Administrator Samantha Power’s Opening Intervention at the C5+1 Development Ministerial

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you, and welcome to all of you and thank you for welcoming me to Uzbekistan and the broader region. I’m truly pleased to have the opportunity to meet with you today.

This is an inflection point for Central Asia – a moment of tremendous opportunity to substantiate the goals laid out last month by your leaders and President Biden at the UN General Assembly. At that meeting, which I had the privilege of attending with President Biden, the U.S. President reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to strengthen the sovereignty, resilience, and prosperity of all your nations. And many of your countries have taken important steps to do just that – enacting reforms to attract more investment, working to share energy and water resources with one another, and recognizing the value of working with civil society partners to, among other successes, eliminate child and forced labor and promote accountability of leaders to their people.

All of these steps have the potential to increase wages, stability, and overall prosperity in each of your countries. And as President Biden highlighted at the UN last month, increasing economic connectivity will be crucial for this goal – both to drive economic growth in your own countries and to help all of your citizens benefit from inclusive growth.

By taking real steps to lower barriers to interregional and international trade, you have the tools to attract new investment to the region, to find new markets for your exports, and to help your farmers, entrepreneurs, and small and medium-sized business owners see their incomes grow. You will facilitate exchanges of knowledge and tools that can help you all diversify your economies – sharing innovations, adapting to climate change, and more efficiently harnessing renewable sources of energy. And expanding trade to more markets, which USAID is very excited to help you do, will help you open up new avenues to equitably and efficiently drive economic growth for all your nations. 

Throughout history, right from the time of the Silk Road, this region has shown us how trade, and the human connections fostered by trade, drives transformative progress. You have an opportunity to do the same today – to model for the rest of the world how trade and collaboration among neighboring countries benefits all citizens, strengthens sovereignty, increases true and enduring stability, and brings prosperity for all.

And the United States stands ready to support you – because, as President Biden said in his meeting with your leaders in New York last month, “we are stronger… and the world is safer when we stand together.”

Thank you so much.