencies to get approvals to do things. We need as much in the way of one point or two points of interface. And so I view the coordination among executive branch players as a first step towards then having a more user-friendly coordinate approach as it relates to reaching out to the private sector and saying, where are your investment goals consistent with or overlap with our development goals? We're interested in fighting poverty, creating economic hope, trying to enable stability in places that may be drifting towards violent extremism. You're interested in making money, which is what most businesses do or try to do, and yet there's overlap. And so we have to build a much better, more robust dialogue that's ongoing, that's non-adversarial, that doesn't wear private sector people down by sending them around all over government or even all over a single agency. And so that's the importance of coordination as I see it. And it's part of building a much more effective development policy, if you will, that's truly integrated with private sector interest as well as public sector tools. One tool that's mentioned in the report that I don't think anybody's touched on here and I just wanna give you an example of how effective that could be, and that is enabling OPIC or some entity in the US government that's aligned with OPIC to contribute to first loss funds. Now, what do we mean by that? Best example I can give you is, while I was at OPIC, we approved an affordable mortgage program of $500 million directed at Palestine. This is a program that the construction sadly has been slow, not terribly surprising in that part of the world, but housing stock and development is ongoing and it will be financed or will be paid for by people with mortgages. But this is a $500 million fund. We wanted a first loss fund, which would be kind of a cushion or buffer between the senior lenders and the front line lending of $50 million, 10%. And we got to 20, I think it's at 20, primarily because of a contribution from the British, from DFID, but we couldn't get anyone else to contribute. We traveled throughout the Gulf region and said, you know, you're tired of giving the Palestinians operating income money or operating funding money. Here's something concrete. In fact, you can actually pay for concrete with this. But you know, we had no takers, none. And it'd be great if there were others willing to step up and do that, but it'd be great as well if OPIC could access some of that. If we'd been able to go from 20 up to 50, instead of it being a $500 million fund, it might have been a $1 billion fund. And so using a little bit of first loss capacity can leverage incredibly the private sector investment that comes along. And I would just say an ultimate possibility in terms of this is, Ben, you're gonna think, and John, I'm glad you're here because he and I have had this, Basilevsky have had this kind of conversations about OPIC and DCA, but you know, in a world in which there's much more sort of seamless coordination between AID and OPIC. And TDA, I think that's not as much an issue, but where there's much more seamless coordination, DCA guarantees loans up to about 50% typically. 80%. Now you have authority to go higher, you used to go up to about 50. And that was kind of a guideline, I think. It seems to me that, and yet we have had at OPIC constraints on the credit, I mean, the credit subsidy that OPIC has, that's something you sort of use to reserve against loans and it's something that's a necessity. And DCA has credit subsidy. If we were kind of doing some deals together, not only could we share who is, in effect, booking the loan and guaranteeing the loan, but sharing of the credit subsidy as well so that it wouldn't necessarily be as constrained. That may be pie in the sky and I'm sure there are AID people who can't imagine that and there are probably OPIC people who can't imagine that, but that's something that is worth aspiring to. That's the kind of coordination I think we need to get to. Great, thank you. And that actually leads to one of the questions I was gonna ask and that's to Ben about first loss and the costs that are involved. So I know most of the, let's say, the typical DCA would be a 50% party passu. But if you do wanna go to a first loss, there are cost implications. Can you maybe talk about those and how we can work those in as we discuss that with OPIC and with various others? Well, I mean, I think there's development implications first before there's cost implications. And so when we do transactions at USAID, we have an investment committee and we put it through them on the kind of financing side. We also put it through a kind of development committee and oftentimes it's a lot harder to get it through the development committee than it is the transaction financing committee. And the reason we do 80 to 90% of our deals in a 50% equal risk sharing or party passu basis is because that's the most sustainable way to approach. The way we work with banks, we try to introduce them to new underserved markets where banks are a little bit skittish to go there. And so we take some of the downside risk. We provide TA to work with the banks and the borrowers. And the idea is that after five years or so of sharing that risk, that the banks are ready to start lending on their own. And so to do that, we think it's important that they have equal skin in the game so that they invest in the sort of human resources they need and the kind of management and operations of the banks to support, say, SME lending, the branch networks, et cetera. And so what I think we've been very successful at with DCA, and again, this is huge credit to John Vashalsky, is banks continue lending after we leave. And that's the height of sustainability for us. And I think with, but I also recognize that every transaction is unique. And I think applying a kind of equal risk share prism to everything isn't necessarily the right approach. So we are, as part of our new approach, open to participating in different types of capital structures using the guarantee in different ways where you wanna do more dynamic guarantees where you may start out at 80, 70%. And so to each year, maybe work your way down. Frankly, we'd like to do more 30 and 40% risk sharing so we can see more widespread market adoption. We are open to first loss. We've done it before. We're actually working on two transactions now where that's involved. But those are rare cases. And I think it really isn't necessarily a cost issue for us, it's a developmental one. And I think when you're in our line of work, which is working with banks, it just often doesn't make a lot of sense. I think if you're maybe doing more project finance and other types of transactions that OPIC does more of, you might need it. To Rob's point on more collaboration, because this is something, Elizabeth and the administrator have talked a lot about and our teams have talked about, it's hard on the finance side because there's sort of sharing information and pipeline and we wanna do more of that. But OMB tends to have the biggest problem because they won't let one USG agency be subordinate to another. And that's just something we're not allowed to do. And so for USA to be first loss to OPIC or vice versa isn't just not something we can do. And I think there's a fairly principled reason for that which is we're both sort of concessional lenders in a way. If we're gonna be taking first loss, which is gold, I mean that is gold to whoever is getting it and you should dispense that gold very carefully. I think it really needs it to be a truly private commercial player and probably not another concessional lender. But I'm sure others would passionately disagree with me. Just quickly on the topic of first loss. I know that in some cases you are across the globe looking to other DFIs or IFIs to share in some of the costs. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? And I know first loss of the cost isn't the major issue as you've already said but that is a component of it as well. Have you done any fundraising externally and partnering with other IFIs or DFIs out there that you can speak of? Well, so we are trying to lower our costs. I mean we face the same challenge, frankly, that Elizabeth and OPEC faces, which is USA mortgages are budgets over periods of years for programs, we plan in five year increments, developments a long term endeavor, we plan long term. And that's not how transactions develop. They're quick, you gotta move quickly and so it's often hard to find resources I don't wanna minimize that as an issue. So we're kinda looking for strategic partners. We have a great partnership with the Swedes, the SIDAs, their development agency. We're increasingly co-guaranteeing on many of our deals with them, which cuts our costs in half. I mentioned we're working on a couple first loss transactions, that's actually, we got the partner to take that position, which I think is even better. And then we have something called gift authority and our authorization and that allows people to pay for or get access to the guarantee without USAID necessarily having to pay for it. And we're actually working in Kosovo right now and the government is looking to access the guarantee and will actually be paying to use USAID's guarantee as they develop their own national guarantee and financing facility, which is actually very exciting to see it being used in that way. Sure. Yeah, I'd just like to make a comment because we have worked extensively with USAID over the years and I think perhaps Ben, this is a little bit of an example of some of the stove piping that is frustrating for us because within USAID, obviously there is plenty of grant funding that's spent every day. There is nothing more forced first loss than a grant. And so I think this idea that sitting within the confines of DCA, you can't take first loss when next door down the hall, someone's taking first loss every day all the time. To me, that's an example of how we need even internally within USAID to get the pieces, the tools are there, to get the pieces to work together a little more effectively. And when it happened, I suspect it was enough under the radar screen that no one ever recognized you were being subordinated in some cases. It has happened, it does happen and it's been successful. And so I think, to me, wonderful tool, it's wonderful to hear that there's more flexibility now, but the other aspect of it is that private sector, commercial banks are not the answer to everything in the development world and others do need more than peripassu, first loss guarantee sharing. So to me, it's just an example of, we can all learn from each other, it can learn from our own experience in the past and just try to be a little more creative and broad based in our thinking, both within agencies and across them. I would like to pose this last question to Rob and then I'd like to open it up to the audience. Rob, just during your experience with OPIC, and I'll open it up also to Elizabeth at this point because you're still here, I wasn't expecting you to still be here. But we've talked about TA alongside OPIC and what would be the best structure there? USAID has the ability to put together IQCs, what they call IQCs, indefinite quality contracts and would that be the best structure or would it be that what we had talked about earlier where OPIC retains some earnings and builds a bit of TA capacity internally? What are your thoughts on that given your experience with OPIC over the five years you were there? Well, notwithstanding my enthusiasm for greater coordination, it'd be a lot easier if OPIC could just retain some of its earnings and not have to try and negotiate transfer of funds from anybody else. So I think that's the sleekest, easiest way to do it. I also think that we would have to find or OPIC would have to find additional help to actually do the technical assistance. I mean, it typically finances organizations that then go around hat in hand looking for resources to do the technical assistance part. So we know who some of the potential players are that would actually use the technical assistance because they're ultimately gonna be clients of OPICs as borrowers, but then there are others that are out there that just will play the technical assistance role and developing that network is something that OPIC would have to do. Thank you. Elizabeth, would you like to? Maybe just I feel like I could comment on almost everything you guys have said and I'm sitting on my hands and trying not to jump in. But one of the things, Ben, you'll know that Raj and I have been talking about just as recently as last week is some mechanism for aligning our capital and our tools ex-ante. So for example, if you look at the challenge we all have with respect to climate finance, the developed countries have collectively committed to a hundred billion dollars annually by 2020. The developing countries to finance adaptation and mitigation. There's no way we're gonna come up with a hundred billion dollars from the foreign aid budgets that we have. And one of the things we're looking at doing that the State Department has been organizing under the leadership of Secretary Clinton is figuring out a way we can align TDA's resources potentially OPIC's resources and AID's ex-ante so that those facilities are in place and ready to go when opportunities arise. But beyond climate finance, we could certainly look at, for example, I think, getting together saying, okay, what are the three or four priority sectors we wanna focus on? What are the terms of engagement? And then developing a sort of fast-track, streamlined decision-making process at all the agencies so that those, as I said earlier, those processes, cycles, decision-making mechanisms and systems are aligned ex-ante. That's something I'd really like to experiment with and see whether we could get something going there and it might be a nice way of putting action to the words that have been recommended in the report. I wanna put a question to the panel. Next month, Secretary Clinton has a summit on impact investing. And so I'd like to put a question to the panel about what would you like to hear the Secretary talk about at the Impact Investing Summit? I can start. Obviously, I was reflecting on that, thinking about coming here today in terms of one of the few conferences I've been to recently where the word impact investing is not in the title somewhere. And yet, obviously, development finance is impact investing going back many decades. And so I think all of the things that we've been saying are critically important going into any kind of summit or understanding about what impact investing is and what the tools are that are needed. But there's some new entrance to the equation which should not be ignored. And that is potentially a new class of investors who has viewed the kinds of things that the development community has worked on over the years as something that you would give to philanthropically. And now through a new lens are beginning to see that these opportunities represent investments and not just humanitarian types of projects. And so in the same way that private sector investment in the US government context used to be an island in the sea of government to government activity, today what we're talking about is on the mainland and who's on the mainland? It's not just the development institutions and the impoverished people in the developing world who need support, it's all those private sector actors. And so we haven't also talked up very much about corporations and how they're moved away from a corporate social responsibility model to an investment in their supply chain model or to really build markets for their products. That's all part of this impact investing space too, along with hopefully a really new category of retail investor or institutional investor who is now seeing that you can do these developmental socially responsible kinds of activities through an investment lens. So I think it's very important, I mean in the same way that OPIC clearly has led the charge globally on impact investing in terms of really being willing to put, be out there on the edge and put some real resources behind it to have the secretary make that commitment for the government writ large and to really challenge all of the USG actors to take all these tools to do the kinds of things that Elizabeth is talking about in terms of new ways to collaborate and really pledging that that is gonna be a core focus so that it really happens. Would you want the secretary to add anything? Oh, that would be a wonderful thing for the secretary to recommend. I would just add, I think the secretary deserves great credit for gradually ratcheting up the level of importance she attaches to private sector driven sustainable development and I'm absolutely convinced she's sincere about it. What the government, what her peers and I think perhaps the secretary could focus as well on is okay, how difficult is it actually to do business with the United States government? We often, whether it's AID or OPIC, think well you want our help, therefore you will jump through all these hoops and we take enthusiastic investors and wear them down in a matter of days because of the process and I mean I hear this over and over again not just from inside government where I used to say, well aren't we better, we OPIC better than most government agencies? I mean that's a relative question and then on the outside I keep hearing it. So governmental authorities who are committed to increasingly working with private sector players have to be committed to making private sector engagement with the government much easier. That includes procurement and a whole host of other things. Easier said than done, right? Exactly. Yeah I would just second that. I mean I see Randall Kempner's in the back from Andy. They're the organizing group for many of the impact investors and it's one of the things that, so the impact investing community will look at an institution like USAID and say you're big and slow and we can't work with you and that's a narrative you can believe from their perspective. So someone from USAID will say you guys, you're not there, you're making small investments, if you're making investments and you're not working at scale and I think we really need to bring those two communities together because we need each other and I think the investment models and business models that the impact investing community are developing are something that the traditional aid community can learn a lot from. But I think the impact investing community really needs to draw on the kind of resources and expertise that you'll find on the ground from an institution like USAID and I think having the secretary speak to that nexus is quite important. And I would just also add, I mean I think you are, you're talking about potentially new kinds of actors in this space. I mean lots of people have been making private investments now are doing that potentially through a new lens but you are really talking about bringing new actors and whether it's on the investment side or in the weird kind of space that a SEAF type organization exists in because we're not for profit but we're engaged in a lot of for profit activities on the ground like Aga Khan, I see Mizra here. So there are many of us out there that are taking a really hybrid approach. We have our DNA as mission focused organizations but we're very committed to the idea that sustainability is only gonna be achieved if you get a company to profitability. And then all kinds of things are possible in terms of achieving your mission objectives. And so I think this idea of achieving scale is gonna have to be accompanied by various other kinds of initiatives and financing and supports for those institutions who are these actors in this space because we can't scale up without investment either and we're weird creatures because you can't just invest equity in a not for profit but we need to scale up to get to those small organizations on the ground that it's not efficient for the big agencies to invest in directly. And I'll just make a comment here as well in the fact that as Ben said in a conversation we had at some stage, many of the existing USAID staff members aren't used to this type of business model. So they're really policy oriented and now we're moving more into a private sector led investment type of development environment and so we have to adapt as well and that takes time unfortunately. Independent researcher recently retired from DOD. I was in Iraq associated with Iraq and the US Army for about four years and back in June. I'd like to bring a little different perspective. The panel has talked at length about how difficult it is for US business people and US citizens in general to figure out what happens here in the labyrinth of Washington. Imagine how impossible it is for an Iraqi to try to figure this out. I have been associated with those conversations involved in those conversations for a couple of years now and embarrassed by those conversations. They have, we think or two people are talking across talking, you know one another. I don't know any of you. If you're sitting in Ramadi or Mahmoudia or a host or Kandahar, imagine how out of it those people must feel in confronting these issues. You're using jargon that goes way over their heads. So what I would suggest is that two things. One is the representation that you have in your embassies in Kabul and Baghdad and elsewhere is the most important link you have with the locals. Forget about the people in Kansas and the entrepreneurs in Texas and so forth. But the locals in Ramadi and Kabul are the ones that you really have to pay attention to. And those are the people, your commercial attaché, your econ officer, your USAID reps in the embassy are gonna have to pay most attention to. Now, following on that, unfortunately in Kabul, unfortunately in Baghdad, those people, those US bureaucrats are stuck behind the wall. They can't get out. And if you have ever come from Ramadi or out in the provinces and tried to get into fortress embassy, you know that your interlocutors in Iraq are not going to do that very often before they give up on you and turn to the Chinese or turn to the Iranians for their development funding. It's a fact of life. Now, in the booklet here, the report says that Secretary Clinton had an impact on your activities following on her March trip to the, pardon me? Oh, I beg your pardon. Okay, all right. I'm just wondering what the impact on Iraq, of the vice president's recent trip has been as far as you all are concerned. Did he bring any proposals back? Okay, thank you. Can I open it up for the rest of the crowd for questions? Yes. I'm actually an entrepreneur from Texas. So I'll work hard not to take exception to that. My name is Rebecca Taylor and I serve in the State Department of the Office of the Science and Technology Advisor. The question I have is actually a variation on the theme of that and that is, have you all bumped into enough scenarios to know whether or not the approaches we're taking in trying to encourage investment in these countries is working better than the models that are used by our friends from China and elsewhere. Are you seeing any data yet that says what we do is more effective than these other paths? Terry? Yeah, go ahead. Nothing scientific, but I would argue that good, well-underwritten projects that are executed by on the ground, private sector players who have private sector for-profit-driven type interests are the most sustainable kind of projects that you can do in contrast to much of what the Chinese do and I would reference, we could say Afghanistan, and look at the ANAC copper mining concession. You know, when you shower folks with that kind of front-enloaded cash and then you say and we'll build you a railroad and a country star for more transportation modalities and you are helping ministries build capacity that's not a fair fight, but I don't think it's either also one that's going to endure well and serve the governance of that country or even necessarily create sustainable jobs. It will create some jobs unless they're being filled by Chinese, in which case that's not helping the local population. So I think our model, although I happen to think our quote development model writ large needs a lot of work, but I think in general the idea of supporting private sector driven economic development with good private sector players in it is head and shoulders above the Chinese model. And I would agree from the USTDA perspective, we see more and more foreign grantees coming to us saying we've worked with the Chinese, it hasn't been working, it isn't working, it failed. We want to work with US companies, we want to work with US Trade Development Agency to bring together the US private sector to create a more reasonable playing field. I would simply add that one of the things that all of these agencies are doing in order to get beyond the embassy gates and be out in the local community is to fund these intermediary organizations that are working very locally in the communities. And so Afghan Growth Finance, which is the example that was given earlier, yes, it was funded by OPIC, it was funded by aid, but it's a purely local team, living every day out in the community has had its office blown up at least once, but it's there, the staff got on the phone the day after the blast and said, we're still here, we hope you are too and your loan is still due. So the point is, there are ways to be out there, to be subject to the same conditions as everybody else locally and to be local, but still to represent the interests of these development communities in an effective way. Recognizing me here, I want to just ask a couple of questions of the panel. I think the excitement of impact investment or new forms of financing is what it might be able to do to alleviate poverty. And thus far, what I've heard from the panel is investment practices that are a little bit softer than what might have been the case. And I do like Mildred's challenge to Ben about first loss can also be grant financing. And so I would like to hear from the panel, are there creative ways that they can think of in which some of this new wave of financing can actually break the back of poverty? So for example, can we really work at it so that education for all is attainable? What sort of models would you need to put into place, blending the financing that we've got so that we can truly get that age old development problem out of the way, which is providing education for all? Thank you. Can I just make a comment on that or try to answer a little bit, just from my own experience of working in South Africa and using or utilizing a DCA guarantee, for example, with a company called Farm Secure, which actually works out in the rural community, works with farmers in regards to the beef industry there in South Africa. And it is a very good example of us going out and this is yet to be approved, but it's in the process. But once it does, the impact that we'll have out in that rural community is tremendous. And so it does happen. It doesn't happen enough, but it does happen. And we need to speak to education as well. And I think my colleagues on the panel can speak to some of the things that they're doing on the educational front. Well, Mayor, this is probably a roundabout way to answer your question, but I believe the way you enable governments to provide services like universal education is to have a viable middle class that's paying taxes and of course an upper class that's paying taxes. And that comes through, I think, kind of a push-pull of economic empowerment. What's exciting about what's happened in the last few years is microfinance, which Elizabeth was so much involved in helping support and spread, has now morphed into SME finance and middle market finance and banks that were totally uninterested in doing any lending are now into credit access still slowly. But I think access to credit and capital as a focus is sort of broadening the opportunity unlike ever before for economic growth, for small business and medium-sized business job creation. Access to affordable housing, again, something that has very sort of middle-class tax-focused type benefits over the long haul. And that's broadening not just construction jobs, but financial services. So I just think we've moved into a bunch of sectors that are creating more opportunity for viable middle classes. And you know better than I, the migration of people, this is, again, given World Bank definitions and not, frankly, higher definitions of what middle-income countries are. But there is migration towards higher-income and middle-income countries, and that means, hopefully, that we develop institutions that can provide quality education for everyone. A couple of two separate comments. Because I think we have a language lingo issue with just, we talk about first loss, we talk about grants. In many cases, they're the same thing. So USAID does actually, in that sense, do a lot of first loss. And in many cases, DCA is the next step, sort of once you've been sustained in a way by USAID grant support. And we do sort of work with the grant side to take, if you want to call it a first loss, but I think the part of it is just, it's a financial language that an agency like USAID doesn't necessarily speak. And so some of that critique is fair and some of it's not. I think the other thing I want to say is, is the way of a development agency and development professionals plan, and it's, we have limited resources in a given country. We have to work with a budget and work with a government and work with them on their priorities and what our priorities are. And we sort of, we call that negotiated alignment. But that's a process and once you get to it, take or feed the future, for example. It's not just we're doing agriculture in Tanzania. We're doing agriculture in Tanzania in a very specific sub-region on three specific value chains. And our investments are coordinated with other donors around those value chains in those regions. And so when an impact investor or OPIC or any other outside entity comes and says, well, you guys don't want to play ball with us. I think it's, you know, people also need to understand that aligning with a strategy and people need to respect it. It's just good to have a strategy and taxpayers appreciate that. Involves aligning around what that strategy is and the sort of process and thought that goes into what those investments are is something that, you know, that's a public good. We can all benefit from that. And when we align, we can achieve impact. But just having a deal that's in a poor country doesn't mean necessarily that, you know, USAID isn't interested in supporting a type of development transaction. And so I just want to, some of the critique is fair and some of it isn't in that sense. The other thing is, which is exciting, is that we have this thing called the Development Leadership Initiative, which is how we sourced a lot of mid-career professionals, foreign service officers into the agency. So a program started under the Bush administration. We've brought in over 700 foreign service officers in the last five years or so. There are 110 private enterprise foreign service officers in the agency. Of those 110, around 80 have joined the agency since 2008. Many of them come with capital markets experience in various forms, sort of the legal transaction side. You know, it's also not a coincidence that sort of after 2008 we got a lot of those skills, but it's a huge resource. It's a huge resource for the agency and I think has been unrecognized to date. And so one of the things we're just trying to do is find those people. Let's make sure we put them in the right places and empower them to be able to do stuff and so they can be originators for DCA or for OPIC and really kind of be a change agent in the mission and not just sort of, you know, doing intern activities. Just another viable argument, excuse me, so why we need to leverage the private sector for more, maybe I can go back to Randall in the back. Thanks, I'm Randall Kempner with the Aspen at Work Development Entrepreneurs. And I'm gonna venture to say that most people in this room agree with the five of you on the panel that these are good recommendations. But the key question is, how do we actually get them implemented? And so if Elizabeth, if you're still here and others, what can we do to actually make these things real? And so what can Andy do? What can other outside actors do? Who do we have to talk to and when? Well, I think, you know, the point is some of these things, you know, can be done simply by continuing the conversations that Elizabeth and Rajeev Shah are having because they don't require new legislation to mandate cooperation between the agencies or something. So those kinds of things can happen. And I think because it gets visibility and attention, they're more likely to happen. So I think all of us can participate in having those discussions so that it stays on the radar screen. Other things obviously do require some level of, you know, mandate change or legislative change. And, you know, how we influence that is the way any other, you know, public policy decision gets influenced. You know, you start by making these things very, very public and specific. And so hopefully that, you know, takes a step in the direction. And so organizations like Andy can certainly take formal positions and make those positions known. But you're right, there's no easy on-off switch. The good news is that these are very practical. And so they're not totally theoretical things that we won't even know when we've reached the end of the road. I mean, I think we'll know when some of these things begin to happen. And so, you know, separating them into the things that can be done without formal change in those that require it and then coming up with action strategies for each is probably a smart way to go. Yeah, the only thing I would add to that, I completely agree that the things that can be done without legislation, we ought to be serious about doing. And that, for instance, would be the technical assistance and the coordination and, again, AID and OPIC working much closer together on sharing. I think that's the kind of thing that I know has begun. But there's a limited amount of commitment to it and resources and it's just not high enough priority. Yeah, I guess the only, I'd say two things. One is, I think in a world where incentives aren't created by bonuses, I wouldn't underestimate the power of leadership to create the incentives that motivate that kind of behavior. We've all worked on all kinds of agencies. We've all worked in the private sector. TERF, EGOS, all these things really matter, especially in the land of no bonuses. So I think I would come back to my, I would come back to my pronoun myopia and just say the more that we all, as a development community, can emphasize that there is, that the highest order of community is the development community and the objectives that underpin it, not the individual agencies. So for me to go to the Hill and take credit for and acknowledge AID and MCC and TDA, which we do regularly, frankly, the piece of paper I hope you'll grab in the back that talks about the partnerships between AID and OPIC. I talk all the time about the fact that we couldn't be doing anything that we're doing in the Middle East were it not for AID. And I think the more we can all keep doing that, that creates its own momentum. So I'm actually quite optimistic about that. The second thing I would say is, I do want to pursue this idea of experimenting with aligning capital upfront and seeing how that can work. And I also would like to take work on finding ways that we as OPIC and I think TDA as well, can address AID's needs to plan and advance and be strategic by actually engaging in conversations earlier in processes so that we all know, what are our priority sectors? What are our priority countries? I think we've always said we're responsive to business, but I do think that we could be having conversations a little bit earlier on as well, outside of the notion of an explicitly aligned capital facility. Okay, I think there are a number of things in the report that don't require legislation. I think there's a series of relationships both in this room and outside this room, both with the secretary of state and with folks at the White House that it just seems to me that we now have a report that people can point to and say, there's a series of things here that don't require legislation that we'd like to see investment officers be rated on the fact that they're cross-selling TDA or OPIC or I'd like to see 10 DLI or PMFs from AID do circumvents at TDA or OPIC as part of their process and it's embedded because as people have referenced, there is a specialized language, this is a community apart from the rest of the development community. Well, that's gonna change because of all what we've been talking about. Private sector led development is the future of development and nine out of 10 jobs in the developing world are coming from the private sector so we're gonna need to use a series of interventions and instruments that are different than the way we've thought about it in the past. So things like circumvents, things like how we incentivize people, those are the simple leadership changes. I also think the secretary has a moment next month and I think there's a number of people around the development community that have a way to speak to the secretary about this and it just seems to me it would be a lost opportunity if that moment was about, I'm gonna roll out one more nice project, that's great but I actually think if she said I'm gonna use my limited, my political capital, she's very popular and said I'm gonna spend some of my political capital on asking for equity authority for OPIC because I understand a lot of the people in the impact investing community say this is important or I'm gonna ask that either AID or MCC or the way that OPIC keeps its profits so that it can have first loss or be more flexible in the way it uses grants each of the institutions, that's actually should be something I hope that are in her talking points next month. So that would be, that'd be if you've asked me and so if I was Andy and I know there are a number of people that are on your board that know the secretary, it would seem to me if you've got a chance to speak to her in the next month, this would be the ask, it would not be please don't do another ribbon cutting, roll out of another project, it would be please talk about the fact that you're gonna support equity authority for OPIC or please talk about the fact that you're gonna be more flexible in the use of grant-mise at MCC AID or let, we're gonna use our limited, my little political capital, please use your little political capital to actually ask for the Congress to let OPIC keep some of its profits to do these sorts of things we've been talking about. Yeah. Well, I mean we have, certainly we have a council that's gonna be looking at the role of private, the role of the private sector in development. This is a very high level council but I think what we've put out on the table are a series of recommendations that others should be picking up and talking about. I mean, we're a research institution, we have, there's a gray zone between what we can do in terms of advocacy, we're not a lobbying institution. So I think we've gotta be a little bit careful but I do think you'll see us continuing to talk about this. This is the future of development. This is, this is where the, you know, this is, whatever happens in 2012, you're gonna see, this is bipartisan, this is about the development future. So you're gonna continue to see us talking about this and looking at this. I hope we'll do something, a special drill down on ag finance or something maybe in our other sectors as well, I have a particular interest in how we use this in zones of conflict as well and we've done some work on that. So I'll stop there. Yeah, Elizabeth. Sorry to keep passing the microphone back and forth but I'd say just two additional things. One is, frankly, until we get a multi-year reauthorization, we're not gonna attempt anything on the Hill. So I mean, I think my sage friend and advisor Rob would corroborate that. I think our strategy right now is to lay low and get this authorization through. If we imagine, if we get a four or five year, much less a permanent reauthorization, then we're gonna march right back up to the Hill immediately thereafter and start fighting for equity authority and some of the things in the report but until that's done, we're not gonna ask for anything else. So we can just add one more thing. Right, exactly, go please. This is coming in the day and let me show you. This was great. We're playing at Atlantic City on Saturdays. Okay. Anyway, so on that, if any of you guys have access to any powers that be up in the heavens, please summon them now, because now's our moment. The second thing I would say, and this is just again in response to Randall's good question, you all may remember that in the State of the Union address last year, the president promised to merge or consolidate the 12 trade agencies because it was very inefficient the way we did business with, and the way the business-facing agencies were fragmented. Of course, when I was here in the State of the Union, I said, that's a terrific idea and then I thought, oh God. You know, I think maybe he means us. And sure enough, we were part of that conversation and actually we spent the whole time in that conversation explaining that there's a community of agencies that's focused on selling USA. Invest in our country, buy our stuff. And there's another community of people that spend their entire day waking up every morning saying, how can I help fix problems in the development world by using US capital? They're completely different missions. And anyway, so the threat I think of consolidating XMTDA and OPIC has now abated for now, frankly I see it as a threat, and I've said that much within the administration. But one of the things that the President has announced recently to address this desire for a better coordinated set of trade agencies, as I think called USA Business, which is going to be a one-stop shop kind of website that will, again, that will help. Lord knows how we're gonna do it with all the agencies involved, but a website that will direct US businesses to the place that they should go to for different services. And hopefully it will make it much simpler for them to navigate the morass of services available to US businesses from the agencies. That's something I think that we could take a page out of that book and consider doing something similar for the development agencies, and explaining how does the handoff go between AID and DCA and OPIC, and what's TDA's role in that too. Because I do see in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, just to ask you a question, there's kind of, I've often described it as a relay between different agencies and different services that can provide a continuum for businesses to go from immediate post-conflict crisis all the way to sustainable development. So I think we might wanna undertake the development of some clear guidance to NGOs and businesses alike as how they might navigate the development community. Okay, one last word. Just on this, I do think that institutions that are on the outside, they wanna do one thing. It should be to make sure that OPIC gets reauthorized. And I mean, Teri and I have written about this a couple of weeks ago, but it seems to me that it's still up in the air. And so if there was one simple thing, that would be one of them. I do think, I just wanna comment on one thing that came up in this panel, which is about there's some really great organizations that want to do important development work, and they have to jump through all sorts of hoops. They've gotta go to country by country, or they've gotta go agency by agency. And so it takes too long. I've had a very happy career at CSIS staying away from the org chart conversation in terms of what this looks like. And I think what we're proposing are simple ways in which they can, I'm not saying it's gonna solve everything, but I do think we think some of the things that we have in the report don't require rewriting org charts and this sort of a thing. So I do think that a lot of this can be done without having to, there's a lot of the conversation, a lot of energy in Washington is around org charts and merging and who's in the lead and et cetera. And I think maybe has to do with this bonus list culture that Elizabeth referred to, but I do think that making sure that OPIC gets reauthorized has gotta be the most important thing, but I do hope that there's this window of opportunity when the secretary speaks next month. And I hope it's not, I've got one more nice deliverable it ought to be about. I've got several reorganizational opportunities and perhaps there's some things in this report that could be referenced. Okay, we have to wrap up. Maybe one more question, go ahead. My question concerns country priorities, specifically with post-Arab Spring countries. I'm wondering what the role of development finance is in the countries that have seen a regime change away from a more authoritarian structure and promoting private sector development. Back in April Obama suggested that OPIC might help fund businesses operating in Egypt and encourage that, so I was wondering what the state of play was and the potential there. Thank you. Good question. Well, with respect, I mean, as you heard, Elizabeth referenced $250 million in Egypt, which is going to be administered through local banks for SME lending, is that right, Elizabeth? And same thing in Jordan. And there's one of these programs in the West Bank of Palestine. So, I mean, and Tunisia, I don't know where you all are, but you know, so there's real commitment to this and it is enabling local financial institutions to make credit available to SMEs. And that's already instructured and I think been approved by the board. I think from USTDA's perspective, we would, pardon me, we would agree our priority countries in the Middle East are Morocco, North African Middle East, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan. And you're gonna see continued investment. I think the dust still needs to settle a little bit, but we're working closely with OPIC already on some projects we've got that are lined up for OPIC financing. So, there's still gonna be a concerted effort, but I think it will take time. Okay, maybe just super short. In Egypt, to answer specifically your question, as Rob said, we've put it together, this $250 million loan guarantee facility, which as it will rotate and leverage the funds of the banks should generate 1.4 billion at best over three years for SME loans. In addition to that, we've provided $125 million for a private equity firm in Egypt that will be using that money for on lending to SMEs as well. In addition to that, we have put on the table, but it hasn't yet been accepted or finalized a proposal to lend, actually direct via US Investment Bank within a risk sharing arrangement to the government to help create some fiscal space. It's not exactly our mandate, and so we're a little bit nervous about the structure, but we know that the IMF money is not gonna be enough for Egypt to fill its gap. And if we can do it in a way that funds ultimately public private partnerships, we're gonna try to structure something there. In Tunisia, just today, in fact, at our board, we approved $52 million for a Tunisian investment fund. Again, we'll be investing in small and medium enterprises, and then we're looking forward to doing a franchising facility in partnership with the State Department, and I believe AID as well. No, the State, I think directly. A franchising facility that would enable us to lend money to US and Tunisian companies that are interested in setting up franchises in Tunisia, and I believe we'll be doing that also in partnership with the Store Bank too. So that's the plans for Tunisia and Egypt. In both cases, we have a number of renewable energy projects and in some cases some telecommunications and other infrastructure projects in the wings too. Thanks very much, Elizabeth. Okay, we're gonna wrap up. We're just running a little bit late. I want to, first of all, thank our distinguished panelists here. They've been here for an hour and a half up here answering questions and talking about their agencies and all very, very useful discussions, and we will continue to push for these various aspects that have been recommended in the paper, including the reauthorization of OPIC, including the TA aspects as well, and equity. So I think thank you again for all the panelists and thank you all for coming. Thank you.