Yerevan, Armenia
Interview
PETROS GHAZARIAN (via translation): Good evening, dear viewers, we continue to follow the most important news. You know that USAID Administrator Samantha Power is in Armenia now, and she is in our studio now. We will try to understand the purpose and the details of her visit. Good evening, Administrator Power, thank you for accepting our invitation.
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Great to be here, my visit comes at a time of incredible possibility for the people of Armenia and for the U.S.-Armenia relationship, but also a sense of heightened vulnerability among our Armenians. And so, you know, I'm very struck as somebody who's followed events in Armenia for many years, outside of government and now in government, that the people-to-people ties between the American people and the Armenian people have always been very strong, because, of course, Armenian-Americans are such an important part of our society, and successive U.S. governments have supported the Armenian people and civil society and so forth.
But what's happening between the U.S. government and the Armenian government, I think, is exceptional and new. The upgrade in our relationship to a Strategic Partnership is really significant. The doubling, for example, of USAID programming over the last couple of years is really significant. But the reason I've come now is to say – okay, our relationship is getting stronger, our ties are getting even deeper, what does it mean to address Armenia's desire to forge a more independent path, to have more resilience in its trading relationships, in its energy sources, in its food security.
And so the focus of my trip is really on this idea of resilience and working toward a day where U.S. programs and U.S. private sector investment support an Armenia that feels secure, economically, politically, and in terms of human rights within its own borders.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Today, during your press conference you said that we should make a transition from assistance to trade. What does it mean?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, for starters, again, in listening to what Armenians are telling me, there is a desire to diversify trade partnerships so that not all that is manufactured here in Armenia is exported just to, you know, one or two countries, but rather that there's a broad variety of markets. For example, for Armenian why, for Armenian agricultural goods, as Armenia becomes a provider of technological services, you know, that there's a broad export market for those services. So that is what I hear, is the desire to have a more diversified set of trade partners.
Already, we've seen a tripling of trade between the United States and Armenia since 2020. But we think that that is just the beginning. And that is – that we are on a trajectory, where the trading relationship gets much more expanded with time. And this is something the Prime Minister [Nikol Pashinyan] raised with me today, it’s something he really wants to see happen. Where USAID comes in, we are an assistance agency. But I like to think of USAID as a catalyst. You know, what is the thing that when I talk to an American company or large multinational, where they say, yeah, we were thinking, but it seems too risky. And then we, operating on the ground in partnership with the government, can talk about the kinds of reforms that might be needed here to make the investment climate more attractive. It's already the government's work in promoting transparency and fighting corruption has helped a lot. I mean, it used to be that when things were very corrupt here and starting a business or making an investment required, you know, a lot of back dealing, that actually would put an American investor at risk under U.S. law. So as the anti-corruption reforms progress and deepen and take hold here, that is going to remove one of the deterrence to investment, you know, from American companies.
But the other thing is awareness, we can take advantage of the broad diaspora networks that exist in the United States, to make sure that people are aware of the tech boom here, that they are aware of the educated young people who are getting STEM education, some of which USAID is supporting, who are getting exposure to energy security, tools and training that puts them in a position to be part of the new clean energy economy. You know, there's not a lot of knowledge about how much Armenia has changed over the last decade, in terms of the nature of its economy. And I think, if we can address this information asymmetry, bring Armenian delegation, excuse me, bring American private sector delegations to our meeting to get exposure to the workforce, to the goods and services that are being produced here, I think there's a possibility to really accelerate the trade relationship.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Has the trade tripled indeed? From $96 million USD to $320 million USD? The growth is impressive, but in our overall turnover it is not that big. Do you think there is potential to really increase these economic relations?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I don't think there's any question. I mean, already, again, we've seen a tripling yes, from a small number, to a modest sized number. But I think, again, the key will be deepening a mutual understanding.
One of the things that USAID has done, for example, in the wine sector, is work with vineyards here, and the owners of those vineyards to better understand the markets that they are trying to penetrate. So, for example, we commissioned studies so that the growers here know what the tastes are in the markets that they are trying to reach. Already, we've seen a significant increase in the export of Armenian wine to Europe, and to the United States and beyond. That's a small example maybe, although wine is, you know, a really wonderful feature of the Armenian economy and very steeped in the culture and the history, so I think it's a great example.
But it speaks to making sure that the growers, and the manufacturers, and the service providers here are very intentional about which markets they are seeking to penetrate and that they are tailoring their marketing in that direction. And that is something USAID facilitates and supports all around the world. So I think we have expertise to bring to bear I think in the wine sector, at the very least we already see the results of this work and these partnerships.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Last year, we saw that you went to the border and met, in person, the people displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh. How has USAID helped the displaced persons from Nagorno-Karabakh so far and what specific programs are in place to assist them?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, let me just say that seeing those families as they came across the border after experiencing what they went through. Not only the immediate days before they fled, but for the many months in which they were not able to get access to food and medicine in the way that they had been with the closure of the Lachin Corridor – hearing those stories and seeing the fear and the pain in the eyes of those families is not something I'll ever forget.
And so we have stepped in and supported efforts to provide in the first instance food and ad hoc shelter, psychosocial support, particularly for the kids. A lot of parents are grappling with their own trauma with everything they've left behind. And it's a very difficult thing to know how to address a child's questions, and everything that they have gone through. So those are examples, I think, of the kind of support that we're offering.
You know, one of the things I talked to the Prime Minister about today, of course, are the efforts of the government to make sure that these people from Nagorno-Karabakh have access to employment. You know, many of the people who have come across already have been able to get access to employment, many have not and still seek employment. But each month, the number of people who have found work is going up. Housing is a major issue, the government is launching a major initiative to provide housing to those families. USAID has provided more technical support to the Labor Ministry as it thinks through how to prioritize the provision of housing. Since the very beginning, there isn't enough housing for everyone, but gradually the desire to provide housing. So, you know, I think these are examples of sectoral support that USAID either provides or provides analysis to support that the government is doing.
There's no question, this is a very big priority for Prime Minister Pashinyan and his administration, every Minister and Deputy Minister that I met with raised this question. And so we will be continuing to try to tailor our programming for the needs as they evolve, because the needs today are different than those in September, and so too a year from now, they will be different.
And I'll just give you one example. I visited yesterday with a small business, a restaurant, that was started by a man who fled Nagorno-Karabakh four years ago. And USAID provided support access to capital technical support, you know, for him, as he has attempted to grow his business. He is hiring mainly out of the pool of people who came in September. I met with a number of the mothers and women who had found employment through him. And you know, many of them, one of them, hasn't had any contact with her husband, doesn't know the fate of her husband. Another is building a new life, has her kids in school, you know, has things on track. Every individual and every family's experience is going to be different.
And so too I think USAID has to be nimble. When we see opportunities like that where there's a business that itself is creating job opportunities for people who have come – now that is something we should rush into trying to support.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Administrator Power, the topics we are discussing will always remain a question if Armenia does not resolve its most important issue: the issue of peace – that is, if peace with Azerbaijan is not achieved. How is USAID supporting the current peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan and what role do you see for the Agency in promoting stability in the region? And I would also like to know how USAID assists the Armenian Government’s “Crossroads of Peace” initiative?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: We are very supportive of the Crossroads of Peace and very grateful for the initiative. I think one of its features that is very important is, as difficult as the negotiations are, and as difficult as any compromise is by either party in the negotiations, what having the Crossroads of Peace initiative out there does is it presents a picture of what can be on the other side of those difficult negotiations. And sometimes that is what is missing in negotiations – is a sense of what can be unlocked if the negotiations bear fruit. And so, you know, I know from my having been a diplomat and doing negotiations myself, what is very real to the negotiator is the cost of making a change, any deviation from the status quo. And often, what you don't see when you're in those talks is the future, and the bounty, and the opportunity.
So what USAID is doing in support of Crossroads of Peace is, for example, trying to commission studies on connectivity, to show what not only what it would mean economically, to have newly opened trade corridors, for example, if you have the middle corridor or to have enhanced energy connectivity, for example, between Armenia and Georgia as well. But to actually identify which places one could make optimal investments. In other words, to provide a kind of menu as to what the governments and the private sector could pursue, in the event that these negotiations are locked, which you rightly say, is the most important foundation for economic growth and stability in this region, which is peace.
I would note that right now, I think, as we sit here, I think Secretary [Antony] Blinken is meeting with the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers to engage on the substance of the negotiations. A lot has happened, you know, very tangible steps have been taken. But obviously, as always happens in negotiations, the hardest issues, you know, remain out there to be solved. But I think what we at USAID are able to do is really show what the economic, energy, telecommunications return on peace will be – what the peace dividend can look like. And then be in a position if the parties are able to come to an agreement, hopefully to move out very quickly to bring that peace dividend about or to support, of course, Armenia and Azerbaijan and bring that peace dividend about. One of the advantages of being USAID is that we have Missions in Armenia and Azerbaijan, in Georgia. You know, we have teams that can talk to one another and I think that can be really helpful in bringing a regional perspective to our programs.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): You emphasized the energy sector several times, and it is one of the vulnerable aspects in Armenia. How does USAID contribute to Armenia’s energy security and promote renewable energy initiatives?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, what we've been doing over the last couple of years as the government has formulated its own energy plan, its own energy strategy, is that we have been providing technical assessments about what a diversified energy portfolio can and should look like. And, I actually got educated on this myself yesterday, and came to understand, you know, the small role that solar energy, for example, plays in Armenia's energy portfolio right now. And what the greater ambition for having a much larger share of solar production by 2030. The Prime Minister's goal, of course, is to have half of Armenia’s energy produced through renewables by 2030. That's a very ambitious timeline. So what we will do is talk to our colleagues at, for example, the Development Finance Corporation, in the multilateral development banks and others, other investors who might be willing to make investments in the renewable space that is happening all around the world is already happening in Armenia, can it happen at a more accelerated pace.
This is where, again, we come back to the fact that the political reforms and the transparency and accountability efforts that the government is making, the faster those reforms move, the more easily it will be to crowd in capital in, for example, the energy sector. So with renewables, I think we'd be looking for outside investment and USAID will do its part to try to rally that. Right now, this is about understanding where and how solar, for example, fits into the larger picture.
The other thing that we've been emphasizing is, you know, the importance of not having monopolies in the energy sector. You know, this is true in the United States. It's true in every country in the world, when any single company has a monopoly that's very rarely going to be good for the consumer. It's not going to be good from a price point, usually over time, but it's also not going to be good from a reliability standpoint. And I know Armenians can remember, older Armenians especially can remember the dark years, where energy was very intermittent and unreliable. And nobody wants to get into a situation where Armenia finds itself energy vulnerable again. So we think the liberalization of the electricity market, which has begun – where you now have people able to buy and sell or particularly large industrial buyers, buying and selling electricity in a manner that is the beginning of this diversification.
And what USAID does is it trains people who work, you know, on the corporate side, who are attempting to or considering using the electricity market, we offer training to people within the government who are thinking about how to demonopolize. And I was yesterday at the Polytechnic at a New Energy Lab, where young people and faculty will get exposure, again, to the kinds of skills and the kind of privatization knowledge that will be very important as that privatization and liberalization occurs over time. So those are just a few examples.
But fundamentally, again, we are a supporter, we are a friend, we are a partner. But the initiative for this is coming through the government's own energy strategy, which recognizes as all of us do, that diversification is a guard against shocks. And we've all experienced the shock of COVID, the shock of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the shock recently of the Houthi attacks on civilian commercial shipping in the Red Sea, around the corner it seems there are always so many shocks. So that is why a diversity of trading partners, a diversity of energy sources becomes very important.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Recently, during the trilateral meeting in Brussels, USA and EU announced the new financing for Armenia. Will you tell us more about this financing, how it will be used, and in general, Ms. Power, how do these various high level meetings help the citizens of Armenia to visibly develop the economy and democracy?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, I attended a meeting in Brussels with Secretary Blinken, Minister [Ursula] von der Leyen, and I was there. And it was a very productive discussion that we might have about his priorities, particularly in the economic sphere. That was the first meeting in fact that I heard his lay down of the very ambitious plans that the government has to house the people from Nagorno-Karabakh, which is also, you know, an initiative that will take a significant toll on the budget. It's an expensive initiative to provide such housing.
I'd say out of that meeting, USAID has developed a Memorandum of Understanding with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, about how we can support at the end the agenda that the government itself has laid out. USAID announced about $33 million worth of new initiatives. It will take time, of course, for those initiatives to translate into jobs. But one of the domains that I think we're making rapid progress on is the digital domain, where the Prime Minister has prioritized digitization across every sector.
USAID has worked in other countries, including actually in Ukraine, building Ministries of digital transformation, and helping support the development of apps on the phone or a single app in which you can access virtually all government services that you would need. The app and the platform that we helped develop in Ukraine, there are actually 120 government services available through the platform online, many of those on the app. And that's really important as an anti-corruption tool. It's really important because it is a service-delivery tool. And it is really important because it also gives citizens the chance to speak at governance and to hold them accountable, including to be critical. It can be a rapid form of almost direct democracy.
If you're a government, you can put forward an initiative and immediately get a response from citizens as to how they feel about a particular legislative proposal, for example. But you can use your pension or you can also get payment through a digital platform. So you don't have to go through any middleman, and, and maybe you don't even have to travel to the bank. So, USAID has a lot of experience doing this kind of work elsewhere. And this is an example of something that we are accelerating.
In fact, today, I launched a new partnership with the Deputy Prime Minister [Mher Grigoryan], and within the Digital Ministry, with Amazon Web Services, where because the Armenian government has decided to move so many of its operations to the cloud, Amazon Web Services is now going to come in and expand its efforts to protect citizen privacy. At the same time, it seeks to expand the use of the cloud. And again, the cyber protections for relying on a cloud in the neighborhood. That, of course, is a very challenging one – the neighborhood in which it finds itself.
MR. GHAZARIAN (via translation): Looking ahead, what are USAID’s priorities in Armenia and what can Armenians expect in the near future?
ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, we don't come in from the outside with our rucksack of priorities. I mean, one of the reasons that we take trips like this is to listen and to learn, and to make sure that our priorities meet the moment. So what I have heard loud and clear, from young people, from private sector leaders, from government officials, you know, they may all disagree on different things. But this emphasis on national independence, and resilience is a message that I will take back with me to Washington.
So, I think the work in energy security is obviously urgent. Crowding in other international actors to make sure that, you know, this is not just about funding studies or having technical expertise on what is needed, but where actual infrastructure investments are being made that are going to put Armenia in a stronger position. Food security, with drought and with flood, you can feel the temperature in Yerevan today, we can imagine what it is out, like out in the fields.
I announced a new public private partnership today where we will look at developing drought and flood resistant seeds that are specifically tailored for the Armenian farmer. This is, you know, a subset of a larger priority which is Armenia's ongoing economic growth and progress.
The last thing I would emphasize is something we haven't talked about yet which is the media environment. Over the years, USAID has, you know, in believing in checks and balances and believing that every government needs to be held accountable by a free press, and that policies that are subtend programs that are subjected to the scrutiny of the independent media, end up being better – corruption ends up being identified, programs get improved, citizen input is allowed. So independent media is incredibly important that holds government accountable.
And so even as USAID works with the government, we believe so much in these external checks and balances. But one of the other areas where resilience is needed is in the area of misinformation. And the importance of the integrity of information. I was very struck meeting with young people here, just describing, you know, how much they are on their phones, and just the flood of lies that, you know, confront them every day. So, I would say another priority for us is investing in media literacy, so that young people and older people know that just because something is on their phone doesn't mean that it is true. After all those years of trying to support the development of an independent media, now, any one person can just tweet something and you know, it can be seen as the gospel in certain places.
I will say with humility, as you know, from maybe watching the American political scene from afar, that no country, no leader has figured out quite how to deal with misinformation and the chaos of the information sphere right now. But media literacy and developing that critical thinking in young people is a critical part of the equation so we can at least start there.