 Good morning everybody. Good morning. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president here at the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm just delighted to welcome everybody for the third annual US-Georgia Strategic Partnership Conference, and I want to go ahead and welcome everyone to come on in. We are very pleased to be co-hosting this event with the Georgian Embassy and the Heritage Foundation in just a few weeks after the 101st anniversary of Georgia's independence. So congratulations on reaching that very important milestone. And I want to extend a very warm welcome to our esteemed guests and co-hosts, especially the Honorable Mamuka Bakhtadzi, the Prime Minister of Georgia, his Excellency David Zalk Aliani, Georgia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. Her Excellency, Nadia Tornava, Georgia's Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Ambassador David Bakhtadzi, the Ambassador of Georgia here in the United States. Mr. Michael Murphy, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary at the State Department and our wonderful partner, Dr. James Carafano from the Heritage Foundation. Thank you everybody for being here for this important conversation. And I want to also welcome those of you who are joining us online. You can follow us on Twitter at USIP and use today's hashtag of GeoUS. USIP was founded by members of Congress who had returned from the battlefields of World War II and based on their experiences, they were convinced that we as a nation needed to do everything possible to avoid that kind of global convulsion of violence that their generation experienced. In 1984 they were instrumental in founding USIP with the mission of helping to prevent, mitigate and resolve violent conflict around the world, which we do by linking research and policy with training and direct support to people around the world who are in the front lines of resolving and preventing violent conflict. And we use our global headquarters here on the National Mall to bring people together from a variety of views and perspectives to wrestle down solutions to difficult problems. And today we're seeing the resurgence of regional and global power competition that threatens the long piece that that generation of World War II worked so hard to preserve. Georgia understands this very well as it lives next to a more aggressive Russia attempting to expand its reach and influence. And so these challenges require stronger international cooperation and a focus on building resilience at both national and regional levels. So this morning we have an important opportunity for a variety of people from different views and perspectives to focus on the trends and challenges in Georgia's neighborhood and the opportunities for building peace and prosperity from a regional and international perspective. We have a terrific set of conversations this morning. The first panel will explore how our two countries can work together to build resilience, foster democracy and cultivate a lasting peace in Georgia and neighboring countries. And the second one will look at how to build a regional hub for growth and economic prosperity, especially given the vital role that Georgia plays as a strategic gateway between Europe and Asia. Building national and regional resilience is absolutely essential in these more turbulent times. So with that I'm delighted to introduce Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadzi who has a wealth of experience in both the private sector and the public sector. Before he became Prime Minister in June of last year, he served as Georgia's Minister of Finance. And before that he was the Executive Director of the Georgia Railway Company. Prime Minister Bakhtadzi has affirmed his commitment to the peaceful resolution of the Russia-Georgia conflict, advancing EU and NATO integration, and building strong relationships with Georgia's allies. So please join me in giving a warm welcome to Prime Minister Bakhtadzi. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests. I'm honored to open the third annual US-Georgia strategic partnership conference, and I would like to thank Nancy Lindbergh and the US Institute of Peace and also our many friends at the Heritage Foundation for hosting us today. This event is a perfect gathering for us to share our thoughts about the future of my country with the best and brightest of the Washington policy community. More importantly, being with you, all of us, and the unique opportunity for me and my team to hear your recommendations and advices. It can never be said often enough that your great nation has stood with Georgia every step of the way since our independence. The US-Georgia strategic partnership is today at an all-time high level and we have the bipartisan support. The partnership has broadened and deepened both geopolitically and economically. Georgia has been honored with visits by Vice President Pence and more recently, US Security Advisor John Bolton. Both gave us the benefit of their thinking on strategic environment, the importance of the US Georgia strategic partnership, and how we can elevate the value of our relations to the new levels. During this and other meetings, we came to a clear understanding of obligations expected of us, as well as the value of the contributions to secure our mutual security. As a result, Georgia realized long-term strategic assistance on expanded interoperability and training through expanded noble partner engagements. Noble partner is a Georgian Armed Forces and US Army-led exercise intended to support and enhance the readiness of my country. The US and participating nations during a multinational training operation that takes place in Georgia. We also are grateful to Congress and the White House for recognizing our more immediate security needs by providing more security cooperation to safeguard our peace and stability. The National Defense Authorization Act offered welcome support for Georgia's sovereignty and security. While Congress focused attention on the violations of Georgia's sovereignty by Russian federations, illegally military occupation that they took, that they started in 2008. Last month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the Georgia Support Act. As you know, this act with bipartisan support is designed to protect sovereignty against Russian aggression, and will punish any adventurism with sanctions, among other important actions. The Georgian people are extremely grateful for the US government's strong support for our territorial integrity in the face of continued Russian aggression. In the past year, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation continued to expand its investments in Georgia, including for financing critical infrastructure and associated infrastructure on the coast of the Black Sea. This project promised to transform Georgia into a regional economic and transport hub, offering the shortest route between Europe and Asia for high-value cargoes, connecting markets of several billion consumers, while opening landlocked nations of at least 120 million more. As they say in the investment world, this is a substantial return on investment. All Georgians are extremely grateful for OPIC's longstanding confidence in Georgia, where it provides financial assistance to many projects. This confidence, plus the reforms that we have undertaken successfully, have attracted many new investors, including to our transport infrastructure, airports, power generation, the hospitality and tourism industries. For those of you who know Georgia for a long time, I ask you to think back just a few years, back when we just getting Georgia, we are in frequent flights from a small handful of European cities with a major headache. I have experienced this myself. Contrary to that today, Georgia today enjoys more than 100 direct flights daily from many parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. And we are working very intensively to start the direct flight between the United States of America and Georgia. Georgia is committed to an expensive economic vision based on three-part strategy. First, we will leverage our geography, natural advantages and stewardship to sustain economic growth that has been averaging 5%, which is two times higher than in our neighbourhood. According to IMF, Georgia will stay as a leader in terms of economic growth during the next four years. We seek to achieve inclusive growth that benefits all of our citizens. This is not unrealistic and already this year we are ahead of projections. We seek to be not just a regional hub, but the crossroads linking Asia and Europe. Our well-educated workforce has gone global and we are currently reforming our education system through dramatic investment that will unlock the ability of our citizens to do even more. Under my leadership we are taking the bold step of dedicating 25% of our national budget to education and human capital building in order to ensure our workforce can succeed in today's economy and for generations to come. Second, we will strive to become the gold standard in ease of doing business and legal transparency. Investment flows to opportunity where the barriers are the lowest. Georgia today is the country with the third lowest tax regime in the world. It is rated as number seven in economic freedom and as number eight in lifting the burden of government regulation. And we are rated as one of the top 20 European countries in terms of rule of law. And as you all know we are number six in terms of doing business. Our successful assault on corruption is also well known. We are becoming a major free market economy under democratic governance and the rule of law. Third, Georgia seeks to be a full participant and a member of the global markets. We are trying to integrate Georgia in the global economy in the most efficient way possible. Our strategy is to make Georgia a regional hub for international business, logistics, tourism, education and innovations. We have signed a free trade agreement with the major economies. And I add with particular pleasure that we are looking forward to increase our economic cooperation with the United States of America. I'm very happy to see the increased number of American companies doing the business in Georgia. Our aim is to increase the trade between two nations and at the same time to support American companies to increase their presence in our part of the world, which is regarded as the fastest growing consumer market in the world. The U.S.-Georgia strategic partnership is at an all-time high level but we must not rest. The world we all see is full of growing uncertainties. All the institutions are eroding. Familiar partners are experiencing upheavals that are redefining them. New actors with powerful capabilities are now active around us. Some states are failing while others near political transition points. Each day I become more convinced that all strategic paradigms no longer describe the world we are entering accurately. It is just a world of uncertainty that the U.S.-Georgia strategic partnership was created to address. When I look to the future, I see even stronger security cooperation rooted in enhanced Black Sea security architecture. I have seen even more American companies doing business in Georgia, taking advantage of our business-friendly environment and geographic location as a gateway to access Asia and Europe. I am strongly committed to building on the U.S.-Georgia strategic and military partnership by expanding economic ties between our nations. To that end, I am very excited about the results of my visit in San Francisco and Seattle that preceded my trip here to Washington. And from Washington we are going to Dallas. We met with a who's who of businesses venture capitalists and policy makers to introduce them to the vibrancy and opportunity of doing business in Georgia. The gateway market where east meets west, where north meets south, and where traditions meet innovations. In every place my message is very clear. Georgia is open for business and we welcome our American friends to say the opportunity that abound in Georgia. It is our region. We want more investments, more trained, and more of the U.S. in Georgia. Rest assured that strengths of our partnership will serve us, as well as uncentury unfolds and new realities present us with unprecedented challenges and inviting opportunities. Our partnership is tailored for such a great vision. And I have no doubt that it will prove up to be the task ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister. And I'd like to invite our first panel to come forward. So let's thank the Prime Minister for that very important overview of Georgia, which is going to set a great context for the rest of our conversation this morning. Good morning. My name is Sepideh Kevan Shad. I'm a senior adviser here at USIP working on Ukraine and Russia. And I will be introducing the panels to you this morning. As Nancy Lindbergh mentioned, we'll have two panels this morning. We'll have a coffee break in between and we plan to have plenty of time for questions at both panels. So with that, let me introduce our first panel, who will be focusing on geopolitics and security, ensuring regional peace and stability. The full bios are in the conference material, so I encourage you to look at those. So I will just give you a brief overview right now. Let's start with our moderator, Peter Doran, who is sitting right next to me over here. Mr. Doran is president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis and a recognized expert on Russia, Ukraine and transatlantic relations. He has testified before Congress on issues related to geopolitics and security, some of which I have seen, as well as state-sponsored disinformation. Mr. Doran contributes to articles for time, foreign policy, defense news, the national review and the American spectator. His commentary and analysis is featured in U.S. and European broadcasts and print media, including Fox News, Wall Street Journal and Newsweek. Mr. Doran is also the author of a book titled Breaking Rocker Feather. Welcome. Let me next move on to our next panelist, who is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia. His Excellency David Zalcaliani, I hope I said that correctly, who has served as minister since 2018. Minister Zalcaliani has extensive experience as a professional diplomat. His career in diplomacy spans almost 30 years. He has served in various capacities at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia and in Georgia's diplomatic missions overseas, including in Vienna and in Washington, D.C. He was appointed Georgia's ambassador to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in 2004 through 2007 and later has become ambassador at large. From 2012 to 2014 and then again in 2016, he was appointed as first Deputy Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs before being appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Welcome, Minister. Next, we'll go to Mr. Michael Murphy, who is the Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. He has been in that position since February of this year, 2019. Prior to that, Mr. Murphy served as director of the Office for European Security and Political Military Affairs in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. His prior diplomatic postings include Botswana, Kosovo, Bosnia Herzegovina, the United Kingdom, Cameroon and Nigeria. Welcome to the panel. And our final panelist is Dr. James J. Carafano, who is the Vice President of the Heritage Foundation's Catherine and Shelby Cullum Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E.W. Richardson Fellow. Dr. Carafano is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as prolific writer and researcher. He is also a regular guest analyst for major U.S. networks and cable television news organization and has appeared on numerous TV news programs in almost 20 countries around the world. Before assuming responsibility for Heritage's defense and foreign policy team in December 2012, Dr. Carafano has served as deputy director for the Davis Institute as well as director of its Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies since 2009. And finally, Dr. Carafano is also a 25-year army veteran and a retired lieutenant colonel. He has served in Europe, Korea and United States. So as we see we have a lot of experience on our panels. So welcome to all of you and we look forward to the conversation. Thank you very much. Before we get started I personally also want to thank the USIP and obviously our colleagues from Georgia who have come a long way to have a very important discussion with us today as well as the Heritage Foundation who has done a great job and I think as we saw Jim as a man who basically needs no introduction. Here is what I'd like to do to structure our conversation this morning. With our panelists let's keep it focused. Let's develop a discussion. I'm going to try and hold us to some teutonic time keeping to make sure that we dismount at the right point in deference to the conference organizers. But I think it would be important for us everyone here today to consider an if-then proposition in order to structure our consideration of US-Georgian strategic relationships. If the United States has undertaken a necessary course correction in its strategic thinking around the world one which anticipates a new era of great power competition then the United States is going to need a lot of allies and friends like Georgia. It strikes me that Georgia answered the call and has sacrificed when the United States needed friends and allies to join us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Georgia has stood firm in the face of Russian aggression and occupation of its territory and Georgia remains steadfast and overcoming absolutely every single obstacle that has come in its way in order to join the North Atlantic Alliance. It strikes me that in many ways with questions about the future of NATO hanging over our heads, Georgia believes in the Atlantic Alliance perhaps more sometimes than we believe in ourselves. I think that's an important point to consider. So if the United States is now in a new era of global competition and then we're going to need allies I'd ask each one of our panelists to reflect on three questions and I hope to weave them in and out of the discussion today. The first one is this. What does Georgia bring to the table? The second one is what does the United States want to see more of from Georgia and perhaps the most important one? What's holding us back? So Mr. Minister, I'm interested in your reflections. Thank you very much. First of all, let me join you in expressing my gratitude to organizers to the United States Institute of Peace and Heritage Foundation and the Georgian Embassy for the conference and it's really important to be here to be back in town. I really love this place as it was mentioned. I was part of the Georgian Embassy several years ago, a long time ago. And I was working together with great ambassadors, Taddo Japaritza and the late Ambassador Leval Mikhailadze and this team has started this strategic, building this strategic partnership with the United States since 1991. Georgia develops a very close strategic partnership with the United States and today we celebrate 10th anniversary since the strategic partnership chart. The framework was launched 10 years ago and during the last 10 years we are demonstrating remarkable achievements. Georgia is dedicated and the most loyal partner of the United States. This partnership is based on common values, freedom and democracy and common vision and understanding of the global security challenges and our vision. We have a very similar vision on the security situation in the region. What we are doing on our side, we are, as a most loyal partner of the United States, we are strengthening our state institutions. We are building vibrant democratic society. We are strengthening our defense and security capabilities and from this perspective the framework of U.S. strategic partnership charter is an important instrument because this charter is based on four main pillars. The first is defense and security. Second one is trade and economy. Third is people-to-people contacts, cultural relations and democracy. During 10 years we have focused on building very strong military cooperation between Georgia and the United States. Back in 2016 we have signed memorandum of understanding on defense and security and it was very successfully implementing by this administration. The Prime Minister has rightly mentioned the cooperation with the current U.S. administration and with the United States it's all time high. We are building very strong defense cooperation through bilateral format as well as in the NATO framework and you have absolutely rightly mentioned that the North Atlantic aspiration is one of the top foreign policy priorities for Georgia. We are doing much in order to demonstrate our adherence to the principles of your Atlantic aspirations like spending 2% of our GDP on defense, 20% of major military acquisition. So it is in line with NATO standards and Georgia is the biggest per capita contributor to the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. Although we have suffered K-33 Georgians died in Afghanistan. For small country like Georgia it's quite a big loss but we understand that this is our contribution to the global security. We are not only consumers but contributors to the security and this partnership is really important. This helps us to strengthen our state institutions, it helps us to increase our resilience because there are a lot of security challenges in the region and the responsible government we are doing everything possible in order to minimize all these risks and security in order to ensure stability in order to ensure stable development because without stability there is no development, there is no prosperity. And as Prime Minister has mentioned the governmental program which is based on the five principles and the number one priority is the full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures to ensure the inclusive growth of economy the last year we have accomplished by 1.8% GDP growth. If you consider what is happening in the region and the challenges we are facing what is happening in the neighborhood that the fact that Georgia not oil and gas rich countries this is quite remarkable achievement but this is not enough but we have to ensure inclusive growth in order to reflect all this positive trend to each and every individual from this perspective also strategic partnership is really important because it is also focused on trade and economy and we are building we want our trade and economy cooperation with United States to be upgraded at the level of defense and security cooperation we need more U.S. investments we need more U.S. companies in Georgia that's why from this point of view the current visit of Prime Minister is really important he visited prior to Washington he was in West Coast in San Francisco in Seattle he will continue to Dallas and this road show is an excellent opportunity to attract investments and to demonstrate the importance of this of my country and also the taking into consideration the rapidly changing environment in the region the economic engagement of main strategic partner of Georgia in the region especially in the country which serves as a transit country which connects East which connects North to South where traditions meet innovations so from this perspective also increasing trade relations and also thinking about the possibility of free trade framework with United States is really crucial we are also cooperating closely with the different U.S. institutions I see here the M.C.C. representatives and also the compact which was elaborated during these years the more than 500 million U.S. dollars which was allocated to the development of different infrastructure in Georgia as well as education helping us to improve our education system is really crucial as well as contribution from OPIC in different programs projects 55 projects have been financed by OPIC as well as U.S. I.D. support by $1.5 billion during the recent years of our independence is playing an important role for increasing resilience. Well Mr. Minister as you are talking here I hear some few themes emerging one a theme of strengthening pillars a theme of breakthroughs and becoming more resilient but I also hear get a sense of that you are not quite satisfied yet that there is still a desire to do much more that what has occurred so far is not enough. Acting P.T.S. Murphy what we have heard from our Georgian colleagues is one perspective I wonder if you would weigh in and give us a sense of what the United States is playing for and what the United States wants to see not only the Black Sea region but through its strategic partnership with the United States and the American region. Is that on? Sorry about that. I'm going to there's a lot you thrown a 20 minute question at me I'm going to try to speak for just a couple of minutes and I want to frame the back and forth that's going to take place between you and us and the audience. I think it's useful to talk a or relationship that just exists today, because I think talking about where we go from here requires an understanding of what it consists of and how we got to where we are, because I think it's often forgotten, quite frankly, in the context of our conversations about what comes next. And in some respects, it started in 1994 with the Partnership for Peace, which was designed as a vehicle to deepen political and military ties between NATO and non-NATO members. And Georgia was one of the first members of that organization. And it's important to remember that ever since that point, quite frankly, the relationship has grown bigger and deeper and stronger. But now it wasn't a military alliance, PFP wasn't a military alliance. It was an expression of shared values and it constituted on both sides a commitment to work together on shared security concerns with each other, other members of the Partnership for Peace itself, on defense and security activities across the continent. These relationships have evolved with different countries, different PFP countries in different ways, and that's important as I go through and talk about how it's involved with Georgia, because it's unique in how our relationship with Georgia has involved. Many of the partners have eventually become NATO members, 13 of them have. And of course, in 2008, and it's been reaffirmed since by different administrations and heads of state at NATO gatherings, we've committed that Georgia will too become a member of the alliance. In 2014, we took another sort of big leap forward with the substantial NATO-Georgia package, which I as an acronym that is a bit of a mouthful, I know. But that has been deepening our security cooperation between Georgia and NATO, and it's been helping Georgia significantly by strengthening its security institutions on land, air and sea, and that's important. And Georgia's also, excuse me, Georgia's also an enhanced opportunities partner. That's ignored a lot, I think, but it's an important relationship. It's unique, not many countries have that relationship with the alliance. And Georgia enjoys something that I think is particularly important, and it often gets overlooked, and that's this direct dialogue it has through NATO, through the NATO-Georgia commission. It meets at a variety of levels in the alliance, it's ambassadorial, foreign ministerial, heads of state, but few other countries have that kind of access to NATO and to NATO members, and I think that's important to remember. And Georgia has used it quite effectively to help us understand its perspectives on the region, the security challenges that it faces, and the allies and the United States have also used it as well to help communicate to Georgia about issues that matter to us in Brussels. Now, there's another important element of the relationship with Georgia that I want to mention, again, I apologize to go through all these acronyms, but I think they matter, and that's the annual national program. And that is something that's really a workhorse program and a workhorse document in the way we relate with our allies and partners. And it's been used in the past several years to help strengthen reforms inside Georgia, not just in the defense sector, but right across the board in the judiciary, on elections, on national security oversight, on protections of journalists and other important topics. And these reforms, of course, are essential to Georgia's democratic future, but also to its aspirations in deepening further security relationship with NATO and eventually becoming a NATO member. And the benefit here is to the people of Georgia as well. I mean, we think about this as a relationship between governments or between one government and a multilateral institution like the Alliance. But what this work is vitally important to the people of the country itself. And by strengthening the institutions of Georgia, not just on the security side, but right across the full spectrum, we're deepening the relationship between the people of Georgia and the peoples of the United States and member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and also between our governments as well. And I think you've referenced this, Mr. Minister, but we're also investing millions of dollars, not just the United States, other allied members as well, and Germany, the United Kingdom, others, to support these efforts and these reforms that we've identified through the AMP and another bilateral fora to help Georgia achieve the vision it has for itself as a fully integrated member of the transatlantic community of nations. And we understand how important these resources are. You talked about wanting to deepen and further that commitment. I think the United States government, the United States Congress, appreciates the importance of that. And I think you see it manifest in the additional investments we've been making in Georgia bilaterally and, of course, multilaterally. Now, we've established this relationship with Georgia for lots of reasons. At the very beginning of the relationship in 1994, we lived in a different world, you alluded to that. And of course, at the time, the American peoples and the American government's deep commitment to Georgia and the values of its people that are the core of the alliance, freedom, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, that drove a lot of the thinking in the 90s about why we needed to be working more closely with the Georgian people. And all of the tools in this toolkit that I've just described, and I'm gonna give you the whole acronym soup in one go here, PFP, SNGP, EOP, NGC and AMP, right? You can all do a cheer on that a little bit later. Are helping make Georgia and the alliance stronger. Well, I'll come back to MAP. I have some views about MAP, but MAP is supposed to get you to AMP. And I think that you've got all the tools that you need to continue to progress towards building a deeper and more enduring relationship with the alliance and also eventually joining NATO. Now, we live in a different world today and you alluded to that. Our national security strategy, I'm gonna read a key passage of it, says quite clearly, quote, through modernized forms of subversive tactics, Russia interferes in the domestic political affairs of countries around the world. The combination of Russian ambition and growing military capabilities creates an unstable frontier in Eurasia where the risk of conflict due to Russian miscalculation is growing. Now, that could be pulled straight out of the Georgia national security strategy, which gets to the question, I think Peter, you posed, which is why do we do this now? The commitment to values was something that drove part of what we were doing in 1994 because we lived in a different world, but today we live in a period of great power competition. And the United States and Georgia have core shared strategic interests. And I think the other members of the alliance do as well. And so there's an important reason for engaging with Georgia that goes beyond our commitment to those values that I've just alluded to. I don't wanna lose sight of those because I think one of the things that the last 25 years or so have established is that the relationship is rooted in values and that's not unimportant. It's not a temporary alliance of convenience between Georgia and the United States. We have shared strategic interests, but we also have those shared values that are driving the relationship forward. And I'll close by just reiterating one last point. All those tools I identified, all those acronyms, and I won't read them off again, they are unique, no other nation enjoys the depth of the relationship with the alliance that Georgia has. And those tools are the tools that we need to keep using to move the relationship closer and deeper between Georgia and NATO. Thank you, Acting P. Desk Murphy. So as you're talking again, I heard more reflections on strengthening Georgian capabilities, obvious emphasis on the annual national plan. And it struck me that as you're reflecting on the two pillars of values and security, in many ways, in this era of great power competition, America not only wants Georgia to succeed, but it also needs Georgia to succeed in order to make our America more competitive through its alliance structures. Jim, there's a lot to digest here. Do you wanna help us understand a bit more about what we're playing for? First of all, I wanna say thank you all for coming. Every year, I'm gonna tell Nancy she needs a bigger auditorium next year. So this is amazing. It's actually more people than shut up for my wedding. So I'm just, this is really impressive for me. And so really thank you so much for caring about the bilateral relationship. And it's really been so impressive to partner with USCIP and watch this event grow and grow in importance. And the auditorium just more and more filled every year. The other thing is I wanna say, I couldn't go without thanking the US Institute of Peace for partnering in this. And to just remind everybody what a tremendous national treasure we have in the Institute as an instrument and a tool of the US government. They're everywhere in the world, there are people that are either afraid, they're under, they're concerned and they have a hope for freedom. And USIP is there where people share those three things partnering to make them better and make them better partners for the United States. And they do remarkable work. And we should all be extremely proud of them and hosting events like this is just reflective of the incredible accomplishments because USIP has walked with Georgia in this path of not just emerging as a self-confident nation but also in its partnership with the United States. So we owe a great deal of thanks to them. I just wanna go back and go to the first question which I think is the one that really should be addressed especially here in Washington is why does the United States care about the bilateral relationship? And I've done a lot of writing and explaining about US foreign policy and the point I continue to emphasize to our allies and friends and partners is that when US foreign policies is America first, you should get very, very excited because it's an affirmation on the part of the present administration that their job one is to protect the vital interests of the United States. And why that is very exciting is in virtually every context around the world it cannot do that without allies, friends and strategic partners. And I wrote a piece a few years ago actually it was after this, the dialogue I think one or two years ago when I specifically emphasize and it's actually buried in the national security strategy if you wanna read way through the 60 pages the specific value of small nations to the United States because we talk about great power competition as if all that matters is us and the other great powers and that is so mischaracterization of American strategy. Small powers mirror a lot and they matter for three reasons and I bring that up here because Georgia is in many respects the quintessential example of all of those. First of all they matter because geography matters and when you're in a strategic geostrategic competition how the parts of your network knit together really matter and there are countries which can be really small but their strategic position gives them a weight and importance to great powers that outweighs the size of their population and GDP and everything else. And as the prime minister mentioned in his remarks Georgia is one of those it is a lynchpin nation and it's strategic position is incredibly important for anybody who either wants to spread good or ill in a very large part of the world. The second and I think you mentioned this when America first got in the partnership for peace in the 90s is you cannot be an alliance for freedom unless you support the concept that nations get to decide for themselves how to provide for their common defense in the context of collective defense. And so we cannot be an alliance for freedom in NATO if we do not hold the door open for other countries to freely choose whether they want to join that community in collective defense or not. And the third reason is small nations actually are net contributors to collective defense. You know, especially if you're not fighting World War III and you're essentially running around the world doing kind of housekeeping, small nations often bring outsized contributions to the size of their country, their economy and their military. And there is no better exemplar of that than the country of Georgia at the height they had I believe 2,000 troops in Afghanistan and they're in Iraq. And, you know, I spent 25 years in military, I spent a lot of time overseas. I was never surprised when I look, well, to be honest, I never really gotten many foxholes, but when I looked to my left and my right and I saw a British soldier there or an Australian soldier there, that never surprised me because we've been doing that forever, but you cannot go to many dangerous places today and an American looks over their shoulder and they see a Georgian soldier standing beside them. And that says a lot to America and it says a lot about Georgia's commitment to collective defense. So this country epitomizes all the reasons why small nations matter to the United States. And I just want to end on this because I talked about the first one and you talked about pillars and we can talk all we want today, but to me it really comes back to two things that are really important. One is Georgia's membership in NATO and it is time for the serious discussion after North Macedonia to really begin that. My colleague Luke Coffey, who is I think just a tremendous analyst on this, has crafted I think a very creative and realistic plan on how to move Georgia forward and seriously consider that membership. And I think that the United States needs to pull its full weight behind that. It's time. Georgia's next. It's important the United States to get Georgia and NATO. It should be a priority for us. And the second issue that the minister raised is the it is really time to step up in the economic relationship. A U.S.-Georgia FTA is I think very, very doable and as we discussed these FTAs are as much in the world in which we live today strategic statements as they are economic statements. And so it is time to move Georgia up in the priority list for the FTA. And to my mind, the United States needs a laser-like focus on those two very important strategic goals. So back to you. Thank you, Jim. And I think that point you made that smaller and mid-sized allies and partner countries of the United States bring so much heft to our global aligned structures. And we need those contributions in order to succeed in a globally competitive environment. So we've heard a lot about what Georgia brings to the table. We've heard some reflections on what the United States would like to see. I'm gonna press the panelists here to really, you know, let's grapple with some of the, what's holding us back? What is it that's holding us back in order to achieve all of the potential that we've heard so far today? Mr. Minister, I'll give you an opportunity to reflect on what you've heard from our fellow panelists. But I'd really like us to understand the audience of participants to understand a bit more about what we need to overcome particularly when it comes to adding Georgia to a member of the North Atlantic Alliance, perhaps. Yes, well, I fully share the position expressed here with regard of Georgia's NATO membership. And it's a fact that Georgia is the most successful aspirant country, the country which has all practical tools for eventual membership as it was mentioned, the annual national program as well, NATO-Georgia Council, Substantial NATO-Georgia package, the decision of the Bucharest Summit that Georgia will become NATO member, the recent decisions of the Brussels Summit and the ministerial meeting, and the very substantial declaration of the Brussels Summit on Georgia which describes the whole issues related to the implementation by Georgia, all the benchmarks. And I believe that this is very well recognized by all our partners that we have all practical tools for eventual membership. But at the same time, we also observe the situation that the only political decision lacks with regard of membership because country which delivers, it has to be reciprocated. When we are coming from the NATO big summits, ministerial meetings, we have to demonstrate the progress in the context of the membership because if we fail, it causes serious frustration internally and it's also wrong signal to our neighbor that they constantly can undermine Georgia's NATO integration program. That's why we believe that the role of the United States as a main strategic partner in the country which strongly supports Georgia's NATO aspiration is really important and we are really grateful for very explicit and vocal support which is reflected in numerous public declarations and also public statements coming from high level US officials. The vice president's pass visit to Georgia was really important from the point of view timing, substance and messages he delivered with regard of NATO aspiration as well as Secretary Pompeo's statement on Georgia's NATO membership made yesterday and also which is also reflected in the joint declaration adopted yesterday on the 10th anniversary of the Georgia's America's strategic partner charter. And Ambassador Bolton, he is very explicitly supporting Georgia's NATO integration but I think that it has to be translated into practical dimension and we need other NATO allies to agree on this and we need the political decision. At the same time, it should not discourage us to continue to build up the very strong bilateral cooperation on military and security with all NATO allies including United States what actually we are doing with the United States, with France, with Germany, with other NATO allies and we're gonna continue. We are working on a very strong cooperation in the Baleck Sea, the Baleck Sea which gains additional importance taking into consideration what is happening right now in the region. The recent incident in the Kerch Strait was a clear demonstration that this region needs more attention from international community. From this point of view, the very practical decisions adopted during the last Brussels summit was really very important and there are four or five concrete elements which we are already starting to translate into practical dimension. The more frequent port calls, more military exercises, joint exercises as well as sharing information on the security situation in the Baleck Sea region is really important but we're gonna continue. Despite all the current obstacles, it's the priority and we believe that with the help of a strategic partner especially with the United States and other allies in NATO, we have to continue our homework and also to work jointly in order to achieve our eventual goal. Thank you, Mr. Minister. It strikes me that every obstacle that has been put in Georgia's way when it comes to deeper integration with the Atlantic Alliance, Georgia's overcoming. Many obstacles that some thought you wouldn't be able to do and that's the kind of alliance that the United States needs. Acting Peter S. Murphy, what's holding us back? I don't, excuse me, I don't think it's the availability of tools as you might have surmised from my remarks. I think we need to continue to use the tools that we have to deepen and focus on practical specific outcomes because if we focus solely on political declarations and statements, we won't be moving the ball forward in concrete terms the way we need to. I mean, I think Jim is right about the importance of Georgia and Georgia's contributions as a security provider to the alliance. It's rural in Afghanistan, the losses it suffered is right and doing more in the Black Sea region is the right way to go, we are looking inside the alliance now with our allies and also with Georgia about how we might be able to do that. Becoming more indispensable is the way to do it. That's really the answer to this question. It is a decision that's going to be taken soon, I hope at 30 and it's a political decision and I think if we focus too much on that aspect of this process, we will be missing opportunities to make it easier to take that political decision and I think that's the challenge. I'm not the responsible inside the Bureau for bilateral relations but I do want to reference some of what the minister said but also what the secretary said yesterday. He talked about some of the important reforms and institution building that's going on inside Georgia and that's critically important as well. It's not just about military capabilities and it's not just about military contributions inside the alliance, that's what the AMP is all about which I referenced earlier. So that focus needs to stay sharp and Georgia needs to continue to take the tough decisions and produce the kind of results that it's been producing over the last decade and a half. I'm not going to say it's easy but I think you want to be in a position to strike when the political iron is hot and you also can advance the time when that might occur by continuing to do what you've been doing and nose to the grindstone inside the alliance is the right way to do it. I just want to go back and re-emphasize what I think is really kind of the open secret is the belt and suspenders approach within NATO is that the robust effort to really mature the alliance for the 21st century but underneath that there's an enormous amount of bilateral activity going on like not waiting till we get to the perfect consensus within NATO and that undergirding web which I actually think makes NATO stronger is really moving at pace and I think both of you are absolutely right. The more that Georgia is integrated into that undergirding bilateral planning, exercise, capability, arrangements, the more the partnership in NATO just becomes natural so I think that's exactly right. So I would say to answer your question I think there's three things. The first I think is really North Macedonia. I think really until North Macedonia was off the table the discussion about other things was just way too difficult. And I think so that one I think that kind of cleared the decks but also importantly I think North Macedonia was not an easy problem. And I think the fact that NATO figured that out and that there were partners within the NATO alliance that demonstrated real leadership in making that happen just should make everybody realize that this Georgia thing is so doable. So that's one. The second is I'm a very strong proponent of the Ukraine and America's bilateral relationship with Ukraine and an important believer in that the path through Ukraine to NATO membership is incredibly important. Having said that, we need to kind of separate the discussion of Georgia and Ukraine. They're very different situations. And I think sometimes in Washington when we talk about NATO expansion we tend to lump them together and that just makes it much more problematic. And so I think it's very clear that we need to talk about there are two very, there are two potential partners but we need to have those discussions kind of different. And so like when we group them together and not helpful. And then the third thing is I just think the United States needs to start strong in being our friends. We need more champions within the alliance for Georgia membership and the United States should be really pressing others to step up to the plate and join us in having a leadership role. Not just saying we think it's a good idea but telling our friends is if you were our friends you would think this is a good idea too. And you would be saying that and pressing others to say that as well. Thank you, Jim. Okay, so we've got about 15 minutes give or take left for our discussion. I wanna use this opportunity to open it up to some Q and A from the audience. A few ground rules because this is the way I moderate panels. I think it is essential that we do this in lightning round fashion. I will insist that each individual who would wish to ask a question, I'm gonna limit you to 60 seconds. I'm going to time you. And if we go off that 60 seconds I will insist that we move on to another question. We'll package these in groups of three. It's not you, it's the process. So with that in mind, I'd encourage questions from the audience that we have microphones on. Terrified, everyone on the other side. Okay, we're focusing on U.S. Georgia. I'm curious about relations with China and how you have been monitoring that relationship and where you see that going. We'll take two more. If you could maybe talk a little bit about going forward, what are the next steps in deepening the bilateral military relationship between U.S. and Georgia, kind of concrete things that we are seeing. And one more. So we've got a good question on China, good question on deepening specifically bilateral military relations. Do we have a third? Minister, what about Abkhazia and South Ossetia as obstacles to NATO membership? Three excellent questions. Mr. Minister? Yes, thank you very much, Ambassador. I will start with the Abkhazia and Tsingvali region. This is the occupation is one of the important security threat and challenge we are facing currently. But our position is well-known that Georgia is committed to the peaceful settlement of conflict. We are committed to the agreement of 2008, ceasefire agreement signed between Georgia and the Russian Federation. We are constructively participating in the international format, Geneva International Discussion, which is the only format where we are talking in the presence of international community with the presence of all international actors like EU special representative, OSCE, Co-Chair, as well as UN, and with the participation of the United States. It's despite the fact that starting from 2008, there is no real breakthrough on the conflict settlement, I believe that it's really important to keep this format. Because this is the only and existing international format where we are talking about the non-compliance from Russian Federation of already taken commitments in front of international community. And I believe that this is the only important instrument which we have in our arsenal, in our hands, in order to convince Russian Federation to push Russian Federation to comply to the 2008 ceasefire agreement. Geneva is based on three main pillars, the implementation of ceasefire agreement, establishment of international security arrangements, return of IDPs, unfortunately, there is no breakthrough. Even more, Georgia is committed to the non-use of force pledge. This is our commitment not to use force for restoring our territorial integrity. And this pledge is legally binding. By making this pledge, we are helping international community to help us to make the peaceful settlement of conflict irreversible. And we believe that this is a very right approach how to help international community to minimize all these risks related to the security challenges in the context of EU expansion or NATO expansion. So when Georgia demonstrates this constructive policy, I think we are helping our partners from NATO and EU to make more bold steps towards membership. So despite all these difficulties, we're gonna continue this policy. You know that we have the important association agreement with European Union, which also includes deep and comprehensive free trade agreement. And there are important elements in this agreement which also refers to the conflict occupied regions, especially in the context of implementation. For example, implementation of the CFTA. It says that the application of the CFTA with regard of occupied regions will be available worse circumstances permit. So there are many possibilities and very possible options to agree on the implementation of international agreements on the occupied territories. And I believe that we are open for the discussion with our NATO allies. We are open to discuss this issue with our European partners. There are many options and this is agreeable, but the main issue is that Georgia demonstrates constructive approach. Unfortunately, there is no reciprocity from Russian side on all main issues which I have described security arrangements, the non-use of force pledge and also establishment of international security arrangements. But we believe that international community, United States, all main actors which are engaged in Geneva problem, Geneva discussion, they have to be more insistent in order to make Russia more constructive towards the already taken international obligations. Mr. Minister, let me ask you a two-finger follow-up on China specifically because I think it's important. If the United States is competing globally, China is a competitor. China comes to countries like Georgia and offers seemingly attractive packages of financial investments, strategic alliances, structures and engagement. But at the same time, these tend to be traps, debt traps, diplomatic traps. How is Georgia navigating the flirtations of Beijing at a time when it is actively engaging the West? So we are developing good relations with all of our neighbors and we have free trade agreement with European Union. We have free trade agreement with EFTA. Free trade agreement with China was signed several years ago and this was done in order to diversify our market and figures show that the trade volume with China increased and we are exporting our agricultural products. But currently we do not see big Chinese investments in Georgia. Of course, they express their interest in different just strategically important projects like port infrastructure and other projects. But currently we do not observe their direct engagement and their direct involvement in the big geostrategically important projects. Thank you. I compete as Murphy. We've got South Ozeotia. We've got bilateral security engagement and we've got China. I'll try to be brief because I want to give everybody else a chance to speak but I don't have a list of things that Unit X has to do in Georgia to deepen our security cooperation beyond the broader set of challenges identified earlier. We need more interoperability. We need more modern security institutions. We need more capable forces. All the things that we're doing this inside the alliance even today after 70 years or 75 years with current allies, that works never done. And so I would defer to the Pentagon about specifics but more of what we've been doing is what's required. And I think both the Georgians and the United States are focused on that. There's a limit to how much you can get done in any one year but I think each year the relationship with the Georgians is deepening. There's no doubt about that. And each year we're in the field together. We get better at working together and better at working with the alliance in Georgia. On China, you're right, China is a competitor. We are concerned in the United States about Chinese inroads in Europe and what the Chinese play there is. We're not arguing that trade with China is bad per se but if the deal is too good to be true it is too good to be true. And we have to be cognizant of issues associated with strategic investment that are designed to undermine the security of the nation where the investment is taking place or our broader transatlantic security. We have to be concerned about telecommunications networks and ensuring that they are secure. If we can't communicate securely with our allies in the time of crisis or move forces across the Atlantic through ports to use an example in time of crisis then we're gonna have a problem which is why the secretary and the president and others in the administration have made the issue of China's strategic investment not just in Europe but globally of course but also the issue of 5G, so such an important part of our foreign policy push to deal with the threat that China is posing. But that is again, I wanna be clear not the same thing as saying trade with China is in itself bad. It's the nature of the investment, the nature of the trade that we have to be mindful for. And we used to be really good many, many years ago about thinking about these issues in geo-strategic or geo-economic terms. Then history ended, the world was declared flat, nations were declared broken and we seem to have forgotten how to think this way. So we just gotta exercise some muscle memory that exists for those of us who've been around long enough and reapply that geo-strategic geopolitical framework to the world in which we operate. As far as the occupied territories, I would agree with the minister that Russia shows little sign of engaging constructively or helpfully or thoughtfully on either of those issues. The United States has made it a priority to both continue to raise this and to ensure that the Russian effort to try to create, if you will, a new sort of de facto European security architecture that accepts the results of Russian aggression as a premise for moving forward doesn't occur. And as the minister knows, we work very closely, whether in the Geneva process or through the OSCE on a regular basis to try to make sure these issues are front and center that we're pushing back against Russia and that we're reminding other European states of the importance of the issue. And I quite frankly feel that we've done a good job doing that because you don't see a push to sort of let these things go from others, which is an important part of this process. It is a long-term game. There is no doubt about it. We're not because of the way Russia has positioned itself. But I think the hard-headed assessment of where we are and what Russia's game is, is firmly embedded in the United States government and in our partnership with Georgia on these issues. So I would just go back on the occupied territories. I would just go back and say that I really commend Luke Coffey's piece on this because I really think he has mapped out the credible way to deal with this and the credible path for Georgian membership. So I'm a real fan of that. The other thing I think that's worth all of us remembering is that look at the incredible progress that Georgia has made despite the fact that 20% of its country is occupied. I mean, I know one of the things we're gonna talk about in the economic panel, one of the things we do every year is this index of economic freedom. We're getting every country in the world on their level of economic freedom. And look at the progress that Georgia has achieved against all the obstacles it's faced. And it really is an incredible accomplishment. The other thing is I would just wanted to give on the China point, just to give credit to the administration which has really jumped in I think with both feet in recognizing the importance of a dialogue on China with our partners throughout Europe and both at the multinational and the bilateral level. So credit for them to doing that. And that I think is the number one most important thing the United States brings to the table is sitting down with our partners and just having a good, honest dialogue about what do we care about, what's important to us, what's a concern and what's not. And I think the American foreign policy in that respect is moving in the right direction. I think actually some of the most productive discussions have been between the US and Georgia on this. Jim, let me, yes, Mr. Minister? I want to add on the occupied territories and in relation with Russia, it's really important to always put high in your political agenda with the Russian Federation situation related to Georgia, because and the United States administration is doing constantly highlighting importance of unacceptability of the current situation and continued occupation and the factual annexation of Georgian territories. Because what Russia is doing currently is they're trying to disseminate the narrative that there is a new reality. And from their perspective, this new reality that there are the first of all, they're saying that Georgia is not Ukraine and Ukraine is a different case, Georgia is a different case. But we know that there are lots of parallels what was in 2008 in Georgia, it was the repetition of 2014 events in Crimea. And we should not help Russia to disseminate this narrative that there is a new reality. There is no new reality. From their perspective, the new reality that there are two de facto, so-called independent states, Abkhazia and Srinvali region. And instead of their advice to Georgia, instead of constantly bringing high to the attention of international community, situation related to the occupied territories is better to deal with them on this new situation. But situation on the ground is really terrible. We are facing humanitarian disaster and the population of the both occupied regions, Abkhazia and Srinvali region is decreasing. The population is growing. If you compare figures, what was before war of 2018 in Abkhazia, it was more than 500,000 in the population. Now it decreased five, six times. There are only 120, 130,000. In Srinvali region, it's even worse. You know, if you compare pre-war figures, 120, now it's only 20,000. Out of 20,000, 7,000 are Russian military and the military base. So this is really a very alarming situation. And our request to our strategic partner is to always keep high in your bilateral agenda with the Russian Federation situation on Georgia and especially with regard to occupied territories. Okay, so if we hold to our lightning round format, I think we've got time for an additional three quick 60 second questions and then we'll use those questions to frame any final thoughts or reflections from our panelists. Thank you very much, Paul Joyle from NSI. Today there was an important announcement made in Georgia that the Anaklia Port Corporation timeframe for raising funds had been increased. I think that's extremely important from an economic and geo-strategic location. And given the fact of the previous discussion about Chinese interests in ports and investment, et cetera, hopefully this will allay some fears that there was something else going on related to that. And I would like to find, as the minister and the panel for their view on this, I think, important development, is it as important as it seems? So opportunities for Anaklia? Yes, we acknowledge that this is a strategic project and the government of Georgia is committed to its obligations. And Paul, you have rightly mentioned that we agreed to extend the time frames for financial closing. And I believe that minister of economy, she will speak in more details after this panel on Anaklia and other important economic projects. So we are constantly talking about the Anaklia project with our strategic partners. Let me remind you that during the last high level meeting with our European partners, this was an unprecedented format which was initiated by European Union only with Georgia. There is no similar project with other Eastern partnership countries. And we brought 18 concrete projects, infrastructure projects to the attention of the European Union. And one of important project in this package was Anaklia. So we asked our European partners, the EU Commission to help us to mobilize financial resources for important geo-strategically important projects for Georgia. So it demonstrates the importance we attach to this process. I can tell you another fact. Recently we have adopted the foreign policy strategy document. This is a very important document for Georgia, for Ministry of Foreign Affairs and for the entire government. In this foreign policy strategy, we have referenced one Anaklia. So the facts speaking about itself, that's the importance we attach to this important geo-politically important project. Okay, we'll do two more. Hi, thank you all for coming today to speak with us. I had a question regarding international development. How can international development companies and the US Agency for International Development better support local organizations to promote and protect resilience in Georgia? Thank you. One more. Yes, last month there was a major US-UK investment in Georgia's radiological material security, mainly the prevention of theft of materials or loss of materials, which could be used to create a dirty bomb. Nuclear smuggling also remains a concern in the region. What's next in this area of cooperation? So question on international development, role of aid and a very important question on radiological material. Jim, we'll start the other reverse and again in the interest of Teutonic timekeeping, feel free to reflect on these questions and then also provides your sort of bottom line here. I yield the balance of my time because I really want to hear from you, Mr. Song. You're on the hot seat, Mr. Minister. So we had a question on, what's the role for organizations like USAID or other on the international development? Yeah, these organizations are playing crucial role and starting from the very beginning of our independence, their financial contribution was really important. For USAID, 1.5 billion US dollar investment in strengthening Georgian, helping Georgia to build up its democratic institutions and also working on education agriculture sector. And we are continuing with USAID, which is an important partner for Georgia. I have mentioned the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the two compacts which we have accomplished. The more than 550 million US dollar was allocated to the development of important infrastructure projects as well as helping Georgia on education system. And as Prime Minister has rightly mentioned, the educational reform is priority for Georgian government and we have very ambitious goals in order to spend 6% of a quarter of our GDP to education by 2021. And I believe that in this regard, the important contribution from US organizations strengthening our educational system will be crucial. As well as OPIC, which is playing important role, more than 50, exactly 55 projects have been financed by OPIC through more than 500 million investments. So I think this is a very fruitful cooperation which is bringing the tangible results. Mr. Murphy. I'll close by making two, since the level of detail that has been asked here is a little bit beyond my area of expertise. But I would make two points. One, to get where we wanna go, we gotta maintain our strategic focus. And I think that's easy to say, but it is hard to do. I love technology, but sometimes I think giving senior officials in any part of the world access to email was a big mistake because we spend too much time chasing ephemera. And we have a 24 second news cycle these days and it's easy to get distracted by that. So we've gotta maintain our strategic focus. And the second, getting to where we wanna go and if we maintain that strategic focus means producing practical outcomes, concrete specific changes on the ground in the nature of the relationship. And that's important because sometimes we get wrapped up in pursuing the latest acronym or the latest phrasing that really isn't gonna get us where we wanna be at the end of the day. We've gotta stay focused and we gotta roll up our sleeves and we gotta do the things that make this, that get us to the destination we have set for ourselves. If we don't do that, if we don't do those two things, we're not gonna get there. All right, Jim, I'm gonna give you the last word. Oh, no, I'm good. You're good? Okay. Again, I wanna thank the US Institute for Peace, Heritage Foundation and our colleagues from the State Department as well as Georgia who have come a very long way. I thought this was a very actually engaging discussion. I learned a few things that's always useful and I hope others did. Please join me in a warm thank you for the participants. So we will now take a 15 minute break. Please be back here at 10.45 where we will start our next panel. Thank you. You can move on, that's fine. So welcome back. We are going to get started with our second panel this morning. Before we start, I just want to remind you that this event is being live streamed and you can also follow us using the event hashtag GOUS. So I will introduce our second panel this morning which is on trade and commerce regional help for growth. We have, I will start with our moderator who is Mr. Anthony Kim. Mr. Kim is research manager and editor of the Index of Economic Freedom at the Heritage Foundation. He has previously served as deputy chief of staff to Dr. Edwin J. Fulner who was the founder of the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Kim focuses on policies related to economic reform, entrepreneurship and investment in various countries around the world and researches international economic issues. Mr. Kim's commentary and opinion pieces have been published widely by the Wall Street Journal's Asia Edition. The New York Post, Washington Times, National Review and Korea Herald among others. Welcome Mr. Kim. I will then move to our first panelist. Her Excellency Natya Tornava who is the minister of economy and sustainable development of Georgia. She has been in that position since February of this year, February 2019. As an experienced manager in both public and private sectors, minister Tornava has always been on the economic front line and engaged in implementing significant reforms and projects in Georgia. Including the country's integration into the global and regional economy, enhancement of regional approaches, effective investment policy, promotion of Georgia in production and poverty elimination and economic prosperity. Prior to her appointment as minister, Dr. Tornava served at various time as deputy minister of economy and sustainable development. Minister Tornava also served as deputy executive director of the partnership fund in Georgia. Welcome minister. Turn to Ms. Cynthia Huger who is vice president for administration and finance at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. She is also currently serving as a head of the agency. Before joining MCC, Ms. Huger served in strategic and operational roles at the Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of the Army and USAID where she was recognized for her leadership and operational excellence. Ms. Huger's work in international and financial management and development began at the Department of the Army where she worked as a principal deputy assistant secretary for financial management. Thank you, Ms. Huger. And finally, I have the pleasure of introducing our final panelist, Mr. Alexander Bernard who is the co-head of the Cerberus Frontier and Senior Managing Director at Cerberus Singapore. He leads Cerberus' private investment activities in frontier markets. Mr. Bernard has led equity and debt transactions in a variety of emerging and frontier markets across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Caucasus and East Africa. He has also published numerous articles on finance, trade and geopolitics in frontier markets for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, foreign affairs and foreign policy, among others. Welcome to you all. Thank you very much. And once again, welcome to this wonderful timely forum to talk about U.S.-Georgia relationship. The first panel was wonderful and second panel will be great, I think. So let's see what happens. Many of you here, obviously, you guys know about Washington, D.C. We are here in this beautiful facility of USIP. And I do know that many of you have visited the Harris Foundation. If you haven't, you have my opening invitation. Now, when you come to the Harris Foundation, you will see our vision statement as an organization. We are leading American conservative think tank. And we say very plainly, but very proudly, we wanna build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, civil society flourish. So freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society. I think everybody here cares about those values and wanna advance those key interwoven four values. If I may, I think we can apply that vision to our partnership with Georgia. We wanna build and advance U.S.-Georgia partnership where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish. And I think that's why we are here. You are not here to have some extra coffee or exchange business card with your colleagues. You are here because you care about this wonderful and very strategic and important partnership between United States and Georgia. And we do that business by adding and multiplying, if I may. We are not in the business of dividing and subtracting. And I think that's why USIP and the Heritage Foundation, we've been hosting this conference annually. This is a two-year general role. We've been jointly hosting this wonderful forum and there'll be more forums and discussions as we go. So this is really about adding and multiplying positive forces of goodwill and then like-mindedness. So first session was about really security and political dimension. This panel is a bit more practical, hopefully more fun. We're gonna talk about some numbers and interaction among people and companies. To lead out panel discussion, we are truly honored to have a minister of economy, Georgia, Mr. Tuanaba. She has a wonderful remarks ready. So fasten your seatbelt. We're gonna start with her remarks. And we're gonna do some exercise too. So since podium is readily available, we'll use a podium. Minister? So, ladies and gentlemen, hello once again. Hello. Thank you for your attention. It is a great privilege for me to address you today at the third US Georgia Strategic Partnership Conference. I would like to take this opportunity and first of all to express my sincere gratitude to our organizers of today's gathering, the United States Institute of Peace, the Heritage Foundation and the Embassy of Georgia to USA for arranging this important conference. This is an excellent opportunity for us to exchange views on ways we can promote trade and commerce and also highlight our expectations and priorities in relations to the US Georgia Strategic Partnership. Let me begin by noting that our bilateral trade economic cooperation is progressing quite rapidly. Trade turnover in 2018 increased by 33%, probably it is not that impressive in figures. However, it shows definite upward trend. I am pleased to underline that United States features in all three top 10 lists such as trade turnover, exporters and importers, partners of Georgia. However, it's certainly not enough as it was mentioned by previous speakers. And we are interested in maximizing the existing potential with the US in terms of trade and investments. You might well be aware that international trade development, including trade diversification, is one of the key priorities of our government. Georgia is a small yet an attractive country for international trade and investments with an open market, liberal market, with a strategic location and Western aspiration, Euro-Atlantic integration aspiration. So being a strategic partner of USA and associated member of the European Union, Georgia enjoys a Western growing network of free trade deals spanning from the European Union, EFTA, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, and the CIS countries. Also, we just recently have finalized the joint FDA feasibility study on Georgia India FDA and initiated the same process with Israel. So the process is going very rapidly. We're seeking to facilitate free trade with the rest of our major trading partners. And among them, the United States is in top priority countries. The United States being our key strategic ally, we attach utmost importance to the high level dialogue on trade and investment, HLTID platform between our countries. And we are interested in engaging with USTR in the framework of this format to continue discussion on enhancement of bilateral trade and investment relations by having the next HLTID meeting in the nearest future. I believe the best way to enhance our bilateral trade and economic cooperation would be to have a free trade agreement with the United States. I understand that it is not easy and it requires a lot of efforts from our side, but it will be a clear signal of growing economic interest of the United States in our region, as well as faster support to Georgia's Euro-Atlantic integration aspirations. It's economic development and trade diversification needs. In fact, we follow very carefully the US recent trade policy developments considering the recently negotiating US-Mexica-Canada deal. I want to stress that Georgia is pretty much in line with the main principles of this deal. Georgia is the only country in the region with the institutions, policies, and business climate necessary for comprehensive trade agreements with the United States. Georgia's business environment has proven to be strong with low taxes and low levels of corruption, as proven by international ratings. Georgia is a perfect foothold for US businesses to enter the wider region, acting as a gateway and trade hub for free access to a variety of markets. I want to elaborate little more on this since it is our today's topic. Georgia's business-friendly policies, strong regional and overseas trade relations, and geopolitical location have truly transformed the country into the new regional frontier for trade and investment opportunities. It makes Georgia a unique place for processing and manufacturing of goods bound to Europe as well as to Asia. Today, Georgia is one of the leading countries in terms of attractive investment environment. Investors enjoy several comparative advantages. What is important? We have a young, well-educated, skilled, and a competitively priced labor force. Georgia is considered as politically stable, transparent, and safe investment destination, minimal bureaucracy, communication efficiency, and low tax burden are among factors that create our favorable investment environment. The rule of law is ensured. Any business disputes are settled fairly without government interruption. Today, Georgia is one of the leading countries in terms of attractive investment environment, and I would like just to list a few international rankings. According to Doing Business 2019, Georgia takes first position in Eastern Europe and Central Asia region and sixth position in the world. We are a third lowest tax burden country in the world. International financial institutions highlight positive expectations towards our country's economic development. Georgia is a top improver since 2003 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia region and globally with 50 institutional and regulatory reforms. Georgia improves positions in sovereign credit rating performance. In April 2019, the standard of poor upgraded sovereign credit rating outlook from stable to positive. Earlier in February 2019, Fitch upgraded Georgia's credit rating to BB from BB minus. Noteworthy that Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom has ranked Georgia to 16th position amongst 180 countries in 2019 and remains in mostly free group. According to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International, in 2018, Georgia is on the first position among the 19 countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Few words about our economy. According to the government projections, economic growth for 2019 will be around 4.5. So we have more positive expectations but I don't want to be too fast. Let us see how it will go but at least 4.5 will be reached. According to international monetary funds, latest estimates, Georgia will have highest gross rate among neighboring countries in 2019-2024, averaging to 5.1. So this is the most dynamic growth in the region which is about twice more than in some of our neighbors. Investment in real sector, most energy and transport, expert diversification, faster improvement of business environment and increase of tourist flows will be the key drivers that positively affect Georgia's economic performance. Here with due to the structural reforms, potential level of GDP growth will also enhance. We expect that in upcoming years, gross rate will converge to its potential level. Realization of Georgia's transit potential taking full advantage of the country's geographical location between Europe and Asia. This is one of the priorities of the government of Georgia. In this regard, increasing efforts are being made to enhance hard and soft infrastructure in Georgia as well as strengths and cooperation with other countries to improve regional connectivity. It is worth mentioning that Georgia is an active member of the Europe, the Caucasus, Asia transport corridor, so-called Traseka corridor and is contributing to the development of new roads and corridors such as Middle Corridor, Lapis Lazuli, Southwest and some other projects. Mentioned roads and corridors make contribution to the revival of the historic Silk Road. To ensure uninterrupted transportation of people and goods and to become a regional hub for growth, we are undertaking a number of large-scale infrastructural projects having regional importance, including the construction of an ugly and new deep seaport. East-West highway improvement, construction of Bakut-Pilisekar's new railway connection line, railway modernization and development of modern logistics centers. The above listed projects shall significantly augment overall transport capacity of Georgia, improve its value proposition as a transit country and strengthen Georgia's position as a regional transit hub. Moreover, I believe Georgia can take advantage of its geographic location and its well-rated business climate to host a regional digital hub, which will help address challenges of limited international data connectivity and development of domestic IT capabilities. When it comes to energy again, Georgia has a wonderful possibility to become a reliable regional hub for energy. It has to be mentioned that there are a number of successful transit projects on stream in the region. We already host BTC Pipeline, South Caucasus Pipeline and WREAP projects intending for the delivery of Caspian Sea reaches westward. Georgia has been a reliable transit partner country for many years and has an intention to enforce its transit potential in future. It is a significant part in the chain ensuring uninterrupted and secure transit across the South Caucasus, contributing to the energy security of the European Union through the diversification and diversified sources and roads, southern gas corridor. Given this context, we welcome the progress for the development of TANAP and TAP projects and continue to provide support in implementation of South Caucasus Pipeline, which is a good precondition for expanding South gas corridor even faster to deliver natural gas resources of Turkmenistan in the region and westward. For that reason, we consider it appropriate to stress the significance of other international energy projects, such as White Stream and some others. In this respect, Georgian government is actively working to secure their development. Towards concluding my remarks, I want to highlight that to materialize all those ideas and plans I spoke earlier, Georgia is hosting an increasing number of large international conferences and gatherings. Just this fall, we will be hosting the third international Tfilisi Silk Road Forum on 22, 23 October, taking this opportunity. I would like to invite you to participate in this high-level event as it provides an excellent platform for governments and businesses to discuss a wide range of issues related to connectivity. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Tuanabat. That was a really timely and informative snapshot on the Georgian economy. Minister mentioned about a few internationally well-recognized indices where those publications compare and study the different countries ranking. So the Heritage Foundation, we've been generating and publishing this annual index of economic freedom over the past 25 years. And Georgia, as newly noted by Madam Minister, has been really highlighting the progress that country, any country, if they want to achieve sustainable long-term development, they should commit. So it's really, really notable. And the better news is that we never coordinate our research with other institutions. For example, World Bank, they do their own business, they do their own research and country ranking, a global competitiveness report by World Economic Forum, they do their own, we do our own independently. But if you correlate everything, Georgia really stands out. So I think in case of Georgia, I think it's really the commitment to freedom and greater prosperity and openness. And that's, I think, once again, why we are here today to advance those values. When you look at any two countries bilateral relationship, it's not really one-dimensional, right? This is not just one level, one layer relationship. This is really multi-layer, multi-dimensional relationship. That's why in the first session, we looked at security, political, some hardcore, you know, geo-strategic issues. And now here, we look at slightly different dimension, which is a trade and commerce. And even in this session, I think our sort of frame is not just one-dimensional. So we just heard from Madam Minister about what's really been happening in Georgia. Now we're gonna turn the channel, we're gonna hear some perspective from Washington DC, especially Millennium Challenger Corporation, how Georgia really has been transforming itself into a really, a next level of economic development. So on that note, I'd like to invite Ms. Huger from MCC. Well, the first thing I'd like to say and talk about is I wanna recognize that all of us are in this room called the Frank Carlucci Auditorium. I had the honor and the privilege to know and work with Mr. Carlucci. He did so much for the US-Georgia relationship. And it's just a time and a wonderful place that we can honor him. About 10 months ago, actually it was last August, I spent some very rewarding time with a group of very young, impressive women. About 100 high school students from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the United States. They graduated from and gathered together in Tbilisi for a camp, a camp where they would acquire certain skills. Those skills were in leadership, science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. We call that STEAM. That initiative, the Women in Science Camp, was designed to help bridge the gender gap in STEM fields by providing young women in those four countries greater access to education, mentorship opportunities, and leadership training. And ultimately to help increase women's participation in STEM professions. I am happy to share with you that this effort was a memorable, a memorable success, and I can tell you stories later and be happy to. The camp came about through a strategic partnership, a partnership between the Millennium Challenge Corporation, we basically call it MCC, and the United Nations Foundations Girl Up Campaign, the US Department of State, Google, Microsoft, and Intel. The camp was only one part, but a very significant part of MCC's $140 million compact, the second compact, with Georgia. It seeks to increase the earning potential of Georgians through improvements in quality education, science, technology, engineering, and math. As you can tell, it was a very exciting time in Georgia that I'll never forget. One of the things that I would like to do is introduce myself again, my name is Cynthia Huger. At MCC I'm the Vice President for Administration and Finance and also the CFO, and also serving as the agency head. As you can tell, I am very proud of MCC and I'm very proud of what we do and the people who work for and with MCC. It's a collaborative effort that we are involved in to generate new economic opportunities around the world. Through efforts with the Women in Science or the WISI camp, that's just one of the things that we do. Before I continue, I would like to thank the United States Institute of Peace, the Heritage Foundation, and also the Georgian Embassy for bringing us together for this important conference on strategic partnership between US and Georgia. I also want to thank the Prime Minister who we just heard from and I had the opportunity to meet with a year ago. I also want to thank Foreign Minister Zakhalali for being here with us in Washington today. He too, I just met with many months ago. Thanks also to Mr. Kim for moderating the panel and to Minister Turnava and Mr. Bernard for what I'm sure you've already heard is a very great discussion and will be used as well. Now I'd like to give you some background on MCC. We are a different kind of organization, a different kind of foreign assistance organization. One with a singular mission and that mission is to reduce poverty through economic growth. We do that by providing time-limited grants. And target key negative factors holding back the economies of developing countries. We choose our partner countries by employing a selection process that focuses on three areas. Here they are. Ruling justly, investing in the health and welfare of people and economic freedom. And Mr. Kim helps us do that because he manages the index for economic freedom at the heritage. Using independent third party evaluations on all low income and lower middle income countries, MCC compiles 20 different indicators to create what we call a scorecard. We're later gonna show you what a scorecard looks like. MCC looks at these indicators and then in order for a country to be eligible for a compact or a time-limited grant, a country must pass at least half of these 20 indicators. MCC's board then uses those scorecards to select which countries to partner with. Georgia is a great example of how MCC's model works and of the economic advances that it can produce from the kinds of things that we do together. So much so that our 15 year presence in Georgia has really become an integral part of our strategic partnership between the US and Georgia. But you know what? It didn't happen overnight. In our first compact, our analysis looked at a number of things and said, you know, there's a lack here of reliable infrastructure and slow development of businesses, especially agribusiness, where hindering all of those two pieces were hindering economic growth. And bottom line, we call that constraints that are hindering economic growth. To address these issues and begin growing the economy, our compact helped build and rehabilitate in the first compact 220 kilometers of road in southwestern portion of the country, connecting that region to the central region of Georgia and to Armenia and to Turkey. We also worked to repair the north-south natural gas pipeline to shore up the country's energy reliability and to spur economic growth within agribusiness. The compact provided technical assistance and grants to farmers with very successful results. One of the recipients of those grants, for example, a woman named Nino, she went from owning just one cow to operating one of the largest dairy farms in the country. And she just established the first Georgian Farmers Association. We were very proud when Nino was recently invited to the White House to launch the Trump administration's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative. Encouraged by the successes generated by that first compact, we then developed a second compact. Working with the government of Georgia more than five years, we determined that investments in human capacity development, specifically science, technology, engineering and math, STEM, could help promote economic growth by boosting the earning potential of the country's citizens and better aligning their skills with the needs of local businesses. The $140 million investment resulting from that compact launched a long strategic effort to reform, and I think the minister was talking about reforms, a long reform for Georgia's educational sector at every level, from the primary level through tertiary and vocational education. For example, compact two, I'm gonna give you some statistics. Made it possible to fully rehabilitate and equip 91 public schools and improve the learning environment of more than 35,000 Georgian students. The compact also made it possible to provide professional development opportunities to 18,000 Georgian STEM teachers and 2050 principals. Overall, the compact is expected to benefit around 1.7 million Georgians, about half the population. Through this compact, MCC also funded 10 technical vocational education providers that have put in place more than 50, actually 51, demand-driven programs and enrolled more than 1,900 students and nearly 500 graduates to date. Because the programs are training Georgia's future workforce, each program has attracted significant co-financing, co-financing from the private sector, the public sector, or both. These public-private partnerships are boosting the impact of technical and vocational education programs in the country and really reshaping the way Georgia develops human capital. One of the most interesting projects in the compact came about through collaborative efforts of MCC, the government of Georgia and San Diego State University. That project, SDSU Georgia, is a partnership between San Diego State University and three Georgian University. It began with funding from MCC's STEM Higher Education Project and co-financing from the government of Georgia. The program allows students to earn internationally accredited STEM bachelor's degrees in the country, in their own country. That means a lot. These degrees are in very high demand among the employers. Just think of that. They can do that in their own country, rather than fleeing. Just last week, the project reached an important milestone, with the graduation of the first class of SDSU Georgian students and about 700 students in all. Moreover, a remarkable 20% of them graduated. Here you go. Summa Cum Laude, with a GPA of 3.8. That is terrific. While Georgia Compact II is set to close next month, the story continues. Thanks to the strong partnership between MCC and Georgia and the government of Georgia's commitment to this compact, plans are already in place to sustain and build on the foundation established through our joint efforts. Today, the government of Georgia continues to prioritize education as a key driver of economic growth and is already looking at ways to use the MCC Compact as a blueprint for their education strategy going forward. I am sure that the work we have done together will continue to have an impact for many years to come. In this context, and with these notable commitments and results, Georgia, being a lower middle income country, has expressed its interest to continue its relationship with MCC, focusing again on education. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia announced the intention, and you heard him here today, the intention of the government to allocate 6% of GDP, that's 25% of their budget, to education by the year 2022. That is formidable. We are very impressed and we support that fully. While Georgia clearly meets the criteria of MCC and is, in fact, what we call a star performer, MCC must follow congressionally mandated procedure for considering continued relationship with the government of Georgia. On behalf of MCC, we look forward to doing that. Let me conclude by saying through MCC's compacts and the efforts of the Georgian people, we have bolstered the strategic partnership between our two countries. Working together, we have helped set the stage for increased economic and trade opportunities that will bring a more prosperous future for the Georgian people. We at MCC are extremely proud of what we have accomplished together. Bottom line, the U.S.-Georgia relationship thrives. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Huger. It was wonderful to know what's really going on through your wonderful MCC programs in Georgia. I mean, the country is still making progress. I mean, this is an ongoing development. The story is not ending yet. This is the more stories, the greater stories coming. I think from up to now, we heard views from Tbilisi, the, you know, Madam Minister, the government of Georgia. That's one picture. And we just heard how United States, we really engage with Georgia to programs like MCC and MCA. Now we need a third pillar or maybe a third component, perhaps very critical in terms of facilitating these two governments in reaction. That's a private sector, either based in Tbilisi or Washington or New York or some LLs around the globe. So lead us to that dimension. We have a binar, Mr. Binar, he's a private sector. Let us know why you decide to go to Georgia to invest. Working, there we go. I don't have quite the energy level of the ladies that went in front of me. So, and, you know, having also flown in from Singapore, I'm gonna be lazy and stay seated. It's great to see all of you and see a lot of familiar faces in the room as well. And thanks to the U.S. Institute of Peace and Heritage for hosting this. I'm a partner with Cerberus, which is an American private equity firm, fairly large, we manage about $40 billion in assets. Most of that is spread across the U.S. and Europe, but I'm in charge of the Frontier Markets Group within Cerberus, which means that my job is to basically find the contrarian bets, the smaller, more sort of off the radar markets that other people are not paying as much attention to, but where there's still a universe of very interesting opportunities. And I would posit that Georgia is the ultimate contrarian bet. Because when you talk to your average American or average European about Georgia, what comes to mind for them is, well, first of all, the U.S., the Georgia-Russia conflict that took place in 2008, that's still surprisingly fresh in people's minds. In fact, oftentimes when I talk to people, that's the first thing that they ask about. They say, well, Georgia, isn't that the place that had a war with Russia? So that comes to mind. The second thing that comes to mind, of course, are the occupied territories. The third thing that comes to mind for people is that it's a very small country, that it's a post-Soviet country. These are the associations that people have with Georgia. But when you travel to Georgia, you immediately realize that the reality could not be more opposite to all of that. And you've, of course, already heard all the statistics, so I won't repeat all the statistics. They're incredibly impressive in terms of where Georgia ranks on ease of doing business, economic freedom, et cetera. But what I can tell you is that in actual practical reality, when you're on the ground, those statistics are there for a reason. You go into the Georgian banks. First of all, you realize that two of them are listed on the London Stock Exchange and are absolute world-class banking institutions. You talk to the bankers at these banks. They have Wharton degrees. They have Harvard Business School degrees. They've worked at top-tier banks in the US or the UK. You go into the local hotels that were developed by local entrepreneurs. Of course, there's also the Marriottes and there's all the foreign brands there. Those are impressive. But there's local hotels in Georgia that frankly are right up there with the top hotels of the world and are going to start branching out internationally from a design standpoint, from a service standpoint. Top-notch, you wouldn't think that you're in a frontier market. You would think that you're in the first world somewhere. You would think that you're in Switzerland or the US. You go into the government offices. On my last visit to Georgia, I had a meeting which was, by the way, at 10 p.m. at the Georgian Prime Minister's request because he'd had such a busy day. So we meet at 10 p.m. on a Friday and he's still basically in the middle of his work day. We had about a 45-minute meeting to discuss a few things. I walked out of that meeting and I bumped into Minister Tornava and Minister Zalcaliana because they're about to have a cabinet meeting at almost 11 p.m. on a Friday. So there's an energy and a vigor and a focus in Georgia and these statistics are not an accident. These statistics are a true reflection of the realities that exist in the market and it's an incredibly impressive place. We've been investing in Georgia for about, I guess, four years now. Primarily thus far in the hydropower sector. We've done a variety of investments in small and medium-sized hydropower projects. We have an office in Tbilisi. We have people on the ground in Tbilisi. We are now increasingly looking at using the Tbilisi office as a hub, not just for Georgia but actually for the region because that's the other part of the story. That's the other part of what makes Georgia actually not so much of a contrarian bet and the Prime Minister in his remarks this morning already hinted at that which is that Georgia sits in the Caucasus region, which is one of the fastest growing consumer regions in the world and if you look at the broader Caucasus economy, setting aside Russia for a moment, so not counting Russia, the Caucasus economy is almost a $1 trillion economy with Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia. This is a very sizable economy and there's only one country, frankly, that you'd pick in that region to do regional business from and that's Georgia. You wouldn't put a regional business in Armenia. You wouldn't put it in Azerbaijan. You would absolutely put it in Georgia. So that's the second part of the story. It's not just a Georgian market story but it's a regional story. So we've been investing in hydropower and now we're gonna look regionally as well and we're now exploring other areas in Georgia that we think are very interesting. Logistics and transportation obviously is top of the list. It's been mentioned multiple times today already that Georgia is right at the crossroads of North and South and East and West. That puts it in a prime position to serve a very important function for the movement of goods, not just through the region but internationally. If you look at the map as well and you sort of chart it all the way over to Central Asia, you see that Central Asia, frankly, doesn't have a lot of good ways to move goods out to international markets if they don't wanna go through Russia and if they don't wanna go through Iran, both of which, of course, present certain challenges. So Georgia is the friendly pro-Western corridor through which these goods can reach international markets. So we think Georgia's very interesting for logistics and transportation. Telecommunications, same thing. Its location makes Georgia a very natural place to route international data movements. And already a lot of Middle East data actually flows up and through Georgia and then over into Europe. Central Asia at the moment is not yet fully connected through, but for the same reasons why you wouldn't really want goods flowing from Central Asia out through Russia and Iran. You also wouldn't want data flowing out through those two countries. And Georgia presents a natural transit point for data. There's additional infrastructure that's needed to make that possible. But that's another very important thing. And tourism, tourism is also something that Georgia has huge potential. The numbers are already staggering. You have a country that has a population of about four million and is already doing about double that per year in tourists. So around eight million per year in visitors, I should say, not just tourists, but visitors. So those are some of the areas. There's many others. And I'll conclude by offering three quick stories, which is a dangerous thing to say because I'll probably now forget one of them. But three quick stories that are examples of really why Georgia is a very special place to do business and why these rankings are all really well-deserved. So the first example I'll give you is broad policy innovation and policy improvement. So in Georgia, this is constantly taking place. Again, it's not just in the statistics, but behind the statistics, there are policy innovations that are constantly occurring and that are being driven by the Georgian government. For example, just in the last couple of years, the Georgian government, without anybody pushing them to do so from the outside, changed certain provisions of the tax code to introduce what's called the Estonian model, which allows you to forego paying taxes on your profits as long as you're rolling those profits back into your company and using it to grow the business rather than distributing them out as dividends. And then more recently, the Georgian government has introduced some other very innovative new policies where if you set up a regional business in Tbilisi that is then focused also on markets outside of Georgia. So for example, on Azerbaijan or on Turkey, then there's also very special tax relief for the business and for any foreign employees who move to Georgia to be part of that regional business. So that's the kind of innovation that's constantly taking place. They're constantly thinking, how can we make Georgia more attractive, more investable? How can we make it a place that people actually wanna come to because they realize it's a small country that maybe people aren't paying as much attention to? So that's sort of broad, constant policy innovation. That's number one. Number two is actual responsiveness to the needs of the private sector. So when we started our hydropower investment program in Georgia, we had a slightly unusual approach. Most people were either doing one large hydropower plant or one small hydropower plant. We were doing numerous small hydropower plants and then bundling them into basically a portfolio. And I won't bore you with all the details, but basically in order to do that, there was some special accommodations that we needed to ensure that the portfolio would have a unified and harmonized set of regulations that applied to each of the hydropower plants so that we wouldn't have a portfolio with some that were under one framework, some under another. And you couldn't imagine another country, I think, where there would be such a professional engagement across the entire interagency. We were able to have meetings with the Ministry of Economy, with the Prime Minister's office. There were professionals within each of these agencies that were appointed lawyers and so on to liaise with us so that they could better understand why we needed this. And it was absolutely a very impressive thing and as a foreign investor to go in and have such a professional experience, I can really only commend Georgia for that. And then the third example I would give you, also from hydropower is legislative fixes when Georgia sees problems. So there's been some pushback in Georgia over the last year, so on hydropower because there's some communities that are saying that they're not actually benefiting sufficiently from the hydropower plants that are being built there. The revenues are just going to Tbilisi and that's resulted in some tension. So now the Georgian government is proposing a legislative fix where a portion of the taxes that are paid by the power plant will go straight into the community where the power plant is located. None of this stuff maybe sounds like rocket science, but you guys have all done business in many different parts of the world or maybe you've followed how things go in different parts of the world. And governments are not usually this responsive and this professional and this quick to address problems. And Georgia sometimes says that it wants to be the Singapore of the Caucasus. And frankly, as somebody who lives in Singapore, I hear all the time countries saying, oh, I want to be the Singapore of East Africa. Well, we want to be the Singapore of whatever. The North Pole is going to be the Singapore of the Arctic Circle. But honestly speaking, Georgia is probably the one country that truly is on track to replicate the Singapore model. And so I can't say enough good things about the experience we've had there. And yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Alexander. By the way, Alexander, I think it sounds to me, at least you're giving me a very real and practical investment tip about a specific country. So I'll try to remember that country after this session. So, Alexander mentioned rocket science. Obviously, economic development, it's not a rocket science. What it requires is commitment and action. I mean, a lot of times we see economic development is like getting on escalator. We see money and something organically, magically will happen. But in reality, it's not really escalator. This is stairways, climbing up the stairways. I think what Georgia has been doing over the past years, past decade, practically symbolize that kind of commitment, climbing up every year. Every time they try to do something new, they reach the new height. I see my good friend in the audience, Ken, from overseas private investment cooperation, through OP with MCC and other US agencies, USAID or other international organizations, and also, most importantly, private sector engagement. I think they all came together, have come together and try to make things happen. But I think the biggest credit goes to the people of Georgia and the leadership and either side and also continuing commitment to greater prosperity and openness. Now, we have about 15 minutes, so exactly seven minutes and 30 seconds, we're gonna talk about among ourselves and the other half will give you, but we can either conclude this session all good, Georgia is great, but celebrate, or we can try to think about what else should be done. I mean, we don't wanna remain complacent so far so good, but what should be our next step? I mean, we can do better, obviously, right? The only direction we know Georgia will take is upward, not standing still or downward, right? So how do we go from here to a next level? That would be the question I'll impose, if I may, on our panelists, beginning with the madam speaker. There are many ways we can advance our relationship. President Trump has been talking about bilateral free trade agreement with countries like like-minded and willing partners. I think Georgia fits into that category, like-minded and willing. And there hasn't been any true Trumpian bilateral trade agreement. That can be one of those things we can talk about, how to further institutionalize our relationship, or to make madam ministers visit next time, a bit easier, we can talk about something more practical. How do we install, say, direct fly from Tbilisi to Washington? So there are many practical ways we can advance our relationship. So let's begin with the madam minister to go over there. Thank you very much. So you said a great part of, you did a great part of my job, you already mentioned what I would like to mention. But let me pick up the major points from our today's discussions. So how to make Georgia more investable, Alexander, great saying, and how to accelerate more our potential in the mutual trade. Let me start from trade. Of course, it was said several times today and let me once again to reiterate that having a legal framework for trade, free trade agreement, of course, is essential and crucial. It doesn't mean that we will not trade with each other without that frame. We are, actually, growing by 33% of our trade. It's a good sign. However, free trade agreement will have multiple implications. First of all, of course, it is a document for trade, economic impact, commercial impact. And even in this respect, I would like to say that free trade agreement will create mutual benefits, not only for Georgia, but for United States of America as well. Let me just share with you just a very, very, let's say, short list of figures, few figures. You motivated us to talk about figures, so I will use that opportunity. From our recent feasibility study that was concluded on the impact of free trade agreement between United States of America and Georgia, just a few figures. FDA between Georgia and the United States would lead to an overall increase in the value of trade between the two countries of 515 million USD by 2023. This is a roughly 50% increase in trade value compared to the factual actual. US expert to Georgia would grow at rate of over 23% per year, compared to the baseline of just around 13% per year, twice more. And if the United States and Georgia were to implement the free trade agreement in 2018, US United States GDP would be 327 million USD higher in 2023 compared to the counterfactual. This increase in exports will lead in additional about 2,000 jobs in United States expert by 2023. In Georgia's GDP would be 200 million USD higher and 21,000 new jobs would be created as a result. Of course, scale is not comparable. It is more important for Georgia rather than for United States of America, but I would like to say that it's a win-win game, win-win situation. But this is only commercial implication. Let me say a few words about political implication of free trade agreement, which is even greater for Georgia than purely commercial outcomes. Having free trade agreement with the United States is a very clear and strong political signal that our strong political ally, our strategic partner, United States, considers Georgia as a best foothold for American businesses. It's a strategic partner in the region and supports our Euro-Atlantic integration aspirations, which is very important for us. It will boost further our democratic reforms. So that's why I would like once again to say that the importance of that document is very high for us and we will do our utmost to be compliant with the expectations of the United States of America and to start, say, real discussions and working on that document. In terms of investment, so I will not repeat the most attractive fields because Alexander already did that. Of course, energy, energy is my favorite topic as well. You know that. We had several discussions on how to make it more civilized because now we're introducing very important European-style reforms in our energy. We became a member of European energy community in 2017, so it's a very important commitment for us to rearrange our market toward European standards, to introduce all these major principles such as competitive market, power exchange, unbundling third-party access, security of supply and so on and so forth. Of course, transportation and logistics. We would like to share with investors and with American investors in particular, all benefits that Georgian geopolitical location offers. Of course, agriculture, our organic food to those who had the chance to meet Georgia, you know how let's say excellent cuisine opportunities were presented, our organic agricultural products and it's also a great business. In this respect, I would like to underline the important role of development institutions, of course, including OPIC, and I would like to use the chance and to thank Kenneth Angel, the great friend of Georgia for an enormous contribution to our development. OPIC, other development institutions, MCC, role of USAID, why it is important? Because, of course, still, American investments and American companies are still a bit hesitant. We are far from each other. We don't have a direct flight so far. So the awareness of Georgia should be built in future. We are trying our best, but still a small country. And that's why support from organizations like Overseas Private Investment Corporation can encourage more American businesses to come. You could share the risks of entering new frontier markets and of course, sharing of real life positive cases. It is also very important and it works. So that's all I can say in conclusion and I think that we'll have a good discussion with the audience, thank you. That sums up very well. Now, any additional thoughts from other two panelists? Is that working? If it's not, I have a very loud voice. Bottom line, one of the things that I look at with regard to MCC is we are the magnet. We are the pull that pulls a country forward and you've just heard some of the statistics. That all of a sudden provide normal relationships whereby the private sector will now be able to create jobs that are going to boost the economy. And the minister mentioned several times, OPIC. So if you look at a continuum, MCC brings the country forward as a pull. Now OPIC comes in. They can actually get bankable loans within the country. So that pulls everything forward. And again, it now creates an environment for many, many jobs. We've also done something that we talked about in terms of education. So we hope that many of those 3.8 grade point average students will now have a lot of very good jobs. Thank you. Alexander? Yeah, I think your question was what should Georgia be doing differently? What should Georgia be doing better? And I have to say, look, frankly Georgia is largely doing everything right economically and foreign policy wise as well. We heard on the previous panel the incredible support that Georgia has been providing militarily to the US and NATO in Afghanistan and elsewhere and the sacrifices they've been making. So my concern is not so much about what Georgia needs to do different. My concern is more on the part of the US and Europe and the West more broadly. And look, frankly speaking, Georgia deserves a free trade agreement. Georgia should have a NATO membership action plan. My worry is when I look at Georgia is whether Georgia in some number of years will start thinking about the broader geopolitical dynamics and will wonder whether there's enough reciprocation that's coming for all the steps that they've been taking. And you look at what happened to Turkey after years and years and years of the EU sort of dangling the EU membership carrot and moving the goal lines again and again and again and at some point Turkey sort of said, well, forget that. And we saw Turkey move a little bit out of the Western camp and tilt more towards the East. I would hate to see something similar happen to Georgia because the level of intentionality, the depth of pro-Western sentiment in Georgia is so strong and it would be a shame if the West didn't appreciate that and didn't reciprocate. Thank you, thank you for that, very good comments. Now I know you have a lot of burning questions but I'll invite just two questions and make that into one question. So who's gonna go? Maybe a lady over there, yeah. We welcome questions. Not statement. Hello, I have a question to our minister. I'm a journalist, blogger from Georgia. So I would like to ask you, Mrs. Turnava. So you've said Georgia is interesting country for investments and my question, for trade. My question is, how do we suggest international, what do we suggest international investors and businessmen when Georgia, according to the last deal you've signed with the gas problem has almost lost its energy independence? When we have no justice, when we have informal ruler, a feudal who owns justice system and government. So how do we suggest to invest in our country? So it's about energy sector. Maybe just one more question from gentlemen over here then. Thank you very much. Question for minister Turnava on the Anaklia port, the significance of the announcement today as well as the significance of having a deep water port that also can not only hit a cargo but also have free economic zones which open up a product to the European market tariff free because of your status with the EU. Also for the MCC, are you looking at developing community college types of capability within Georgia so that certifications for, let's say, business worthy capabilities, Cisco router certification, Microsoft server security, things that translate into positive developments for the business community, is this gonna be undertaken? Thank you very much. Thank you, let's go with these two first and then we'll see if we have some time. Minister, can you go quickly about energy sector? First of all, let me start from the energy sector and gas sector. As it was mentioned here several times and Prime Minister also said in his speech, Georgia is a transit country. It's a country in place where East meets West and South meets North. So in terms of East and West corridor, I also mentioned in my speech that we are supporting very actively development of southern gas corridor. We are contributing a lot in that. We are working to extend the importance of southern gas corridor and also to diversify supplies of gas, not only to Georgia but also to European Union by adding Turkmenistan to that chain and that's why we are welcoming development of TANAP and TAP and we are a country who hosts BTC pipeline. As for the North and South, we also are hosting some transit flows that are coming from Russia to Armenia. Historically, Georgia serves as a transit corridor for gas prompt to deliver gas flows to Armenia and we are capitalizing on that as well. So Georgia always has some benefits from that transit potential. So let me just clarify that if you look at our gas balance, I mean let's say indication of different flows of gas and suppliers of gas which is public and published on the website of the ministry, you will see that 96% of our market and consumption is covered by other gas and this is a gas which is supplied by two independent sources, from two independent sources. One is a state Azerbaijanian company Sokhar and another is our transit quote from BTC pipeline and that's what does it mean. What it means that our strategic consumers including population and generation of energy, our thermal power plants are fully supplied from Azerbaijanian gas and only in the private business, it's about four or 3% of the whole consumption, companies are allowed to buy some alternative gas from Gazprom. When we are talking about that figures, 96, 97% are covered by Azerbaijanian gas and only 3%, 4% might be covered by Russian gas of course it's obvious that Russian gas cannot dominate on our market. Well, we'll just, you know, I'm talking about figures, I'm talking about figures. Yeah, we'll have that discussion after this formal session. So we really respect your, please respect our time please. So once again, I encourage you to visit our website and just have a look what is a gas balance. Ugh. May I just comment on MCC and the question? I thank you so much for that question. Very proud to report that the government of Georgia stepped up to a very big plate and provide $10.5 million so that the fifth cohort into SDSU will start in the fall of 2019 and with that the graduation day will be 2023. So the education will continue to spur and continue to go on. We're very proud of that. We together had a very good springboard but the government of Georgia made a very major commitment so this would extend beyond our compact. Thank you, thank you. There was a question about Anaklia port also. Sure. Yeah, very briefly. So it was mentioned several times and I would like also to reiterate that Anaklia deep sea port represents a strategic importance for Georgia. While our port infrastructure is quite developed we still lack deep sea port that will be able to handle cargo and big vessels like Panamax and post Panamax vessels and through development of Anaklia port we will increase our freight turnover but at the same time Anaklia port has also strategic political meanings because when it comes to such a big investment in our logistic infrastructure it's always strengthen our security. It's always strengthen our territorial integrity. That's why government of Georgia is so committed toward that project. We're supporting that project financially, legally by building very massive infrastructure, additional railroads, additional electricity infrastructure and transferring land and so on and so forth. And of course coming back to your particular question this project will have enormous positive impact to the adjustment areas including new free trade zone and new Anaklia city. These not all benefits that I can list it that we're expecting from development of Anaklia port but in general I would like to say and to confirm that we are highly committed toward this project. We do hope to conclude negotiations very soon. Thank you. Thank you, thank you Madam Minister. Our former sessions times up but that doesn't mean the end of discussion. So we'll end this session with a round of applause but we'll continue our discussion outside probably. Thank you very much. Thank you.