 Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Bill Burns and I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and I am very pleased to welcome all of you here today for an event about an important country and an important part of the world. For those of us who follow the region, the proposition that Tunisia matters is not terribly controversial. But for many, it can prove a little counterintuitive. Tunisia, after all, is a small country of 11 million people with an economic output one quarter of that of the state of Maryland. It is surrounded by a major energy player to its west and a country convulsed by civil conflict to its east. With fires burning across the region, Tunisia can sometimes get lost in the smoke. Tunisia may be small, but it is disproportionately significant for regional order, for the fate of reform and democracy across the Arab world and for U.S. national interests. Tunisia's failure would not only dispirit all those who yearn and sacrifice for more pluralism in the Arab world, it would send thousands more Tunisians into the arms of extremist groups and human traffickers. That would deal a body blow to the fight against ISIS, and it would deal a body blow to Europe's efforts to deal with the refugee crisis and its profound political and geopolitical consequences. Besides admiring Tunisia's remarkable but fragile transition, my Carnegie colleagues decided to try to offer concrete ideas to ensure its success. Thanks to the encouragement, support, and partnership of the Open Society foundations, we were able to assemble a distinguished team of scholars to analyze why Tunisia's transition has run into difficulties and how Tunisians and their international partners might overcome them. Our team included regional experts and former high-ranking diplomats from the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Together, they spent considerable time in Tunisia, leading a series of structured consultations with Tunisia's leadership, elected representatives, political parties, the business sector, trade unions, and civil society organizations. They also spent considerable time in European capitals and here in Washington to understand better the perspectives of Tunisia's international public and private partners and what they can do to support Tunisian-led reforms. Their charge was not to reinvent the wheel, but to see if they could help point the policy conversation in a more productive direction. My colleagues approached this exercise with humility and a clear recognition that only Tunisians should determine their country's course. This is why I'm so pleased that we'll have an opportunity today to hear not only from my former colleague, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, but also from Tunisia's Minister of Development International Cooperation, Missin-Brahim, as well as a number of Tunisian voices from the private sector. To present Carnegie's new report, introduce our first distinguished keynote and launch today's conversation. It is my pleasure to invite our Vice President for Studies and my friend, Marwan Mawasher, to the podium. Marwan has done as much as anyone I know, not only to make the case for greater pluralism in the Arab world, but also to help make it a reality. Marwan understands what is at stake in Tunisia and together with our colleagues, Mark Perini and Alex Jurasi, he's written a smart, sensible and pragmatic report full of ideas that deserve attention and action. So thanks again to all of you for joining us this morning and thanks to Marwan for kicking things off. Thank you all. Thank you very much, Bill. And good morning, everyone. It's my great pleasure to say a few words about the new report we are releasing today and to introduce Minister Yasin-Brahim. Let me first thank the Open Society Foundations for its support. Our Middle East program takes great pride in looking at long-term trends in the Middle East and to helping policy makers think beyond the horizon. There are, however, moments when it is imperative to focus on the current situation and the near future. I think that when it comes to Tunisia and how best to support this new democracy today is precisely that kind of moment. So I'm deeply grateful for OSF's focus on Tunisia and its partnership with Carnegie. I also want to acknowledge my two co-authors, Ambassador Mark Perini and Alex Girasi, for their many hours of work on this project. My hope is that together we will succeed, not only in raising awareness about Tunisia but also help generate concrete ideas about how Tunisians and their partners can ensure the country's success. I'm convinced Tunisia can succeed. Five years ago Tunisians courageously pushed a dictator from power. That remarkably was the easy part. Realizing the aspirations that inspired their uprising turned out to be far more complicated, not just for Tunisians but for all those who took part in the Arab Awakening. Tunisia is democratically chosen leaders including Minister Brahim and Tunisia's many friends in the international community including the United States have their work cut out for them. Tunisia is facing today some significant challenges. Those challenges include the glaring tragic and destabilizing situation in Libya, the larger destabilization of the region and the aftershocks from the human tragedy in the Levant. They also include Tunisia's domestic inheritance, socioeconomic issues, governance issues and security threats continue to loom. As the economy has struggled, in particular last year following a series of horrific terrorist acts, Tunisians understandably have grown frustrated. And yet despite provocations from militant groups, Tunisians by and large are sticking with their country and with their decision for pluralism and democratic government. In our conversations with policymakers and diplomats in Washington, in Brussels, in Paris, in Berlin and other capitals, Micro authors and I have heard of their commitment to Tunisia. Important new pledges of assistance have been made just in recent months. This is all encouraging, but it is just not enough. The report we are releasing today, the product of intense and focused research and consultations over the past six months is not intended to reinvent the wheel, either in terms of the required international assistance or in terms of reforms needed in Tunisia. Tunisians know very well what they need to do. The report is not meant to be a Washington directive or prescription and it does not intend to offer a cure all for Tunisia's ills. What this report tries to do, however, is to offer pragmatic suggestions of how to facilitate the process of and help build the capacity needed to implement what Tunisians themselves agree must be done. The paper focuses on one specific aspect of Tunisia's challenges, the economy. Political and security issues are extremely important as well, but Tunisians themselves have worked very hard on the new political system, still a work in progress for sure. And the international community has been very much seized of the security issues generated by regional turmoil. It is the economy and how Tunisians and international players can cooperate more effectively to ensure that economic progress bolsters the political transition to which we devote particular attention in this paper. I hope that you will all read the paper and enjoy it, but let me just outline very quickly the main takeaways. We are calling in this report for a new framework for partnership, a new compact between Tunisia and its international partners. We identify five areas where reciprocal commitments and actions among Tunisia and its international partners could generate the mechanisms, approaches and concrete support necessary to help jumpstart progress. First, international players should intensify engagement with and assistance to Tunisia on urgent economic priorities. Frankly, I am astonished at the lack of focus there is on Tunisia as compared to Libya, Syria and other countries among key international players with a strong and clear interest in the country's success. Of course, all need to stop wars and come back security threats, but there should at the same time be a much clearer focus on bolstering the one positive opportunity in the Arab world. Second, the government of Tunisia for its part should lead the establishment of a coordination mechanism among donors from the G7 and beyond to establish transparency, accountability and follow-through. Too much donor assistance is not being spent effectively. Third, the government of Tunisia should play on the country's clear strength in pluralism, dialogue and consensus building by launching an inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders in the country about public policies and new laws in order to rebuild citizen trust. Fourth, Tunisians will need to advance reforms that can remove the significant remaining obstacles to revitalizing the economy, particularly in marginalized regions. Although the revolution upgraded Tunisia's regime hardware from an authoritarian to a democratic government, Tunisia still needs to finish transforming its operating system of state institutions, laws, bureaucracies, courts and police. In fifth, as part of this Tunisian-led partnership, the government should carry through on plans to establish a fast-track mechanism to implement policies, sorry projects aimed at fostering economic and social development and creating jobs. Reform of the overall system will take a matter of years, which is understandable and to be expected, but Tunisians need to experience relief and hope now in a matter of months, not years. Rather than mutual cynicism and recriminations, the defining elements of this new effort should be mutual responsibility and mutual accountability, as well as pragmatism and prioritization. International partners should be prepared to increase and intensify their assistance, including through support to labor-intensive industries in Tunisia that can create jobs and visible results. If Tunisia is prepared to advance public administration, investment and customs reforms, its partners should provide the necessary advice and expertise, as well as the support to cushion the inevitable dislocations. We are not, God forbid, calling for a repeat of the Doveel experience, the 2011 International Conference that promised much and produced relatively little, but there are several important international gatherings coming up. This week's World Bank and IMF meetings, the G7 summit in late May and a planned economic conference in Tunisia in the autumn that offered the opportunity to operationalize this idea of mutual commitments, if the players believe it is useful. And precisely because Tunisians are writing their own future, we cannot afford to ignore their words and their sacrifice. We are very fortunate this morning to have the privilege of hearing directly from a distinguished Tunisian who is helping write that future, Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation Yasin Rahim. Few Tunisians have a more intimate view of the country's development needs. Few have done more over the past few years to seek to realize those needs. And few Tunisians have engaged more intensively or exhaustively with the country's international players than Minister Rahim. Minister Rahim is not only a distinguished public servant, but also an experienced business leader. He has that unique capacity to bridge the divide between government and the private sector and between Tunisia and the world. He and his team have been leading the charge in crafting the Tunisian government strategic plan. The authors of this paper learned a great deal from the minister and his team. And I'm certain that all of us will benefit greatly from his perspective and vision for Tunisia. I hope you will all join me in giving a very warm welcome to Minister Yasin Rahim. Thank you very much, Minister Moesher. First of all, I would like, thanks a little bit Burns, and all the Carnegie team, Mr. Dorfus, Alexander, the excellent work done on Tunisia. And to thank you as well to have given me the opportunity to be with you today to participate in the enrichment of the debate and this Zoom, I would say, on this new democracy under building in a quite sensitive region. I think that we had we had a lot of exchange when the team was working because we were delivering at that stage the orientation note and how we see the five coming years within the country. And we worked on it with, of course, the civil society, the MPs in the parliament and the main four parties that are supporting the current government. And the diagnosis was really important. Diagnosis about the economical and social model of Tunisia before the revolution and all what happened during the five last years and why we were at the stage and we are at this stage of having not started what we call it the economical and social revolution. Tunisia exceeded after the revolution to build a society where Gaba concentrated on education, healthcare, building the country, the infrastructure. But the economic model in the 15 last 15 years before the revolution was saturated. We have educated people, 30% of the young people that went to the university are without employment today, frustrated. And I suppose that some of you read quite a good article in the New Yorker dot com few weeks ago that was explaining this situation of frustration of the young people of Tunisia, globally and all what and the impact of that of course within Tunisia and all over the world. After the revolution we had a lack of stability politically speaking. We made the choice to start from a white paper and build a new constitution and ask ourselves which kind of society we want to have. We are still sometimes asking that. But we spent four years in of course political debates and reaching a compromise on the constitution and that had a cost because today is we haven't been able to make the reforms, the structural reforms economically speaking, socially speaking at the right speed. And there is really a lack of passions, passions that we had to buy in the five last years. All the programs, all the international financing went to employment in the public sector, which is not the most efficient way of course to improve an economy and also increase of salaries on the pressure of course of the social and justice that we have and especially the lack of developments in the main development regions in the country. What I like the new report and the new work is really that the situation is clearly presented and some pragmatic solutions and approaches are proposed in the report. What are the five pillars that we presented in the orientation? First of them are governments. We have a big problem of governance today within the country. The state was not strong in the five last year, still not strong today and stable, which of course increased corruption all over all the state organization. A lot of things are mentioned in the report. What is maybe lacking, if I can, is the justice system, which is really important in any state of law and a new country and we have a lot to do in that area as well. We don't have a consensus about the role of the state and especially the government and we don't have a consensus, especially with the union about it. We have an issue on that. Some people continue to think that we can do a lot with the public sector and the state. I don't believe so. So all the project that will concerns public private partnership, etc. We have a resistance. We still have resistance today, but thanks to the ambition of the strategic plan and all the requests that we have in thermal project, we won't have a choice. We need to push PPPs in the power station. We need to do PPP in the salination projects. We need to push PPP in the waste management projects, but we'll have some resistance, especially from the union on that because there is an ideology about the fact that the state should stay over there and if the state will say that mean more power, of course, to the union in that area. And this is not sufficiently as well maybe mentioned because it has to be maybe diplomatically correct, but politically we are having topics and discussions about that. Governance, the first point. The second one is the second pillar of the strategy is how to enhance the value added of the economy and how to make Tunisia as a hub. We have a quite externally geographical positioning between Europe and Africa, North Africa and the Middle East. And we are having more and more, especially in some sector like the ICT, like the automotive industry, like the aeronautic industry. I'd have to leave a few at 10.05 to go to visit Boeing that is thinking about maybe having some work in Tunisia. So we have so many international companies that are coming to Tunisia and considering Tunisia as a hub for the region. And we have, in fact, the level of the engineering, the technicians, et cetera, that we could push this momentum using Tunisia as a hub. The third pillar concerns the human development. As you know, Tunisia invested a lot in the Arab countries and Tunisia, the role of the women in Tunisia is important. 60%, 62% of the students in the universities are ladies, young ladies. Women are having more and more responsibilities. And our electorate also low for the parliament. We had some obligations about gender. We need to improve more because we have raised just 28% of the workforce that are women in Tunisia. So we can't lack them. There is an improvement of the educational system because the employability of young people getting out from the university is not good at all today. So there is conditions of improvement on that. And it's an axis where the international community is helping and could have largely more. The fourth pillar, we have two countries within the country, the cost and the Western regions. And in that, our diagnosis is that we are not connecting enough the Western regions and we are not having enough trade with Algeria and the West to enhance the prosperity and the level of life in the West region. And we have a lot of ambitions in terms of projects, in terms of infrastructure in the five coming years to link these Western regions to the cost of regions and the poor, especially. The last and not the least axis is the green economy. We have difficulties about natural resources in Tunisia, especially water, power, of course, and the land. On the water, we have a strategy that is deployed today. We are going on the cost to have desalination projects and we are going to bring water from the north to the center of the country. But we have just 400 cubic meters per capita in Tunisia compared to an average in the world of 1000 cubic meters. So it's really a stress situation on the water. That's why we have a lot of projects concerning water on the power. We are late on renewable energies. We are just at 3 percent of production of renewable energy in Tunisia of our needed power production and we are aiming to go to 12 percent in 2020. We are as well really late on the waste management and the communal management of the waste globally all over the country. So these are the five axes and the good news is when we converted this strategic orientation to a strategic plan, we had so many requests of projects coming from the regions, of course, and coming from all the ministries all over the government. And now we are finalizing at the final stage of the arbitration. To give you just an idea, it's a small country. We spent on the public investment, public sector, we spent around 10 billion dollars in the five last years. We had requests for 30 billion dollars coming from the regions and the departments. And our, if we, of course, we want to keep an acceptable, of course, macroeconomic balance, we'll be able to produce 15 to 17, 18, depending on the financial conditions that we have with our partners, of course. To finish, about the relationship with our international partners. We are really grateful that we had, we had, even if it's not enough, we had very good support from the international community in the five last years. We feel that the international community wants Tunisia to succeed. It was not easy to support a country that was not stable at all, that in 2013 was not far from a chaotic situation. So we had our partners with us, the U.S., of course, the European Union, we call the European countries, and all the international multilateral organizations. Was it enough? Were we producing at the right speed? The answer is no. Of course, in terms of execution, we were not efficient, but there are several reasons. Governance in the region, especially on the project, and governance of the projects was not sufficient. International community is always, of course, asking of speed of reforms. When you don't have the stable political situation in a country, it's not easy to have a speed, the right speed in terms of reforms. We are supposed to have now a more stable situation, but it's not true 100%. We have a kind of natural association today in terms of power, political power, and, of course, this generates time-to-time some problems. But there is also the number of laws that are coming to the parliament. A parliament that, and you mentioned that in your report, parliament that has to put the right tools to have more means to accelerate, to be able to study correctly all the laws. But also, we need not to forget that we haven't finished building what we agreed on in the constitution. Especially, we haven't, we have just this year voted the constitutional court law, the justice council law. We are going to vote the decentralization law. We are going to have elections in the municipalities. This has an impact, of course, on what's going on in the parliament and the political map. And if in the same time, we need to have the PPP law, we need to have the investment code law, we need to have the banking law, we need to have the central bank law, we need to have the bankruptcy law, et cetera, I'm going so fast in the US between the Congress and the government. So, we have to have in mind, of course, we need to reform, of course, we need to have the right speed, et cetera. But we need also the international community to consider that it's a new democracy. We want to go as fast as possible, we will go as fast as possible, but you need to understand that there is also reality and there is a political life that is under building in Tunisia. And we hope that will be successful because really, there is one thing that we cannot, I'm quite confident on it in Tunisia. We had a revolution for freedom and we had a revolution for prosperity and dignity, like you said in the report. Freedom, now, we cannot feel that Tunisia can go back on that. The question is that how to put really the boat on the right road in terms of enhancement of the social situation within the country? That's, of course, our responsibility first. We need to accelerate, we need to reassure, and for that we need your support and all what you propose in terms of governance and how we can handle this relationship between the international community and the executive power in Tunisia and the parliamentary power in Tunisia. And even the civil society is quite good because it's been proven on the security side. I think that's a very good idea to have a pragmatic, fast-track process of delivery in the five coming years. We hope that we encourage even more that on the 25th of April when you'll be in Tunisia and see how we can put that in practice afterwards. Thank you very much. Minister Brahim has to leave at 10, and so in that vein, I'm going to forfeit my right to ask questions and go directly to the audience. If you maybe can, let's entertain three questions at a time. Please make it short and identify yourself. So please. Mohammad Shinna from the Voice of America. The United States has been a staunch supporter of the Tunisian Revolution. What are you expecting to get in terms of assistance from the United States? Okay. Yes, sir. Alright. Jeff Picard from USAID. Minister, you mentioned decentralization as a key component, and it seems like your ministry and the ministry for local affairs are probably the two most important ministries in this approach. What is your thought in terms of the five-year plan and teed up with that in terms of ensuring transparency and accountability for development projects as they move out to the interior? Okay. Other questions? Yes, please. Ali Kamil from Creative Associates. I haven't seen like a pillar for youths while you're saying there is a 60% or more and the unemployment is very high as well as the mismatch between skills in the labor market. Maybe we can start with this. Yeah. Okay. Concerning the United States, in fact, the United States, well, has supported Tunisia during the last years in several ways. Of course, we enhanced the amounts of concrete financial support in some projects, and especially the grant support for Tunisia, but also the guarantee given by the United States as a state for the issues that we had in the capital market globally. And of course, the United States is one of the most important shareholders of the multilateral organization, which is the World Bank, the IMF. And as you know, we had several programs, one program with the IMF, but several programs with the World Bank during the last year. So we had the support from the United States. I still have good support from the United States, of course. What I would, is it enough? Never enough. And the unique point that maybe we haven't succeeded in the last period of time to to reach with the United States, because the United States had to discuss several important trade agreements with all the other regions in the world, is this question of the FDA. So Mr. Moshe knows about it. He's done it for his country a few years ago. It's, of course, Tunisia is a small country. We won't have any risk for the U.S. market about Tunisian products, of course, but we are starting to have troubles about, especially in the textiles industry, about it, in fact, not having an access to the U.S. market as a free market for Tunisian products, especially when we have people that are ordering from the Tunisian companies. In fact, for global world is a problem. It's starting to be a serious problem. And the other way around, when we have American companies that will sell in Tunisia, it's not very large market. So we are seeing people in Tunisian side that it's not important. The FDA, if we start to discuss about it, that's also signal for American investors to come to Tunisia. It's important that for any country that make any FDA with the U.S., it means that really we have the environment that is sufficiently open and competitive to the U.S. investors. And then for this idea of using Tunisia as a hub for the regions, having really an FDA for Tunisia with the U.S. is important, especially also when we have some competitors in the region that have the FDA and we don't. So that's, I think, one of the access in terms of potential enhancement of the relationship in the future, in the short future, I hope, with the U.S.A. We, in terms of transparency and compatibility, of course, when I spoke about the governance, the first pillar of the governance, that's what I mean. In fact, one of the problems that we have with the lack of confidence between the citizens and, let's say, the administration globally, consult that topic. And the main of the social movement that we had in the last, let's say, even two years or three years were mainly about when the public sector has to employ. And we don't have transparency of the process, in fact, because for any position, you have always 20, 30 times requests compared to what we offer. And then the transparency is not there. But the problem now is that we need to use technology as well for that. And we have started to use technology more and more for that because the people in charge are feeling about it. And we have even investors that sometimes in some regions, they don't call for recruitment because they are freeing about the number of people that will come for the position and how they will create unhappiness at the end compared to what they are proposing. So really, we need to use more and more technology to have transparency and to be completely, completely accurate on that process. So we are in the government, we have a project of Pop and Garb, of course, and we have the Minister of Finance, we'll assist with the Under Secretary Novelli today, talking about what we are doing in that area. We're doing a lot and we do have, of course, and we are aiming to do even more and more. And ICT is one, technology will be one of the access to really enhance those processes. Of course, there is not a pillar for the youth because the youth are everywhere. In fact, all what you are doing is for them. When we are talking about enhancing the value added in the economy, that means that we want to bring more opportunities to educated people in our economy globally. When we are talking about employability, we need really to have, to push more professional training and not having people in universities in areas that are not committed to what the market is asking for tomorrow. We are bringing more culture and support in the education system to have citizens that are less, more open and less potentially attracted with all what's happening because our openness, of course, we are open completely, but we are open also to the extremist groups as well. And so the idea is really to invest more on the culture and support in the education system to open our young people to all what's happening in the world. When we are talking about decentralization and having several decision-making processes that are close to the people, we have the average age in Tunisia at 31 now. So the opportunity will be for the young people. And our, the best measurement of success of the policy will be the bringing back hope on the future. Because the young people in Tunisia, the youth are conscientious that not everything will be corrected in a few years. But the idea is to see signals that the machine is restarting and there is hope on the future about what's happening in Tunisia. Please. Natalie Panedo, XMLLC, please. Thank you for coming and speaking about the Tunisia and giving more explanation about the situation from inside the country. I have some questions for you. So for the export and import company, which is the best way to start working with Tunisia and if you have any Tunisian government agencies that can assist on it. Thank you. Thank you. Munji Dawidi from the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy. Welcome to DC. My question is looking at the report and the new framework that it's offering for the Tunisia to get out of this economic crisis. How do you envision putting that in action and also talking about your own strategy vis-à-vis the other major political parties and vis-à-vis also the other major political player that's not a political party, which is the UGTT. I mean it has a significant presence in the political life in Tunisia and probably a veto on some of the major initiatives that the government might try to put forward. Okay. Please, Ambassador Kotler. I'd just like to return to the first question and maybe be a little more specific. What is our government, has our government been doing enough, our congressional support and do you have any specific goals for what to expect from us and how can our organizations like Carnegie and others help out? I want to add a question of my own since I think I have the opportunity now. Does Tunisia feel, I mean there is of course a lot of domestic pressure to succeed, but does Tunisia feel a regional pressure to succeed and present an example of a successful transition to democracy not just politically but economically as well. Is there such a pressure within the Tunisian population or are you all focused on making Tunisia succeed internally? Regional, you mean in the Arab world? I mean becoming an example for the Arab world and how to achieve you know peaceful transitions to democracy. So for the trade and all the investment globally in Tunisia and environment, we have a foreign investment promotion agency FIPA that we find on the web of course and of course the embassy here is completely connected to all what our agencies are in charge of that and we can of course explain to you how you could proceed. On the political question, yes of course that's a permanent question of course and the ADA is really, we had a problem with the first party since November, October that won the election of 2014 and improved it partially in fact at least in two hours today and that created really an issue in fact in the country because it's been long and now we are quite desperate to have it back so the ADA is really that created a balance that is different in fact in the parliament especially and we are working on it in fact we are working on it and how to rebalance back because we have a perspective of course of the municipal elections and really to have even if we have a kind of association in the country we still have kind of three political powers in fact now we have the left extreme left with the support of the union at certain stage we have the Islamist of course political party and we have this center in fact modernist that is completely now divided in three or four forces and political forces so the idea is that it's moving there are discussions and there is a consensus globally in the country in fact that we cannot offer today a fight in fact a political fight in front of the challenges that you are facing but in the same time the consensus cannot be a block it has to be a pusher and not a blocker for the development in fact and that's why we need a discussion of course with the union we don't have any problem with globally within the parties that are supporting the government about the program the state etc maybe the problem will be more in the relationship with the union and also we need to discuss about the priorities time to time in terms of reforms and speed of reforms globally so it's not 100 percent perfect but we move we move on the right direction each time we need to do to do it but for the feature to accelerate we need really to have a clear position with the union especially about how to manage the role of the state especially and and to accelerate the use of the PPP projects for example for the the support we think that we have area of of enhancement especially on the security side because security doesn't concern destination that's the region all what's happening in Libya is so important for us and we've been I saw the numbers in the five last years especially in terms of investment we we made arbitrage in 2014 especially and 15 for all the security budgets that we took from the economical infrastructure budget of course in Tunisia so having more support and more means and more ability not just to coordinate but also material and financial in fact support from the United States on the security side is important we are we are going that path and especially with the two or three countries from the G7 under G7 kind of governance together with the security forces in Tunisia and defense forces but I think that there is area for for improvement and enhancement in term of capacity and capabilities and support of of the US Congress on the economical side I guess that we were not far we've been discussing another support in terms of going to the market with the guarantee of the US but it's been it's been scheduled in the end of last year but we need we needed to achieve some goals in terms of reforms that haven't been achieved and now we are discussing again depending on the program of the IMF so we hope that we have an agreement on battery as well to accelerate the support because we are reaching now a debt that is close to 60% especially when you integrate all the also public companies so it's a level that this could become dangerous for Tunisia if the for example the the brand once goes to 60 70 dollars it will be really a problem for us so we need really to to have a less costly debt if you want to to accelerate in fact in term of the review of projects do we have any regional pressure to succeed that's a difficult question we have quite good relationship with our neighbors with Algeria especially on the security side and Algeria wants Tunisia to succeed at least doesn't want Tunisia to become another problem of course but we are coordinating together of course because we have we have I mean the fight against the reason we have of course some issues and the borders and we are really coordinating very well we are also coordinating together with all the regions of just Algeria all the countries Egypt as well about all what's going on in Libya of course with the international community with Europe of course do we have a support from the Gulf countries we do we do it's not it's largely not comparable to to Egypt or Morocco of course we are not we are we are not a kingdom but but for the moment we have the support we have the support in term of multilateral funds and infrastructure financing etc from the some Gulf banking organization maybe we have room for one or two more questions please the gentleman in the back just a one quick question do you have any information on the latest status of tourism in Tunisia are there any bright spots there ambassador ambassador here marwan made a very persuasive case why tunisia is so important if i could flip marwan's question looking back on the past five years what what lessons would you draw from the transition that applicable to those elsewhere in the region who are pushing for and believe in but what's the main main lesson you would draw it would be helpful elsewhere please tourism and for trinity i do and for trinity we it's it's really catastrophic it's in the first quarter which is not normally a quarter of tourism but we are at minus 60 percent already we had the second half of the year at minus 50 percent in term of of course flu and then in term of expenses the the unique country that really people were here is Algeria in fact we have 1.4 million Algerians come into Tunisia in last summer which was encouraging and now we are trying to diversify of course and we have some some countries that are interested today in Tunisia and maybe we'll be here this summer especially russia because russia will have less tourists in turkey in egypt with all what happened of course in 2015 the european in fact pulled it back a lot because we had around 2014 we had around 4.5 million european coming in tunisia and we went down to 2.5 in 2015 and maybe it could be even less in 2016 which is which is impacting of course the directorism industry especially the hotels but also all what is around transport restaurants etc so really in our projection that's why in 2016 we are projecting just 2 percent of growth which will be above the average growth of the five last years of one but five person but that will be really restart so what we what we hope is that we won't have any other big issues in terms of terrorism of course or security and then to have confidence coming back in the beginning of 2017 but we we don't have any large hopes on tourism 2016 for the moment for the for the second question about the the five last years and the lesson that for the country i mean it's quite exceptional in tunisia and depending on the countries because morocco has a specific path that is going i won't command morocco but going i mean there is there is there is election there are elections in morocco this year that are very important to see how things will move in morocco after the municipalities election we are following really closely and especially the political map in fact in morocco it's evolving uh we libya is quite specific now libya we need to consult eight on how to get weapons uh maybe not out but with less impact and to structure a country and to start to have a kind of a state egypt is quite specific so and when you go to the middle east there is so many species in tunisia is that it's coming it came from strong let's say at least civil society then political parties and we had our difficulties we were really not far from i was in the in the 2013 as a head of political party really in in the action the national dialogue success is quite specific so so we have a good chance to succeed we are still fragile because of the non-delivery on the economical and social side and because of the security risk that we still face of course in front of a non-stable uh geostrategic environment globally but we feel that having uh having done all what we have done in the five last year we don't have an internal risk of lack of stability in tunisia where maybe in few other countries the risk is still more important minister brahim thank you very much for a very rich discussion and thank you for helping us launch this very important initiative for us and i hope for you too please join me in thanking minister brahim thank you thank you very much hey good to see you how you doing how's everything all right um i was going to ask you your permission sure uh the deputy secretary wanted to talk a little bit about tape uh huh in his speech when he comes okay i wanted to sort of say how we're investing in outside of tunisia um so all right if we just mentioned louise gave me only where a couple of the projects were yeah but i think i think uh but absolutely you can use anything that from the numbers louise gave me yeah all right thanks well good morning everyone um and welcome to this session on the private sector contribution and role my name is mohammed malouche i'm the board chairman of the tunisian american young professional which is a diaspora organization that has been focusing on increasing economic cooperation and partnerships between tunisia and the united states in particular in terms of education entrepreneurship exports and exchanges so what we're going to do in the next hour and 15 minutes is discuss the role of the private sector and how the private sector can contribute to catalyze the process of reforms in tunisia and how it could contribute to frankly bringing back some hope some optimism in the situation in tunisia we obviously want to be very candid about the difficulties the issues the constraints that exist but we also want to be very positive in terms of you know incremental steps that the private sector can undertake and frankly a leadership role that the private sector ought to take especially in light of some of the very pragmatic organizational operational and policy recommendation that carnegy has made in this report i want to salute the efforts of carnegy this was a tremendous amount of work in the fields you know i've seen the team in action and i can testify that frankly i've rarely seen such an amount of dedication of energy you know frankly of passion you know into into putting together so we ought to take advantage of this momentum and this energy and this dynamic to to try collectively and in particular in terms of the private sector do everything we can to move things forward so i'm happy to introduce our panel and i'm going to start with the senya senyam sadhak who is a director in the governance global practice at the world bank she's in charge of public resource mobilization and management as well as financial management in member countries she's had a long distinguished career at the bank but before joining the bank she was a consultant she was an accountant she worked for arthur anderson in tunisia and you know i'm happy to tell you that samia is the first tunisian woman who has been appointed as a director at the world bank and only the second arab woman in this position so we're very proud of you on my immediate right nasa khidusi is is also a tunisian success story he's the ceo of exabyte who is what is that is the fourth largest isp internet service provider in tunisia he has founded exabyte upon his return from the united states to tunisia he is also a vice president at amsham the tunisian american chamber of commerce in charge of fundraising and he's finally also an angel investor and very involved in grooming and and enhancing the entrepreneurial ecosystem in tunisia so welcome nasa thanks and then bo cutter is the chairman of the tunisian american enterprise fund which is a fund that has been put in place by the u.s government to support the tunisian private sector and sms in particular bo is also the director at the roosevelt institute he was a managing partner at warbur pinkus which is one of the large private equity firm in wall street he was also a managing partner at coopers and librarians and he served in various government roles he ran omb the office of management and budget and he was also a senior economic policy advisor to president quinton so that's our panel and i want to start with some sort of baseline discussion around the reforms and the topic of reforms and the pace of reforms and you know one of the comments that minister brachim has made around sort of the difficulty to reform in tunisia you know there was an expectation after the election of 2014 that you know with a government that's no longer an interim government with a four political parties that are forming that government that's in big terms really agree on the economic policy and the economic reforms that need to be put in place and with a majority in parliament that reforms there was an expectation that reforms will actually you know move quickly unfortunately it's not the case for a variety of reasons and so i wanted to ask our panelists and maybe i'll start with you bo from your perspective as an investor what what is your assessment of the economic landscape today in tunisia and what are the types of measures and the types of actions that you would want to see as an investor to be done let me let me hit three points and it and i and i will not begin largely because mohammed has promised me that i'd get a chance at another point about saying what it is the enterprise fund has is doing and before i even do that the first i wanted to say that an important part of mohammed's resume that he has not mentioned that is he is also on the board of the tunisian-american enterprise fund and he's an extremely valuable member of that board and the second point is i want to congratulate karneke both on the report and on the op-ed page piece that came out today i i have been involved off and on with the report since its inception and i thought the op-ed page piece was really an extremely good summary of it for those millions of people who won't actually read the full report let me make three points the first is that when you look at the tunisian economy from a hard hard-eyed macro perspective it is a low investment economy in comparison to the kinds of investments as a percentage of gdp that economies in roughly the same shape as tunisia by that i mean roughly the same per capita income make in in fact it under invest invest by about 10 of gdp if you then say that in trade terms not in purchasing price parity terms but in trade terms the tunisian economy is about $35 billion that's about 10% of that is three and a half billion dollars a year of investment that's not being made the that's an enormous gap and so point one i won't bore you with more on that although i'm happy to go into more on that point one is that until there's more investment in the tunisian economy and i i mean from internally within tunisia never on earth has foreign direct investment actually solved the country's problems so it's internal to tunisia uh tunisia is going to limp along at one and a half to two percent a year um and that's just the fact point two is that the we invest and therefore i talk most to small and medium enterprise CEOs inside of tunis outside of tunis male and female and most of them feel that what they essentially have to do with respect to the government is placate it so it will leave them alone they they are nowhere near the point of thinking that they're and remember these are these are the these are the proprietors of quite small businesses so maybe the big businesses feel quite differently but the ones i deal with are nowhere near the point of thinking or hoping that the government would actually that over a period of time do a series of productive things for them the third point is one that's mentioned all the time but i where i where i actually think that there is an enormous amount that can be done that that would bridge the political divides and it's the the lack of transparency in the government and i was i was really very pleased to to hear in the in the first session some really quite interesting thoughts about that and about the use of technology in it if i get a chance i'll embroider i'll enlarge on that but i think one of the ways to begin really to catalyze uh investment and reform in the tunisian economy is to make it vastly clearer than it is today on what it is the government actually does and i'll stop certainly the role of the government's uh was something that minister brahim was was talking about and it's it's it's subject to debate in tunisia because there you know a whole range of a variety of opinion on that nasa i would ask you the same sort of question around constraints and around what the private sector in your opinion could do to accelerate the process of reforms your view as an entrepreneur and as a private sector leader first of all i will share a story which give you an idea about the mood in tunisia i had to take a cab a couple of days ago and the the taxi driver was complaining about how life is getting difficult how he has to work 12 to 14 hours a day uh how he started missing the banali's days and before before i i leave the the the car he asked me this one question that kept looping on my mind until now he told me sir if democracy is so good why do we feel so bad so uh so and i will build on that so uh uh there is an immediate reforms that needs to be done and we feel this uh this bad uh uh mood even for the private sector uh a lot of money has been spent but uh i'll give you two points we need quick fast uh quick win reforms i mean the government has been working uh on deep transformations that we will probably see result in in in many years but we're lacking on quick win reforms where uh uh citizen will get the uh we'll see the the the results as soon as possible because we cannot wait uh any more time uh second thing um you mentioned in a nice words the lack of transparency i will call it corruption i mean uh uh uh uh we lost three uh i mean there's um the corruption is is growing in tunisia uh and we created an anti-corruption uh team but we didn't give right tools to this team i mean in my opinion uh there is an immediate need to create uh an uncorruptible elite team composed of police national guards uh people from uh i mean irs we need to train them uh capacity building give them top top uh top technology items to do the job uh we should give them full access to intelligence data bank account irs files they should be under uh uh the they should be independent from any any government entity and just to i'm gonna also share another story with you guys uh it's uh there is an notorious smuggler who's known as banana because he made his fortune smuggling banana from uh between uh uh labia and tunis and between uh algeria and tunis and the ben ali days and this gentleman is a top uh donator for the two parties who's ruling the country today so what kind of signal is being sent to the heart working honest men so what signal is being sent to the to the private sector so uh again i'm thinking loud i mean uh and uh you know the speech of the private sector is not biased so it's it's a harmless direct speech that's what we need absolutely so so we'll talk about corruption in a second but i wanted to rebound on one point that you made and ask the question to samia around capacity building because it sounds like you know a lot of what nasa has said a lot of what minister daheem has said was the difficulties to implement you know whether it's in the parliament level whether it's the administration level sometimes there's funding but no capacity and or willingness to implement things so what is being done in terms of capacity building in tunisia and what ought to be done more what are some of the things that need to be focused on in terms of capacity building enough i'll also ask you about sort of governance and accountability because it's one of the scenes as well that's i think near and dear to your heart thank you mohammed good morning everybody uh congratulations to moa shah and the team for an excellent report i'm very pleased to have this external eye assessing the situation but this morning also feeling very pleased that our views are converging what you have summarized in the book is converging with our assessment of the situation we issued the country diagnostic a couple of months ago and our country's a framework a partnership framework is also ready and under consultation so the we know the issues and this is what is making the next step difficult sometimes you don't know the issue and then you say wonder from where to start but here we have a fair diagnostic and understanding of the situation so we need to act and nasser you said the quick wins yes we need the quick wins it's a it's a mindset it's people they want that people are impatient five years is a lot and the scale of the the humanity is nothing and if you see the big achievements except the big bong they take time and but people are impatient so i saw how to manage that and um you are touching on governance let me tell you uh dr moa shah knows this very well when he was in the bank in 2003 i think we hosted the the bad world dubai hosted the world bank annual meeting and the men are Asian middle eastern north africa produced four flagship reports for that and one of them is on governance it was really the most difficult reports we ever issued i think in the bank nobody was ready to talk about this and right away i think governance you think corruption while it's beyond that so now i'm very happy to see that we talk about governance openly number one number two it's in the pillar and the it says the not strategic of the government is in the pillar of our strategy and it's in the report here so this is already a big step forward now the challenge is how to define governance sometimes also you can play around uh this and governance is extremely complex it touches on everything on in a government at first and uh citizenship uh needs we tried last year as we created the global practice the governance global practice group to try to find a way of explaining it and maybe this will be relevant to the discussion today we thought that governance is the system by which you create your and approve laws and for that two elements it's a citizen centric it should be citizen centric we don't create law for for the law but we created to serve the interest of the citizens and number two this governance should be inclusive and why we are complaining why we had the Arab Spring and the Tunisian when they claimed transparency in fact and dignity is this exclusion they're not treating the different groups in the country uh equally and inclusively so this is the dimension that we are trying so every law is difficult to issue because we need to make sure it's inclusive and fair to everybody i think that while we are saying that we have a long list and minister brahim listed this and who cannot have all this yes done overnight yes i agree but in my view the struggle our advantage in Tunisia is that we don't have the ethnicity that other countries are struggling with because you have four or five religion and you need you don't have a lot of cultural background that is constraining so then the question is where is our common ground and what are our differences let us start where we have agreement because everybody will benefit these are public goods the laws are producer of public goods to benefit all the citizen so let us start these are a little bit the quick wins the biggest challenge in dealing with governance if we treat everything and a to-do list this will take us forever because everything is important in fact but what is more important than what is essential and within that let us define the common ground things that are so obvious that nobody will will um a challenge look if you improve the management of hospital please who will say no who will say no i don't know yes we know we don't want to enter that area yeah you know it if you take and start a reform on the education and people feel you know what the most important thing for any citizen is his kids or the children that are close to him or her so saying that i'm investing on this who will say no so we need also to think about what is the interest of the citizen a little bit what we called now what's for me if we want really to move and build coalition we need to take it from that angle of what's for me what institution that i'm investing on that will benefit the citizen and then for now i'm not seeing this nexus there for now it's all over because everyone is dealing with the sector we need really to have this uh esprit de coq where we think about the common interest and the ground that we need to treat them it doesn't mean that our to do list will not but will be covered all together but really from where to start to create the trust that something is done Muhammad when we were preparing for this i told you are just a rat from Lebanon and it's really uh talking about ideology uh i was really reflecting everybody knows the crisis in Lebanon no president for ever uh no parliament meeting for nobody can count now so the the political tensions are just uh every time i'm impressed i made these things that you you cannot even imagine in your mind then but i arrived to Beirut that i am after seven years i think i haven't been there seven years and everything is working perfectly working including with the refugee issue two million refugees fifty percent of the resident population there and so a new center impressive a new marina you cannot say anything everything is working dinner lunch dinner team dinner on a tuesday we arrived at eight the restaurant was empty i said yes it's tuesday when we left at ten it was full so then i asked my Lebanese colleague saying what do you think maybe we don't need presidents to rule countries because this country is uh working without the president so we laughed about that but what i want to say here is precisely is run by the private sector the country is run by the private sector i met with the central bank and the oversight and i can tell you that the way they are designing this dimension of banking and boosting the economy and financing and supporting the private sector etc is just amazing their country is run by the private sector firing i guess uh let me let me let me turn to uh to nasa and maybe since he took his company from the startup to an sme uh onto the fourth largest isp in the country um you know and maybe he has ambition to run the country as well but you know i i want to really know sort of you know the issue you traversed and sort of how you overcame them and what kind of lessons you drew out of that experience in uh 2015 we had a major issue with labor union and again you know there is no free lunch so the uh the fact that having today democracy came with the empowerment of the labor union we didn't have to deal with this before and frankly the demands coming from the union weren't exact acceptable they first of all they wanted the company to stop paying dividends to shareholders so because they thought that the company should belong to the workers so first idea stop distributing profits and give us 25 percent raise wow and the the raise should be given to everybody that means it's even against the company procedures we have a metric of performances so um and they were asking to give the same raise for the less performer to the to the best performers and you can imagine that the sale union or then our company is composed by the worst performing workers uh then they went into strikes we have 130 employees i had to talk to every single employee that we manage to uh to go through this difficult uh experience and uh the bad thing is we ended firing three peoples and reducing some extra benefits to others and uh we had to do it the hard way but again i don't want to leave uh this story on on with the beds on on a negative way i mean if you do business in france if you do business in italy if you do business in portugal things are even worse so we have a new strong labor union which is uh uh trying to slow down some of the reforms they're against the ppp we believe that the private public partnership is the best way to speed up the rebuilding the transformation in tunisia especially on the icc sector because this the sector you can't think anywhere build anywhere anywhere you can sell anywhere so and the creating a job in this sector is not as expensive as other sectors i knew that there were uh slowing down uh some uh three billions uh projects that were to be done 100 on a ppp basis but again this is the price to pay for having freedom and we'll get to that central question of i think dialogue and trust in a second but i want to give the opportunity to both to also share uh his perspective in terms of again in terms of sort of helping out how how the fund has this philosophy of trying to uh you know build capacity you know build sustainability try to you know focus on best practices so that the ecosystem of investment actually benefits you know how are you doing that before i do that let me do two things the first is say that i i'd almost rather not talk for the rest of the panel and listen to the two of you all it's been fascinating to do it then the second is uh these are the 11 and point to tell you what's been a constant for i think 30 years and polling in the united states everybody in the in the uh cognizanty always say how terrible it is that that congress doesn't do any work when you ask the average america and they think this is a wonderful thing because they feel in general the more work congress does the worse off they are uh i suspect you'd find the same results if you if you pulled that into nature uh let me talk a little bit about it about our what we're doing in our philosophy first i should say that we are an investment organization that's established by the united states government but we're not a grand organization not a foundation uh we're not social workers we're supposed to invest in businesses and help those businesses succeed uh we're going to invest in three broad sectors microfinance because the the bulk of of microfinance money goes to the lowest income people in most countries the second and the for the the bulk of our investment which would i guess be almost two-thirds will will be in small and medium enterprise and then finally that we're going to we're going to join with others in partnership to try to help create an ecosystem for startup for for startups in tunisia uh i say frankly that's a that's tough i'm not personally certain that that's it's possible but we're going to give it give it a try and we're going to invest in the area the our sense is that what we can responsibly do are the following things we can create terms for investment which are appropriate for the small and medium enterprise sector uh and and are not designed because they're convenient to us an awful lot of times in in in countries the terms are terms are investment terms are created that are convenient to the investor and not to the to the investee that's point one point two is that we can see our role as centrally helping the entrepreneurs in whom we invest succeed and we can do that a couple of ways the first is a sort of uh dutch uncle role which is that we are going to try to bring best governance practice at a corporate level not at a not at a national level to the to the companies in which we invest because we'll be on the boards of almost all of those companies so we'll insist on transparency for investors we will we will insist that on regular due diligence and due process in terms of how that in terms of how companies work and we think that redowns both to the success of the companies in which we invest but also more broadly in the business community if if we what we would like is that if we invest in a company that's in a sense a gold star for the company and that for their next rounds of investment for their for their next source of money they can use the fact that we gave them money and we stayed with them that we invested in them not gave them money and we stayed with them as in as in the sense a credential to get money elsewhere and in that way i think we can we can leverage the amount of money that we're given and finally we're going to focus quite directly and spend money and this is something that that a normal investor wouldn't really be able to do on making that company individually better one of the things in that we've tried to do is is institute a hundred day improvement program in every company that we invest in and that's not sort of focused on kind of broad conceptual things it's if you're in a particular if you're running a company that is a particular kind of management process or manufacturing process what specifically do you need what kind of engineering assistance for example would make you double the effectiveness of your manufacturing so we are willing to focus on and spend money on the direct improvement of the companies in which we invest so i think i'll stop there i've used up a lot of time but the but the general point is we are an investment entity we we believe we have to be responsible investors in the sense of that we we invest from the perspective that companies need to learn how to deal with real investors but we also have to be responsible from the perspective that it's an obligation of ours to help those companies succeed thank you bo i wanted to shift a little bit focus and talk about one of the key aspects i think that was brought up in in the in the report this whole question of i think dialogue and trust tunisia has sort of a trademark you know in terms of being a country that now has built a reputation of being a country where dialogue is possible and has actually yielded results you know through compromise through trade-offs there was the national dialogue the Nobel peace price yet on the economic side things seem to be completely different because of various interests various views on sort of economic models you know some some conflictual aspects you know with labor unions that you mentioned so let me let me start maybe with you samia and ask you about you know you talked about lebanon you know in tunisia what are some of the ways to regain trust and rebuild trust between the governments you know the unions the private sector you know you've you've done this in many countries i'm sure how do you you know how do you rebuild the trust yeah so this is a very very difficult question i think is the area where it's very difficult to establish benchmarks for a simple reason it depends a lot on the political economy and in each country in each part of the world is so specific that you need really to think about it and these terms and with the different parameters but one thing that works really and is powerful is again about the concept of transparency and good governance sometimes we do the thing the good thing but we do don't do them well and or do the right thing but not the right way so we do a lot but we don't talk about it so people will not read the mind of the politician or the legislators etc of course i follow the little bit some debates on the tv etc newspaper it's all about confrontation and not about advocacy we need more advocacy for what we are for what we have really this is extremely powerful we should not hesitate to say the things again and again and again one very well known speaker the world bank at his retirement party they told them you are known as being an excellent speaker very influential however i heard you saying exactly the same thing years and years he said yes because it's not the same audience uh so it's like we we declared that we approve the law isn't the journal official then that's it we take it from granted everybody is aware no it's not true and we need to test tell the say it and the telling story we need to reach out to the right level to the all the levels it's very intellectual very sophisticated so nobody is so so no no reaching so when you don't reach out properly it's also a problem of transparency because you know my ignorance and you are exactly telling me things that i don't know then so i cannot even have a debate with you number one number two and telling the stories is also and this advocacy is sometimes telling the benefit of things but sometimes telling the cost of not doing it that guys if you don't do it this is for your kids and the grandchildren and you name it whatnot so let us think about it together so think about the the cost of not doing this or not complying with this so we don't want any more a police state this is a gun we got it so and we discovered that we realized that is not the right thing we need to communicate this is at the everybody can do it so we can help where we have communication specialists and everything that we do now we have any citizen engagement component to make sure that we reach out to the citizen explaining why for example if you take the word bank right after the revolution they said that that audience that oh this is ban Ali who contracted these loans and then ban Ali should pay them back to the bank you know what i'm still laughing but i told my colleagues in the bank this is our fault we did not communicate they don't know the role of the bank they don't know that she needs member of the wood bank we are serving our members and it's not about imposing on them to to drain their resources etc so it's it's communication explaining explaining why you are doing things why things are difficult to do and talking about them is extremely important the other thing that we also learned look there are a lot of things that are intuitive it's very obvious i need the law to anti-corruption who will disagree i need the law on to to on any transformation and on managing the energy on green economy but okay we need analytics we need analytics to explain to convince ourselves that is a priority that i need to put my energy and what are the benefits or the risk associated i know that with all the work that was done we are still very fragmented and we are not pulling it together for example the minister expressed this morning of an important concern very very important one about water guess what in 98 when i joined the bank the first thing i worked on is the water strategy for tunisia 2020 i said 2020 oh my god you know what i feel that so 2020 is tomorrow and you have everything is the most serious study i've ever seen done with the partnership with all the donors etc led by the wood bank and the ministry of water and agriculture and this is 2020 if you do 123 by 2020 you will reach a level of self-sufficiency etc i'm very sad today i'm very sad to hear that you are at the 400 now things would be done from scratch but we have the analytics let us start there there are a lot of studies that were done and were not taken seriously by previous governments let us pull them the knowledge exists is what you do with it that is important and this is our second area when so that if you don't do that you can go all over interesting things but not necessarily meeting your your need and the third the report here and the term washer referred to it i'm happy also that mr brangham also referred to it the partnership for a purpose a partnership for a purpose is beautiful to say we need to partner back for what what we want to achieve together what is the win-win then it should all the donors should coordinate and it should be laid by the guy led by the government it can't be the world bank is the chef the field it's not it's your interest my friend it's your priorities so you need to put it in the middle and make sure that we are not losing solution is there and that is coordinated when it confirms for us the sense of urgency but of ownership that they are essential for us as donors and the partners to tunisia that we can move otherwise you can you can push but at one point you will not be used you don't feel that you are moving and you will stop the movement so these three points are extremely extremely important tunisia had done a lot look the basic is there again is the constitution yesterday i was in the parliamentarian meeting and the everybody is referring to how great is the constitution is not easy yeah is the constitution is the heart is everything of the society but starting from that really let us move but let us move while with and communicating and not the fact that you don't communicate to cultivate the second guessing why he wants to do now the anti-corruption law come on oh it means that he wants to destroy the other party anyone we are human being if you don't explain to me why are doing things i will try to second to second guess your mind and i will waste my energy and create more barriers so communicate communicate say why and be evidence-based remove the fiction and the state factual and remove the fiction all the studies are there we can use them we can update them but they should be evidence-based saying guys this is the reality that we need to face excellent i i want to ask you this sort of the something around what you just said you know it seems you know and and samia i'd like that that a lot of the interaction between private sector states union are around conflict you know there's an ask you know gives me this license or give me more more you know salaries etc how can that dynamic be changed and and sort of be more around constructions and trying to solve the common problem at sort of your level is there a way to engage dialogue around construction rather than sort of you know perpetuating this antagonism mohammed we need to understand where is this trust conflict issue is coming from we grew up in a government where we didn't believe figures and the Winston Churchill said one time the only figure i trust are the one i fake myself so this is the kind so this is a kind of of a government and of we grew up i'm in dealing with that so now how to build this this this trust again i think that the politician oversaw the revolution so and marwen mark and alex you use the disillusion word so it and this is i mean you understood it this is a disillusion okay it's easy i mean if you want to fight corruption do something about it if you want to the corruption is taking 2% GDP growth that's 30 000 jobs that the government can create i mean do something about it if you want to quick wins reforms okay i mean we private sector give you a list of quick win reforms okay do something about it then you have this amazing thing happening in this small part of the world which is you have a massive civil society life that that you can use to be the link between new government and and the people so use it because of the civil society is asking for that and get the civil society and get the private sector involved in your decision we truly believe that the next economy should be a private sector-led economy and the and the government should just be a policymaker i think there's there's no i mean those are the ingredients i mean and again i will jump on what samia said and communicate you need better communication so so let me rebound on exactly that because i think we all agree that there's a need for a certain level of dialogue between everybody civil society private sector state union etc but bow you have government experience you know where where does how do you balance the need for dialogue and the need for swift action for these quick wins let me try something out and i'll i'll start with two learnings of mine one that both of the things i should have always known but i didn't and one has to do with the u.s experience and the second is somewhat more of a tunisian experience and i'll expand on it but for better or for worse the roles that i've played in the public sector have always involved intense negotiations with everybody in sight if you run the u.s budget that's the only thing you do all day is defend yourself and in a very long time ago in one of the first dialogue meetings we called it that that i led with the with elements of the private sector i asked a friend after it was over how the meeting had gone and he was in business and someone i'd known for a long time and he said it was a typical government meeting and i said what do you mean and he said when government says this is the u.s government he said when government says that it wants to have a dialogue with you what it means is we want you to sit and be quiet while we tell you what to do i don't think there are very many governments that are different from that uh the second is why in tunisia it is a little bit more intense thankfully under in u.s law the principle generally is if the law doesn't specifically say you can't do it then you can do it and you can apologize after the fact in tunisia as i have learned the law is exactly the opposite if the if it doesn't say you explicitly can do it and if 20 different bureaucrats from 20 different agencies don't agree with that interpretation then you cannot do it at all uh that cost me a year and a half in tunisia just specifically so how do you get around that and and how do you begin to change the incentives of a of a whole of a whole sector of life which in some respects is what is government i think the first thing you have to understand is that there's still going to be conflict but what you want to do is not move for kind of we're all going to sing together and and and put our arms around each other it's that we're going to fight about constructive things um and i wanted to say i want to build on your comment and your comment in that respect we do have enormous tools now that we never had before in terms of transparency and i think what you want to do is make is have the government understand that it is in its own interest to make things so transparent that it can be criticized at a detailed level which will then give people who function at a detailed level the incentive to escape that criticism by actually doing something and let me give you two examples one has to do with an issue that the Carnegie commission raised in its report and it's public finance and public large public projects and how do you create a how do you create a uh a rapid action kind of facility make it all public put every single public contract and since that's hard let's put the top 100 out so that it's available to every single citizen in Tunisia and let them ask the question why isn't xyz moving fast because then someone has to answer that question but if all if if they don't have the information then all the public can really do is seem to whine and gripe in general but that's not really what they're whining and griping about they're whining about why this particular project done I would try to deal with your water project you couldn't do this in 1998 but today you could you could put the entire study out you could put all the indices out you could put all the numbers out and you'd begin to have citizens ask why isn't my water sufficient the second has to do with an area that I'm somewhat more directly concerned with now is investment it's hard to invest in Tunisia if you're if you're running a small company the general estimate by the Tunisian government is it's 18 months to start a business if you're trying to do it from outside of Tunis you kind of have to give up your life and move it move into Tunis while you talk to 38 different government agencies of one kind or another to be able to start up a business and then on every step along the way you have to in a in a in with a small c sense of the term corruption convince people who ought to be trying to get you to do what you do for free convince them to let you do it and that's where the rule comes at the point comes in a bit if the law doesn't say you can do it then then you can't do it I would I'd like to see and then this is one where we've talked about it is that we're willing to finance I'd like to see a real ease of doing business index for Tunisia one that is based on the actual facts of Tunisia and I want to hear congratulate the World Bank as the World Bank started this the ease of doing business indices a while ago and they are wonderful but they aren't great for really small countries because the World Bank doesn't have the staff to go way down into the details and build them specifically for those countries so we're willing to put up some money to do that for Tunisia we've begun to talk with the Mediterranean School of Business to have because we're not statisticians we're not survey experts but we can find people who are but and then make it all public make make everything public about why is it so hard to do big to do business in Tunisia so the I conclude therefore by saying that if you want to create the kind of pressure on a government that's useful is make as much public as you possibly can make give up the argument you're you're worried that gee we might make too too much public the public the public might know too much give that up and start putting making things very very available and people generally being intelligent will then start asking really useful questions definitely full and open transparency I want to ask one quick question to either one of you specifically around sort of the mechanism that was supposed to establish this partnership between public and private entity this PPP law that's much awaited that finally was passed in parliament but still is not doesn't seem to be that actionable why is that why why is it not that actionable why are people not sort of trying to leverage you know and I'll ask you from a private sector and perhaps more from a an IFI standpoint ladies first no go ahead you give me time to think because we we need to hear from the ground I wanted from the World Bank perspective because that's a tricky question very tricky okay I know that there is a law of resistance coming from the the left wind because they think when there is a lack of transparency that it's gonna open doors to corruption okay that's one second we're one of one of the hexabyte is also we build tablets and we're trying to distribute two million tablets to the education and the transform the way people learn and of course the only way to do that is PPP so and we had to explain this to the to the to the union because under some people from the parliament the left wing and again this is a very complex issue now because you have a law and you have a government willing to start working you have the private sector willing to start working but there is fear from the government official to sign or to take any decision because they know that in a probably couple of years they won't be in the government any more and they're afraid to be accountable for that in a couple of years very interesting I have to hear this perspective I'm not judging and if there is a concern expressed by any party in the country we need to address it not to deny it if it isn't there is in my view coming from a misunderstanding or a lack of trust or this second guessing that I refer to so we need to understand based on what they are making this statement and what are the risks that they are trying to manage or to avoid and addressed from that part I don't think that approaching the way that this we have I have a law I'm right you are wrong or will will resolve this I think that we need to understand the tension here PPP of course is very complex operation I'll talk about in a second but in a way is a government giving up something that is a public sector service delivery to a private sector to achieve it and this is where the word is heading the role of the government according to a little bit our definition first of all is to ensure the security of people and the rule of law then for me as a citizen I need to make sure that when I am in a place I'm safe and there is enough security and my rights are protected in case someone is touching on them I know that there is a way of giving me back so this is a normal definition that people accept and expect from a government if this is the role of the government then we will have the list of the thing that the government should not do doesn't have a comparative advantage it's very expensive for a government and here again I go back to the analytics in my view today the situation is such that no private sector will come with the big tickets to say because it's very very difficult to invest and put your money with your hand on your heart and say this is the saving of my children I will put it very difficult to understand that and the other hand the government is rushing to it creating a kind of mistrust coming then I'm giving up let the private sector deal I'm giving up it's not the giving up is as you mentioned is in charge of the policies and when the policies are clear then it's not it's the right thing to do is to give it to the private sector it's known it's understood that private sector is more efficient but the government should explain that by doing this we gain an efficiency with great jobs and then I would play my role as a government because I need to monitor I need to oversee all this work I need to ensure your security I need to ensure the rule of law if we don't put it as a win-win nobody will accept it why should I change I used to go to the hospital and this public I give my my card and I enter now as I need to go through the private sector and all this is a change a cultural change as well that should be banished and that and I need to trust then here Nasser also maybe the private sector should contribute to build the trust and that that the private sector is trustworthy to take strategic sector and charge the private sector is trustworthy to deliver on public sector look people you don't touch them on health and education you know this is critical water electricity these are extremely important despite the mistrust they trust the systems of the government it used to work the government used to give me electricity you don't propose anything else to me because I don't know already I have a lot of unknowns you will add to me that my electricity will come from someone who will sell me a card you see how it is difficult so then the labor union represents the people and we need to listen to their concerns we need also to engage with the group citizen a little bit of survey saying what do you think what do you know what you don't know etc and try to engage this citizen engagement is extremely important and here really is a plea for the private sector if you will lead the country one day and we'll work for it and you'll be there but really is this effort of engaging with the citizen as well who are your customers in the future and show that the private sector is here to save the country create this power structure give it a little bit of way to support to the government action and it will be win-win look I always in this partnership I refer to the example of Singapore that you all know about but think a little bit on the details how they are doing it you can enter any website anything that you will see it's a strong public private partnership very very strong one it's admirable it's it's not love it's respect win-win work together there is no way that we don't want that we don't work together and it's really working very well because everything is done as my background I'm an accountant and auditor and it's very very independent kind of private touch of this then you know what for us if the government is has stay away from me you affect my independence because I'm the one who will issue an opinion on the finance and and of course the trend changed after the end run and all this and the other side but I stay this stayed in my mind a lot and I was really admiring how that it operates in Singapore and the professions that I know very well and how it is effective because of the win-win and the mutual trust and we know the boundaries and the roles and they complement each other there is no interference what we fear and this partnership is someone has more power than the other and at what point of the journey will take over this is what we fear and if it is the boundaries are clear the law is quite protective for both I'm willing to put my money that you are I'm willing also to open my doors then you oversee that I'm delivering on your strategic roles as a service to the public as you agree this is that equation that should be put that we need to engage it's not easy it's a new area that is in there to finish PPP is beautiful we support them we have a global practice in charge of that they take the big tickets and the one that are important they take a lot of time it's not a couple of months is exactly like any of our operation is a cycle that we want to keep around one year but the real big one is it's a big time because there are a lot of elements to put in place and make sure it works so thank you Samia I want to leave a little bit of time for questions from all of you but before that just want to get sort of the panel's sentiment about international support in general and this proposed Tunisia led framework for partnerships that Carnegie has put together that calls for more cross-ministry collaboration for sort of unique vis-à-vis to the international donor community for more private sector involvement and boom maybe maybe I'll start with you because you wrote a piece in the Washington Post calling for more support from the US administration from the G7 how do you feel about this framework and how can it be built upon let me go back to another sort of experience of mine that's really related more to the US government I ran the National Economic Council for President Clinton in this first term and as such oversaw four group of seven at the time it was a group of eight meetings and we very early tried we didn't always succeed to think of them strategically and there is a there is a strategic sequence that Tunisia can think of it's the group of seven meeting that's in Japan this this year in May I think then there's the United Nations General Assembly the UNGA in September in New York and then there is a major investment conference in Tunisia in October I think let's think of that as a as a package the process of creating the agenda for the G7 is way way and it has been has been working for now for months and months the G7 meeting members name Sherpas and the Sherpas meet beginning a couple of years before before a particular G7 even though they're held every year to work out the agenda so it's not as if it's a blank sheet now but given the importance and and I think the op-ed page piece made a nice made a good point about while we're focusing on the crises perhaps it would be useful if we focused on some of the opportunities we'd be in the world and I think that would be the way I would present it to the G7 and I think what you want out of the G7 you can't you you can't take over the agenda then it's gonna happen but but what what you would like I think is a clear mention of the substance of this report uh and and of maybe one particular piece of it and I liked the partnership and fast track mechanisms but whatever they are then you would like to make a point of those being themes in the younger meetings when and in Tunisia's participation in the younger meetings because the the only way to begin to get issues on an on an on an international agenda is repetition and there is the point you made and if then that could be carried through into the investment conference in October where these points and maybe you would add in the the the ppp kind of point could then again be could again be asserted you could begin to develop a sort of groundswell that these kinds of issues have to be dealt with but if you just do it one at a time thing in which somebody goes and gives a speech nothing's gonna happen so you have to think of it over a year that's easy 101 yeah that's it you know we'll be criticizing the the government but we also need to to share the fact that the partners needs to turn commitment into actions you know that we've been promised 40 billion in Dove hills we didn't get those 40 billions I believe that too many financial aid is bad financial aid so we're we're we're not we're not begging for money I mean we're not so and Tunisia needs some some some finance but it's not that big I'm not good with numbers probably same yeah so some of this money will pay for the social invoice so we had a social invoice that has to be paid this is the cost this is what I call the cost of the revolution and it has nothing to do with how good is the government dealing with money this is an extra cost that we cannot pay back especially within the crisis in Libya the economy slowing down in Europe so we need help in that part then when it comes to the money going to the development I will jump on what Ronald Reagan say trust but verify and one of the mechanism we brainstorm with Alex when he was in Tunisia is to put in place a multi-stakeholder group that will be in charge of seeing if the money is being spent the right way or not so it will send a good sign for Tunisia partners and also for Tunisia friends sir you said what the US can do for Tunisia you asked minister Yesin and immediately review the GSPs I mean there is a you know we had an extra production of olive oil that needs to sell and we have a very active textile sector and we have a Tunisian diaspora living here that is willing to come back and invest in Tunisia and create about 20 000 jobs immediately if they have a chance on GSP and probably I mean for the next government we will have to put the FTA on the table again especially we have competitors within the same region that has the FTA I mean I just said just to correct the point because I very much agree with the slant of these remarks when I was talking about a strategic view I didn't mean to imply that that is Tunisia's only Tunisia's responsibility the United States government bears has stated a particular focus and a particular value of a partnership with Tunisia it needs to be clear about that too so the if one's going to think about the group of seven meeting and the UNGA meeting and then another the US government has to be consistent in terms of how to purchase those also and I think it could be also part of the agenda of the joint economic commission that's going to be held in May 6 all of these the measures that you know we're talked about so I'll give you the the last word about you know support and aid the president of the World Bank was in Tunis a few a few weeks ago or a few days ago yeah two weeks ago and has talked about supporting Tunisia how does it align with this framework that Carnegie has recommended now look the Tunisia case while we see some asymmetry and while describing what is going on and the kind of contradiction or perceived contradiction everybody believes of Tunisia I like the word promises promise yes it gives us a hope in the future everybody believes on the potential of Tunisia and this really extraordinary is something that it's not easy to get it's not because we do it for for nothing because a reason strategic vision as well and I've seen firsthand in the bank people fighting really fighting to increase the Tunisia lending amount saying that this is the opportunity and so all what they have said and at the highest level and it's not from Tunisia you know people on the bank so and so this is admirable I asked even a VP who was fighting well I said why are you doing it it's not your region why you are doing it he said look what Tunisia did is rare in the human history and the people of Tunisia had the courage and if we if we send the signal that if you are vocal and raise your voice you are punished then nobody will do and this is really a very important cause very close to my heart so I saw him fighting for Tunisia like if he were Tunisian or for his region so he didn't have any interest that that is very very important then this is for the human right in general this is the ultimate cause if someone is vocal and is punished voila will the other will have the lesson from it and number two Tunisia had always been has shown resilience then people can believe because nobody would like to associate himself or herself with failure so then Tunisians were showing over time that they are slow but really they create success they are reliable they are resilient and then people would like to bet on them because in the past they produced good results if supported now this time when I want to make a try and really out of it in fact for me if I think about it I want to say we need to put Tunisia at work we need to work that's it stop terminus five years now we need to work but for that we need really to use powerful massages powerful numbers to put people two elements of it we need to recognize that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere is a word that I'm saying it's not for me so as you guess is the from Martin Luther King and anywhere in any place if you have an injustice it's a threat to justice everywhere and the favor is a in Tunisia will go to Tunisia's capital yes it affected the whole world will be affected by injustice so we better all together as community of donors as a community of thinker and the word to help addressing injustice because it will threaten us and our kids and our children and number two and and putting that Tunisia should also try to come back to a normal speed and doing things and it's finding the common ground that I refer to but this is will not happen if someone doesn't give you cannot receive without giving it's a human being and we need really to show and now the government should also give for that the government should change very simple thing is it's a tweak in the thinking rather than talking about budget and 35 billion and you name it you can analyze and all the way talk about revenues what are our revenues what we can produce is very simple what we can do every citizen any households start by saying what are my revenues what I can do I can buy a car or I can buy a sofa I can buy food I don't care so then let us think about revenue it's a little shift that will make everybody number one we can increase our revenues it's psychologically a better drive than reduce your expenses even about us as people really it's difficult then at the scale and showing our gap then we need to plan little by little at the household we plan this year I will buy a car next year I will do a trip I cannot do both in one year so it's it's acceptable so how to create this shift and we are working on our country financing strategy on this dimension of revenue thank you Samia so just a few minutes for questions yeah I've been kind of assisting the project and with research I was wondering in terms of your example about Lebanon you mentioned that things work and you you kind of have this very optimistic view of what happens when the private sector leads a service provision I was wondering about when it comes to voice certain communities when the private sector is produce providing certain services cannot are often left out of service provision because the private sector's vision is one of the profit generally and while you mentioned that there should be government oversight and policy I was wondering how you see for example in Lebanon right now the waste management system trash is a big issue there and that is something that is not being dealt with properly by the private sector how do you see marginalized communities in Tunisia in the northwest or in the interior regions dealing with that issue given that they don't have the voice the capabilities to express demand in the same way as wealthier regions can thank you very good question I am a louche for a bank and Tunisian member founding members of the Tunisian American I have a question to Nasser since you are the representative of the private sector today so we we heard about the resistance of the labor union for some reason what about the role of the private sector as a champion of preforms haven't we don't really hear them loud and clear that they want some forms and I would even ask whether there is an appetite from the private sector for more competition these structural reforms would bring winners so would increase the price for everyone so how would you what's your view since I understand you have a newcomer in the private sector by the Tunisia on the role of the private sector as a champion of preforms starting the negotiation of the different comprehensive FJ with the EU there are a lot of people pricing that before compared to private sectors so you have opportunities all right we're just going to take literally one minute to answer each one of the question because we're running out of time unfortunately so Nasser if you want to start I mean when it comes to reform I mean we're pushing for reforms but I'll give you a picture so you will understand you have a private sector living in 2016 dealing with an administration which living in the 1990 working with the procedure from the 70s so we're pushing for reforms hard we're pushing for them it's not that easy one minute as well the one minute answer look the example of Lebanon I'm not saying that it's an admirable case from a governance point of view what I was saying about that is that the private sector can play a major role that's that is working but it has it doesn't mean that the government should give up his role what we have in Lebanon is that and precisely when you give to the private sector the current affairs etc you can focus on these policies you can see the rights there is no accountability without voice and this is why I refer to inclusive governance governance only doesn't resolve the issues it should be an inclusive governance and the way you issue the laws and policies that are inclusive and takes into account the different dimension but if you are the legislator and do the things you will judge yourself be the legislator and let other people do things then you will oversee them and tell them no no it was not our agreement address it well I want to thank all of our speakers for their insights and you know the hard part starts now because everybody has a leadership role in this not only government private sector civil society and I hope that Carnegie is going to continue this effort because this is an effort that really needs to be built upon there's a dynamic and a potential here that needs to be built upon so thank you all thanks let's meet in Tunis okay we'll meet in Tunis thank you please remain in your seats deputy secretary blinkin will come and speak in just a moment this is how we love to have you launched in our you name it great I really I'd very much by the way are morning again everyone let me first thank minister brahim for his eloquent and thoughtful presentation this morning to get us kicked off and also for our panelists from the private sector for an equally thoughtful set of remarks and now I'm delighted to welcome our second keynote speaker my friend and former colleague the deputy secretary of state Tony blinkin I have to say that retiring from the state department after 33 years of diplomatic service was not easy for me but handing over the reins of the office of the deputy secretary to Tony blinkin was pretty effortless in washington's often cynical culture you usually want your successors to make you look good that was never in the cards with Tony one of the most gifted diplomats and public servants there is and one of the most decent people you will ever meet in this often jaded town there's a great deal to admire about Tony besides his distinguished resume and 10 000 followers on twitter for example he continues to wear his new york yankees hat despite secretary Kerry's well-known allegiance to the Boston Red Sox so he's clearly a man of integrity however questionable his taste in sports teams but he is also someone who is able to focus not only on the crises of today but on the opportunities of tomorrow Tony has led the department's innovation agenda and he has championed countries like tunisia places that can often get lost in the storm and stress of washington policymaking but which remain as all of you know very well very important and which requires sustained attention by senior american policymakers Tony was in tunisia one year ago this week and has remained deeply engaged in diplomatic efforts to secure tunisia's transition he has also played a critical role over many years in broader u.s policy in this deeply complicated part of the world he has a deep sense of what's possible in a deep sense of how to achieve it we are deeply fortunate that he's taken the time to join us and i hope you'll join me in giving him a very warm welcome thank you well good morning and thank you all very very much minister brahames wonderful to see you be with you today ambassador guya my friend minister masher also very good to see you again and so many friends and colleagues who are here it's a great privilege to join you this morning let me though before i get started just quickly return the favor i we have a big problem which is that bill and i have a mutual admiration society going and it's convening today once again briefly but let me just let me just say this there is a a tendency in global affairs today to prioritize the urgent over the important to judge by the tweet rather than the fact to question the value of embassies even in an age where social media makes everyone a diplomat and in this world where things are moving so quickly and so fast and so much information coming at you there are just a few individuals really just a very few whose character whose composure and whose caliber embody the very mission of diplomacy and whose record of leadership remind us of diplomacy's tremendous relevance to everything we're doing today and in my experience bill burns embodies exactly that he is one of those very very few people um i have a little post-it note um on my desk that i inherited from bill um that reads uh wwbd uh what would bill do i refer to it all too frequently um and i suppose if um bill have to go anywhere after state um we're particularly grateful that he's here at Carnegie uh where he's continued to eliminate the path forward on the most critical issues of our day and what brings us together today is exactly that one of those issues thanks to bill's leadership um so bill to you and the entire uh Carnegie team thank you for shaping this conversation today for bringing so many people together around what is a critical issue uh your tireless engagement with the government of tinesia with tinesian civil society with the international community has shed light on the challenges ahead the milestones that we have to reach and the importance of working together to help tinesia achieve those goals uh 217 years ago uh america fresh from independence sent its first ever console across the atlantic to negotiate peace and secure trade with the bay of tunas uh 151 years ago a magnificent portrait of the bay was given to the united states as a kind gesture in a trying time and it now hangs with great appreciation in in our state department and last year last may president obama welcomed president sbsi to the oval office and hosted the first ever meeting between a u.s president and a democratically elected tinesian president across this long arc of history both of our nations have experienced times of great struggle and setback as we have pursued forever forward societies that reflect our principles and that actually live our values here in the united states we're reminded every day that our own journey is far from complete in tinesia against the greatest of headwinds people are proving that no one no single country no single culture no single faith has a monopoly on the ideals of democracy across the political spectrum secularists and islamists left and right have come together in common purpose that shows how democratic transitions while incredibly difficult and succeed through courageous leadership and national consensus um in just a few short years the tinesian people have negotiated a peaceful transfer of power from a transitional government to a democratically elected coalition government they drafted a new inclusive constitution that protects freedom of assembly freedom of the press freedom of religion upholds human rights guarantees equality for men and women they cast ballots in a free and fair election choosing from more than 100 political parties we've got just two of them i can only thank a hundred challenging they've created space for civil society to flourish for the second year in a row freedom house has categorized tinesia as free the first arab country to be recognized in this way last year when the nobel committee awarded a coalition of tinesian human rights defenders lawyers business owners labor leaders in the highest price for peace it was in recognition of the tremendous commitment of the tinesian people to chisel the fragile foundations of democratic governance out of the rubble of dictatorship and revolution so i say all this because it's easy and understandable and we'll come to it to get fixated and focused on the challenges the shortcomings the deficits they're real they're deep they're difficult and again we'll talk about them but it is so important to level set to and put into perspective what has been achieved what tinesians have achieved in the most difficult circumstances imaginable and it has not been easy um and at times the forces of opposition opposition to progress opposition to freedom they have grown perilously strong political leaders were assassinated during the transition putting at risk the very change for which the tinesian people had marched in the streets violent extremists too have tried everything they can to prevent tinesia's democratic experiment from succeeding um last year as bill mentioned i was in tinesia and i visited the uh national bardo museum uh to pay tribute to those tinesians and foreigners who lost their lives in that horrific attack an attack that struck at tinesia's very history and soul but actually even more broadly in a sense at civilization i'm in the contrast those of you who are tinesian friends of course know this so well but to those of you who've had a chance to visit this is one of the most extraordinary museums in the world i have rarely been as overwhelmed uh at the sheer magnificence of what was there um as in visiting the bardo but when you contrast it with the horror of what took place there and at the time that i went the the bullet holes were still there in fact the director of the museum who was kind enough to give us um a tour actually walked us through the very trajectory that the terrorists had taken uh that day and the contrast between the extraordinary beauty of the place and the civilization that it represented and what had happened on that day couldn't have been stronger but it was still there still standing and people were there still coming and that's what's so important but this evil uh at the heart of the attack on bardo ensues unfortunately tragically thereafter um in beggerdan just this past march have raised this vector of violence that has torn apart other countries in the region but as of now i think it is fair to say and safe to say that the terrorists and the recidivists have failed their savagery has only hardened teneza's resolve to meet the ideology of terror with a commitment to the rule of law so as i said earlier the challenges facing teneza are as great as any young democracy must face challenges of fully eradicating corruption engaging marginalized populations in its interior regions reducing the weight of bureaucracy getting people especially young people into productive jobs and translating reform into tangible results for all people and unless these challenges are met it's true that the hope and promise of this extraordinary democratic transition is at risk it's at risk of withering it's at risk of losing a unique opportunity that tenezians have right now to chart a much brighter future i think what carnegie has done today bill um is to put forward what is an ambitious plan to confront the challenges directly and at the heart of its proposal is a message that could not be more important the need for the international community and the tenezian government and people to tackle these challenges together both sides have to deliver if we're going to succeed as teneza's leaders strengthen their commitment to reform we need to continue to bolster their efforts helping to fill vital needs provide critical know-how and also help cushion the near-term pain of change because we know that the decisions that are being made by political leaders are difficult they're hard and they sometimes require um real risk up front they sometimes require what seems to be a step back in being able to deliver for people before you can take a leap forward and that is hard hard hard to do so we're determined to match teneza's commitment with our own commitment deepening the political economic and security support it needs to try to make the most of this moment first we are committed to help tenezians consolidate their democratic gains as the greatest bowlers of long-term growth and stability and an important counterpoint to those who believe that islam is somehow incompatible with democracy in rapid order teneza has worked to improve accountability among security services combat corruption hold the first ever municipal elections we've invested in these efforts to reform the security and justice systems providing safe and effective crowd control training helping create a prison classification system to properly identify high-risk offenders inmates with special needs and also low-risk offenders who can be referred to community correction programs uh just this past february february second the teneza parliament approved amendments to the code of criminal procedure that strengthen detainee rights the new provisions grant suspects the right to a lawyer from the very first moment of detention they shorten the maximum time someone can spend in detention without being charged and they invalidate court proceedings at the code of criminal procedure is breached reform addresses in part at least concerns about allegations of torture and other mistreatment by the police and of course what's always critical is the implementation and we'll be looking to that and teneza will be looking to that but the legal framework is there and that's what's so important at the same time we've helped teneza's parliament and parties institutionalized the democratic practices that the nation's leaders have started um including things like helping members of parliament parliamentary groups and commissions develop ways to actually solicit input from citizens document and track citizen requests prioritize issues to be debated and addressed through legislation because after all they're there as representatives of the people and their job just as it is here for our legislators and for folks in government is to try and address the concerns of the people and they need to know them they need to be responsive to them uh and they need to act on them on march 11 the teneza parliament passed by 123 to nothing a landmark bill requiring public institutions to publish on their websites reports of oversight bodies a full budget broken down by regions and municipalities information concerning public services and contracts this transparency in government is critical to the credibility of governance to creating confidence of the citizenry in its elected representatives and the executive branch these reform efforts have not only been called for by donors and implemented by government officials they have been demanded by teneza society itself carrying forward their nation's history of a rich and vibrant civil society teneza's are reclaiming space once denied them to actively participate in their nation's economic and political life in both 2011 and 2014 more than 3000 trained and certified teneza election observers found out across the country send real-time reports and show skeptics what an open free and fair and competitive election in an arab country looks like more recently new civil society organizations have formed to prevent the spread of violent extremism to stop the recruitment the radicalization the mobilization of young people as agents of terror but there's real movement in this area and we're working to support it second we're helping to deliver on the promises of the revolution by improving the daily lives of teneza the pressure on teneza's young democracy to meet the economic expectations of its citizens and move the economy forward is simply extraordinary especially given all that we know about the link between jobs and security over a third of teneza's are under the age of 25 and teneza's between the ages of 15 and 30 comprise only one third the labor force but three quarters of the unemployed the outlook for employment remains challenging but we're focused on trying to help this cohort emerge as an engine for progress rather than become a recruitment pool for violent extremism there is of course no grievance so bitter no disadvantage so deep that it ever justifies terrorism but unemployment marginalization hopelessness can sow the seeds of radicalization justice education opportunity and good governance can form the roots of sustainable inclusive prosperity we have to address these environmental issues that put communities and people more at risk of going the wrong way and conversely addressing them actually strengthening these roots and making it less likely that countries move in the wrong direction with our technical assistance and support teneza's leaders are enacting tough economic reforms and working to create an environment in which business can thrive and i've had the opportunity to talk to the minister about this in the past there is a very strong reform agenda but again i want to emphasize we know how difficult it is and inherently these are challenging political decisions and it is very difficult in any political system including our own to recognize and act on the need for short-term pain in order to get longer-term gain but that is the challenge before teneza late last year parliament adopted the competition and prices law to reduce barriers to investment while closing some of the loopholes that allowed companies to use political influence to secure a monopoly or fix prices and the new public private partnership law will allow for quicker and greater mobilization of capital into public projects especially for badly needed infrastructure we've extended almost one billion dollars in loan guarantees to help the government gain affordable financing and with 60 million in seed funding from the united states the teneza american enterprise fund is ramping up its own investments in small businesses like an it firm sus the textile company in manduva a ceramic shop in nabul these small and medium-sized enterprises are truly engines for growth and employment and we have a very strong incentive in helping to create an environment and give them the initial resources they need to try to take off but we know it's not enough to help establish business growth we also want young people to start them we want to help teneza foster an innovation ecosystem that allows new ventures to flourish and entrepreneurs to fail and try again on the road to success parenthetically it's one of the most interesting cultural challenges that we see around the world one of the things that people look to the united states for is this entrepreneurial and innovative capacity and one of the hallmarks of that capacity is all of you know is actually a willingness to fail and indeed if you're successful and you haven't failed once people look at you a little suspiciously but we have a system that allows for people to fail and not be out of the game bankruptcy for example is absolutely critical so there's a a series of laws that need to be taken into account to create a system and with people can take risks and not literally worry about losing their shirt or the roof over their head and at the same time there's a cultural dynamic to this that's so important in getting people to recognize that it's okay to fail that that may be the road ultimately to succeeding so we've helped the government make it easier for new businesses to register and access financing we've expanded our exchange program for students and increased our support for entrepreneurs the thomas jefferson scholarship program the full bright teneza tech scholars through those programs nearly 500 tenezians that qualified to study universities and community colleges across the united states through usa id we're training the next generation of students youth with the skills they need in math and science and engineering to compete in a high-tech marketplace but for growth to stick for employment to actually come down teneza has to continue pursuing and implementing significant reforms including revisions to its investment code banking sector and tax and customs administration all of which if done and completed successfully will in fact attract more investment and facilitate entrepreneurship and job growth third and in parallel with our political and economic partnerships we are deepening the security partnership and cooperation in a way that protects our citizens and strengthens teneza's capability to defeat those who threaten its freedom and its security this past september teneza joined more than 60 other nations in the global counter isle or counter that dash coalition we're consulting closely about the danger posed by regional instability especially in neighboring libya where a real and effective government of national unity is urgently needed and is now starting to take root our cooperation with teneza has never been more important in this area as we work to stop the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters traveling to and from iraq and syria as well as to libya united states has been working to double our security assistance which has already enabled teneza to acquire badly needed equipment including night vision goggles body armor armored vehicles more important it's provided training to help modernize teneza's police its national guard its military into modern forces that are capable of defeating terrorists while also respecting the rule of law to this end we've helped improve the way their forces engage with communities especially those of the interior in the south and help them develop more effective tools for gathering evidence so the practice of torture is fully excised ultimately nations know that the reflex to meet extremism with extremism only provokes a dangerous spiral of grievance and repression stakes today could not be any higher across the region governments are confronting the very same questions at teneza questions of stability and security of rights and freedoms without always understanding the answer fundamental truth that we recognize and that we grapple with too is that there is no choice between the protection of our citizens and the preservation of our values it can't be either or it must be both over the long term we believe from our own experience but also the experience of other countries around the world that democracy serves as the strongest defense against extremism radicalization precisely because it gives all people the opportunity to express their rights to pursue their ambitions to redress their grievances peacefully in the short term what's required is tremendous patience perseverance and engagement as karnige's report emphasizes we have to do our part to help the tenezian people actually see the dividends of democracy we have to prioritize the coordination of our assistance and ensure that it's delivered to the parts of tenezian society that need it most now the experts say that on average successful transitions from dictatorship to democracy with rule of law they somewhere between 15 and 20 years in the best of circumstances 15 to 20 years in the best of circumstances teneza it's been five years so we need to put our expectations in line with the reality of the difficulty and the duration of these transitions no country can serve as the perfect model for another and of course there are no guarantees but teneza's early experiences against a backdrop of regional chaos and violence keeps us the importance of prioritizing the interests and investing in the human capital of our citizens no organization has been a stronger voice for this message than al-bawasala an organization that i know is well known to pretty much all of you in this room set up in the months after teneza's first parliamentary elections by talented young tenezians it dedicated itself to helping its fellow citizens see inside their political process for the very first time and as a result it feels some ownership for that process and some ownership for the direction of their country in 2013 the french newspaper le monde nicknamed this young transparency team les incolectives the incorruptibles not long ago the organization's founder and president uh miroya yawi explained it this way and i quote my biggest frustration she said is that each time i had to explain why we should vote for independence of the judiciary why we should vote for gender equality each time i never had an example from the region to point to there was no precedent in the region and there's no precedence in any country that looks like us i think what teneza did is that tomorrow a libyan angio or a yemeni angio or a syrian angio point to teneza and say put it in our constitution too that's what they did that is incredibly powerful um and it is more needed than it has ever been young tenezians like amira have propelled their nation into courageous but also uncharted lands where it must now stay the course and that really is the hard part and we know there are going to be hard days ahead we know there are going to be setbacks we know there are going to be sacrifices and it's easy for us to say that at the distance of an ocean so much harder for our tenezian friends to live that every single day and yet to keep standing and keep moving forward but as tenezians seek to build the arab world's newest democracy they do have the support of friends all over the world especially here in the united states and significantly right here in this room Carnegie report emphasizes how important it is for all of us to try to work together to combine our capacities and our insights to ensure that we're maximizing the potential of our partnerships that's very powerful too so i really wanted this opportunity to come and pay um respect to our tenezian friends and to pay respect to the tremendous work that Carnegie has done in trying to marshal some of the thinking and the energy and commitment that exists here in the united states and around the world for tenezia so to our tenezian friends and to Carnegie thank you for all that you've done to help tenezia usher in a future that its people have fought for and the future that they deserve one of peace one of prosperity one of security one of democracy for every single tenezian thank you very very much