country. and we certainly want all the right things to happen. ..

>> now the russian ambassador to the u.s. talks about the upcoming g20 summit in st. petersburg russia. following his remarks white house advisor for international economics caroline atkinson on the summits history and purpose. from the center for strategic and international studies, this is 45 minutes. >> good morning. my name is matthew goodman. i hold the assignment chair at csis and i'm delighted to welcome you all here. thank you for peddling here this

morning on a soggy friday morning in july. let me recognize our on line audience in addition to the many people in the room. we have a strong on line audience. you are welcome to follow us on twitter at csis and tweet a way. please turn off all of your noise makers and other devices so we don't disrupt the speakers. we have started a tradition of doing it sounds like this ahead of these big summits. g20 is the biggest of them all in the area i work on. it will be held labor day just after labor day in st. petersburg russia and we normally would do this two or three weeks out but because of the summer holidays and everything we thought we would get an early start. we are delighted to have a terrific lineup of speakers today which we will get started with and in just one second. we will have after our two keynote speakers the russian ambassador and the u.s. sherpa we will have an expert panel and

then a very short break and then we are going to have a senior sherpa perspective on the g20 summit and the agenda they are on. with no further ado let me introduce the president and ceo of csis. >> thank you all for coming. i am surprised not to see people dripping. there is a lot of water here these days. there is a very important i look we are going to have this morning and i want to say thanks for all of you for braving it to get here. there forms of internationalism. structural treaty-based internationalism and then consensus internationalism. we all know about structural internationalism places like united nations and the imf where country spend time developing a framework structure and it

becomes, it's one of the dominant certainly characteristic of internationalism over the last 60 years. the advantage of it of course is that is normative. the next generation knows the things that are important because they have grown up with institutions that these institutions also become brittle over time and they don't work as well over time. so there is a preference often with countries to use consensus-based international, coalitions of the willing, just find people to agree with you and let's go off and do it. the problem is sufficient that it's not normative. it doesn't really carry over to the next big problem. this is what the international world community has been wrestling with and in many ways it was the impulse to create the g20. you know the imf and the world bank and the u.n., we are going to be able to keep up and cope with the crisis as it was unfolding in the great recession

was starting in 2008 and 2009. let, you know what were the institutions that were available that were more flexible? the g8? g8? well the g8 is considered to be a bunch of rich white guys. it certainly isn't considered to be representative of the broad community but how do you bring a big community together? the international community chose to create something, the g20 and i think it was enormously important in helping at a crucial time to give a sense of direction of a sovereign nation to implement things that there needed to be some form and method to bring it together and get some shared coherence. that is kind of the foundation where we got here but now we asked the question where's the g20 going? is it really going to be a normative structural overtime?

how does it do that? it's unclear and part of it is the backdrop of what we are going to be dealing with in this conversation. we are going to be thinking together, people that have an interest. how do we find a shared purpose in an international way on such a complex problem and not fall into the trap of having you know shifting into a structure that becomes brittle over time. is there legitimacy of this configuration? certainly is more broadly based than the g8 is but is it, doesn't have the command power? these are the kinds of questions. now we are lucky one of the most skilled diplomats in the world is with us today, sergei kislyak a long-standing friend and we prevailed upon him to come

obviously because rush is going to be the host for this g20 summit but also because of his personal talent as a diplomat. he has been in washington during some pretty choppy days. these are not the easiest times to be the russian ambassador in washington. but he has handled it with skill and with enormous strategic insight and we are very fortunate that someone like him is here now. this is not the best of days in our relations with each other that it's made dramatically better because of his presence and visibility. so with your applause please welcome the honorable sergei kislyak. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for that presentation but i always feel a little bit oversold and certainly it -- i was invited to make a

welcoming address. now i am upgraded two keynote speaker and thank you for that. however i was thinking how different my speech would be and what's the difference between welcoming and keynote? in my view both are something that help you to understand what is the russian view in and the organization that we are discussing. several points. one, this is one of the youngest multilateral mechanisms that is addressing problems that are unifying. and it's one of the institutions where russia and the united states however different positions on the issues, work together.

so being in the same economic crisis, the united states us in the other countries brought us together into a mechanism that may be short of being a director at on normative -- as a formed mechanism where people can discuss and reconcile national strategies in the multilateral world very entered to find economies. at the g20 as far as i understand has proved to be rather efficient. i'm not suggesting that it was able to resolve all the issues of the crisis but being upgraded in 2008 it did exist prior to death in somewhat more working formats. but in 2008 there was a decision made in order to have it on the level of the leaders and that creates a kind of normative

character to the whole kind of consensus that can be achieved with this mechanism. rush of being a country that 20 or 22 years that we are an integrated part of the world market. that means for us we have high-stakes in the vitality and the health of the economic relations in the world. we are adjusted in seeing the international trade would be favorable for us as well. we certainly also depend on the markets outside russia being an important exporter of things. and for us being in the chair this organization is unique opportunity not only to help

together with the others to form a consensus on the current issues but also to bea to contribute to the solutions, looking through the optics of our own problems and our own goals. the two main subjects that we have her post for the g20 summit this year are sustained growth and creating jobs. they are not necessarily new to the agenda of the g20, but to focus on these issues is very important because specialists are focusing on how to achieve that kind of strategy. certainly the national solutions in the national strategies will be decided by each and every country but the way to reconcile it has to talk about the issues and i think currently we do not find another that would be as

usable for that kind of thing sg 20 taking into account the composition of the countries that are involved. i would also like to say that russia currently enjoys pretty solid economic situation in relative terms. with the average growth rate in the world is about 3.2% and russia is 3.4. is it enough for us? of course not. we want much higher -- before the crisis and we hope to be able to restore it in the future. but at the same time it's still solid and we hope it will be on the increase with in years to come. we also find an increase in our

job base. we have an ambitious plan to create additional 25 million jobs. all jobs and creating new. all of this requires a lot of investment so the environment for the investment is also one of our national priorities. currently the climate according to the national ratings isn't among the top 20 i would say but i wish we would have a chance to get in the same kind of format in five years. i'll bet we will be in the 20. we are working hard creating conditions for a russia that would be considered by other outside investors as good as the 20 best countries in the world. but even today i think our investment climate is very much

underrated and we are much better than some -- at the same time also when it comes to the russian economy, we have enjoyed a pretty stable fiscal environment. we have accumulated significant reserves. we have to fund. one with $84 billion in another reserve fund that is another 80 plus billion dollars. and the national reserves are 500 plus billion dollars as well. we are almost debt-free country because our external debt is no more than 2.4% and including internally that is around 10 or 11%. if you compared with the g8 countries with a country that

hosts us today i think we are doing in relative terms significantly better. so, for us g20 is a very important mechanism whereby we will try to harmonize national with the others in a way that will be advancing national goals and also being part of the international community working on the crisis because we stand to benefit from the healthy international economic environment as any other g20 country and many others. so the chairmanship of this organization brings a lot of additional work for a russia that we like it because it gives also us an opportunity to invite the best specialists on all the

economic issues of the current situation, financial, job creation specialist. in a week plus minus we are going to have a unique forum that will bring together ministers of finance and ministers of labor of the g20 that is pretty unique and they understand it will give him a chance to discuss what can be done with the priorities that we have. so, g20 is going to be a significant event in the economic discussions in its own right. it will be an important event for us because of our enrollment and i hope it's going to be another confirmation that we all stand to benefit more by working

together rather than working against each other. and economics today is one of these areas. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we will take our seats again. okay. welcome back. i hope everyone had a chance to get a cup of coffee. so i am just delighted to introduce the first of two former bosses participating in today's program.

caroline atkinson as the deputy national security adviser for international economics at the white house. she is an old colleague and friend of mine and boss, twice and she has actually been at the white house for a couple of years working on a range of international economic issues, all the important ones including the g20 which she has now inherited as a sherpa for the united states. that is the president's premier advisor on this important summit. she has a very long and distinguished career and international finance at the bank of england. that is "the washington post" and the times of london and of course the u.s. treasury department where we work together and number of years ago. and importantly her biography says she was born in washington d.c.. like me, that is also true. we have parents of reddish origin but unlike me her parents were wise enough to spend enough

time in the u.k. that she picked up that wonderful accent that i unfortunately did not. you will see in the second. with that caroline. >> thanks very much matt. it does require a little bit of explanation when i show up as president obama's chauffeur and in fact the g8 david cameron said i had been wondering whose side you are really on. anyway it's a pleasure to be here this morning and i've want to exclaim to our colleagues that i was just meeting with my russian counterpart so he said that is why she is not here and i said she is why i am late. i think that goes to part of what is so valuable about the g20. i should be clear and interest because when matt and i were working together at the treasury department it was the birth of

what became the g20. with the asian crisis in the late 90s it was clear that there wasn't really a right grouping of countries to discuss the important issues that crisis revealed and their traditional g7 in those days was too heavily dominated or just consisted of the advanced and big industrialized countries but the crisis is going on in a part of the world that was really underrepresented in those groupings. and i think it was singapore, then singapore leader who suggested to president clinton that there should be some meeting of officials and senior officials and ministers to discuss these important issues in a more global context and president clinton charged bob rubin and larry summers who subsequently been charged me

with putting together what was then the g20 two. i think the first meeting took place at the willard hotel and it was called the willard group. in those days it was extremely difficult to figure out as we were developing which countries whether antony show or russia or brazil, turkey. we didn't have counterparts that we clearly and usually were in contact with in the united states. and so we began to build up this network and of course it's subsequently evolved into a quite established process of finance ministers and central bank governors meeting on a regular basis and briefly was the g. 33 and then it was that was the g20. and then that i felt very pleased when the g20 kind of came in to itself, came into its own in 2008 and 2009 with the global financial crisis which of course we all thought that was

the worst thing that could happen but we discovered that it could be worse with the whole globe starting in the u.s.. we realize that the g20 route together the countries that needed to be at the table when you had that global economic trouble in that required corporate event coordinated action and meeting at the leaders level really help to promote the breakthroughs in london 2009 that were so important for helping to pull a broken economy back from the brink of the worst recession since the second world war, but it could've been the worst depression. so that stage i think the g20 kind of proved itself in those early days. it proved itself with the way that you could get leaders focused to drive other economic

institutions to take the kind of action that was needed and to understand the spillover from one country to another. since then of course things have changed a lot and the g20 has a new and not less acute but complex challenge now i think which is how to deal with more chronic issues of the need for coordination. my personal view and the view of my government and my president is that the g20 remains extremely important. it was sort of do the premier economic forum after 2008 and 2009 for global economic coordination and debate. i think it remains that. the problems that we now face are not the cute ones of the

financial crisis. they are more chronic ones of still too slow recovery from the crisis, still too high unemployment in many countries including here and we still face the issues of how we can all work together so that our economic policies are supported within the framework of sustained balanced and strong growth in a way that we can understand each other. now in the past couple of years as many of you will know and matt certainly knows the summits have tended to be a bit dominated by an acute crisis, again not a global crisis but a european crisis and can which was my first g20 summit in this role working for the white house dominated by what was happening with greece and the referendum and so on. in los cabos it was another very

interesting moment for the g20 because some of the emerging markets sometimes feel well, we don't get to discuss what the big countries do and we want to have the boys because they affect us. i think that really happened in mexico and if you go back and look at the leaders statement he will see that the europeans who were at that stage in the crosshairs if you'd like with the crisis really put on the table some important steps that they plans to take and of course after the june los cabos summit there were important steps taken in europe that really lowered the temperature and help to provide financial healing. as we look at the agenda this year and we have the imf and i know my former colleague will be coming later, we have the imf telling us all that the global

outlook and the latest release is work than they expected and then we expected. just recently. i think that we in the u.s. are finding that the recovery is perhaps a little stronger than was expected and there is healing going on but we still recognize we have worked to do. if we look at the rest of the world almost everywhere other than japan interestingly enough the outlook is more disappointing was not maybe the big downside risks but still with a lot of concerns that have been expected just a few weeks ago. so we think that a focus that leaders will want to gain to focus on how we can really get this recovery on a steady and strong path. that is a big challenge for us and all other countries. and i think that what has been

happening in emerging markets just recently will also -- yeah. we'll also put an extra interest from the whole group on these basic macroquestions. last year as europe and it wasn't clear how quickly we were getting out of ali and had not decisively turned down in europe obviously was still struggling with a lot of difficult issues, the emerging markets looked as if they could decouple. i think we have seen more recently that as a lot of emerging markets remain concerned and it's important for the big knots of industrialized countries to have that discussion around a table the table that includes all of the major economies, 80% of gdp

about how the policies that we all carry out affect each other and that is not always an easy way, an easy conversation to have but it is a critical one because it helps us to understand better how things seem from other parts of the world and that's true from everybody else's point of view. so there are other issues that over the years have been added to the agenda. i was just having a debate yesterday with one of my other sherpa colleagues who was saying really we should do a kind of back to basics only worry about the global economy debate. i don't really agree with that because they think part of of the power of the g20 also is a these countries if we make policy commitments, they can have an important role in setting a global agenda and in affecting the global economy in a larger sense, not just the fiscal deficits but other

important areas. one of the important steps that the g20 has taken in recent years which might seem not central to the global macrodebate that is of enormous importance in the world was to agree not to put on export dance for food products at times of shortage and that has been a really important -- that helps a lot of countries to explain to their domestic audiences why they were not in times of shortage resorting to -- and we know from the work that imf and others have done that these export bans actually worsened the global food crisis. just an example of how one of global world what any country does can really have a quick and immediate impact. that has led to an important development of more transparency and agricultural pricing and there is a group that meets to talk about that promotes that

which helps markets to grow. another key area is trade. we are always saying and most of the g20, it's our position that the g20 is not a place to be doing trade negotiations. in fact in a way the sherpa's are the masters of all and if none. we don't really know in great tale -- detail but we try to represent our leaders on a whole bunch of topics. on trade for example what we can do is give a political push. two years ago in cann it was quite important that after years and years in teaching that we are going to complete the doha round quickly leaders agreed that it was time to look at fresh and credible approaches in order to revise the multilateral trading ground. they also earlier had agreed to a standstill on protectionist measures. there was a piece in the newspaper i think yesterday

about how protection was the dog that did not arc. i don't want to claim everything for the g20 but the fact that leaders were there. they were able to come to agreement that they would resist the temptation to put on protectionist measures despite the enormous challenges faced in their economies was one important element in helping to preserve the open trading system. and this year of course there has been a lot of focus especially in the u.s. and especially on the trade priorities of the u.s. and my predecessor mike furman with transpacific partnership and more recently the launch of the trans-atlantic trade partnership or ttip there was some question on where was the world trading system going? they think the g20 can send an important signal that we care about the wto and the maintenance and revitalization if you like of the wto and the

multilateral trading ground and we are very hopeful that in bali when the wto meets later this year it will be possible to reach an agreement around a package that is the genuine value to all of the nations around trade facilitation. maybe it goes a little further than that but it's a step forward rather than a repeat of discussions that have not been getting anywhere much. and the trade area in the climate is another very important area and energy security. these are all areas where traditionally there have been a sort of fear that emerging and advanced economies were kind of on one side and emerging and developing countries should be treated differently. i think as we have worked around the g20 table and bilaterally it's clearer and clearer that

the emerging, the major economies need to talk about these issues on a sort of, not that everybody is the same but on a basis where we recognize that we all have obligations. this came up and you would have seen in today's newspaper in our discussions this week with china there was a recognition that we need to have a joint climate plan and trade, climate and other things. what the major economies do in the emerging world is important for the international system just as with the big industrialized economies do. so another couple of issues that i think have been very important that the g20 has championed. in the energy field in 2009 we called for phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies, wasteful fossil fuel subsidies and everybody could sign up to that but then the next -- question was what is a subsidy and what is what is

the wasteful one and a lot of debate about that. this year under russian leadership we are taking steps towards looking at a peer review may be involving some of the international institutions so that there is more transparency in understanding about the need to act on fossil fuel subsidies. the imf did this great work in the spring showing this half a trillion dollars a year spent holding down the prices of fossil fuels. if you think with the other part of our brains some countries people are looking at ways to price carbon and to raise the price of carbon at least you want to start off with not subsidizing it. but of course that is a very difficult political issue in many countries but it's one that we think we need to work on more and more especially as the cost of these subsidies have become really really crippling for some countries on their fiscal

policies. there are other issues, taxes where the g8 look at tax policy internationally. a really 20 needs to be involved in that debate and we look forward to that game one of the issues that comes up in russia as well. corruption which a lot of people 10 years ago might have said that's not really an economic issue. we know it is an economic issue and may not be, may not be such an economic issue in work and business and so on in what was the g7 but it certainly is an issue as we think about cross-border investment and how to help promote development. and the development is my last point. in the old days the g7 and g8 would talk about development very much and leaders from the poorest regions of the world, africa, and it would be very much and you may remember the

demonstration, very much removed from ngos and also from the countries, the poorer countries themselves to say to the richer ones well you are rich, what are you going to do to help this? where's your aid and so on and then the rich countries would be trying to push each other to do a bit more. that debate has really changed in the g8 where last year and this year under the u.s. and u.k. presidency there is then a broader group of developing countries pull together and a very different debate where it's much more about what can we do together as partners? what developing countries themselves the poorest ones due to it attracted -- devaney. the game, the real game is in both trade and also private capital and capital and domestic resource mobilization. in the g20 eight think it helped to push that recognition into

the g8 and to also show that it's no longer what is the g7 giving to africa? we know that china's investment in sub-saharan africa is very important. we know that brazil has took allergies that can help production in tropical areas if they share those. so there is much more the kind of common interest in how this kind of sharing and mutual support can help to advance goals as different as both the development goals for also the original global economy ones and financial regulation and so on and also through the help of areas that touch on how successful our international global and financial system can be for everybody. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much caroline. just a breathtaking presentation

of the scope of g20's work and her responsibilities which are fast and it's hard to see how one human being can cover all that ground. we are going to talk more -- that's true, you do have help. we are proud of what we do for sherpa's. caroline has time for a think a few questions so if you do have a question please wait for the microphone that i think are floating and please identify yourself and please make the question short. down there i see. and if you can say who you are as you ask a question. >> my name is anna and i'm here with reuters and i was wondering if you could speak a bit about some of the issues that are likely to come up with the next g20 meetings and especially fed

policy. how you will respond to some of the concerns emerging markets have raised about spillover effects and other issues like that. >> i'm not going to get into vet policy beards so simple rule for those of us in the white house. i will just say that i think what's important and what we see as important, and i think this is true for every country in the g20 that we need to bear in mind the importance of strengthening our own economies and then we need to strengthen our own economies in a play that supports the global economy. that's certainly the sort of focus of u.s. policy. we want to make, and we took very dramatic steps early on in the crisis on our banking system monetary policy and fiscal policy to hault the decline and

promote recovery and of course whatever country does x. every other country and that's something that the g20 provides a good forum for discussion and the most, the sort of guiding light of the g20 is that countries should be mindful -- country should talk about what it is that they can do to reinforce a strong global economy. >> robert from georgetown. i know trade is something you only tangentially talk on at the g20. could you go a little further about what you are seeing ahead for the next couple of years in terms of supporting the

multilateral negotiation and in addition to all of the many many fta's but there must be a strong trade agenda coming up. could you talk a little bit about what we will see and particularly support for multilateral? bsa said we think the multilateral agenda is very important and that is why we have been putting in an enormous amount of energy into having successful agreement or successful negotiations in bali which will come after this year's g. 20s so what i would hope is the g20 is able to provide some political soup poured for such an agreement centered around the court trade facilitation where there has been some quite interesting work done in geneva and also a lot of work. i think the oecd has calculated

how measures on trade facilitation can help importantly all kinds of countries and possibly support for trade and gdp is even greater in developing countries where there may be more barriers for moving goods to market and a smooth and efficient way. so we think that is an important element of the multilateral trade negotiations. >> there is then a new focus on economic relations and u.s. russian relations and the establishment of the commission between dmitri medvedev and joe biden and ambassador kislyak

just said some important things about the russian interests in the global economy and you just said you came from a meeting from sherpa. can you tell me if there's anything particularly russian about this agenda? like in the past to have that countries that have really had a mark on it. is there anything you see as important in terms of our own understanding of russia or the way the g20 should be shaped from a russian point of view? >> the ambassador spoke on that is coming later so i would prefer to let them define what they see as the sort of hallmarks of this from a russian perspective. all i would say is that of course every chair has a particular mark but at the same time every chair is responsive both to immediate defense, so if

you look at the los cabos summit that was in mexico, there was actually a fair amount of detail as i mentioned about european economic policy as well as a number of other issues and then part of of the point of the g20 is also that it is a global agenda so there is a balance always between the recognition of the global issues and the common issues and then the particular areas where the chair pushes. i think it's actually up to the chair to describe those. thanks. >> thank you very much for your remarks. with the upcoming -- i'm sorry, karen. with the upcoming g20 labor finance minister meeting do you see any room for discussion

getting beyond fiscal policy and on the terry policy and more inclusive growth and job development since there is a huge job deficit? >> thank you. i think increasingly we have been putting the issue of jobs and growth, growth and jobs, growth and job creation on the agenda and in fact russia this year made very clear that was one of the sort of key areas of focus for this year's summit. and i think that has only become more evident as the year has gone on. and we fully support that. i also believe that the coincidence of the labor and finance ministers, there have been one day overlapping i believe and will have some outcome from that, is particularly opposite this year.

it's a very good year for that discussion to occur. and i expect, i am hopeful that there can be some progress in understanding. we also believe that one should be talking about growth strategy and not just you know a separate fiscal strategy and a separate macroone. in the end if you ask what the leaders and their people want, and of course we can characterize growth in different ways. strong sustainable balance in all of this but we are really talking about the need for growth and improved living standards. thank you. [applause] >> more more now from the center forced to dziedzic and international studies with a discussion on the proposed agenda for the upcoming g20

summit in st. petersburg russia. speakers include the international monetary fund's david lipton and the g20 official from the office of the russian president. this discussion is a little less than an hour. >> welcome back. thank you again for participating this morning on a wet friday morning. it's great to see a good group here and i hear there a lot of people watching on line and welcome to as well. i am delighted to have on either side of me to people who individually would be a headline maker here, talking about a lot of issues that certainly about the g20. i'm delighted to have both of them at the same time for a conversation about the g20 and what to look forward to in the next couple of months after the summit in st. petersburg.

on my left is the second of the two former bosses that i alluded to earlier when i introduce caroline. david litman has been in that role for almost two years i think. david and i worked together at the white house and the treasury. he has a long distinguished were in international finance and the private sector and at the imf and u.s. treasury and academia and i think he is actually a pretty well-known figure in washington. so welcome to him. i should've said he got his ph.d. from an obscure institution in cambridge massachusetts because that is the lead into our other speaker. ksenia yudaeva is the russian g20 sherpa and that's a big responsibility this year as russia hosts. she is also the expert structured in the executive office of the president.

ksenia has been in office for over a year and has taken on recently the role of organizing st. petersburg summit in all the many related aspects of a hosting year in the g20. she was prior to government service again after long career in international economics including chief economist and she also worked in the washington think-tank in the moscow office and in addition to degrees from moscow state university and the new economic school she also has a ph.d. from another obscure institution in cambridge massachusetts which you can read about in the biography. delighted to have you both here. where going to go through the g20 agenda starting with the core three pillars that we which is talked about on the last panel. we will start with a macrogrowth, global growth story and i wanted to ask david, the

imf issued an update of its regular annual world economic outlook this week and you downgraded slightly the outlook of the global economy. when i looked back at the april lease i notice one thing that was different. back in april you were pretty positive about the emerging markets. you even have a headline and summary that said free accelerating activity in emerging markets and developing economies. what happened? >> let me start by saying a couple words about the g20. i think the g20 is as a group has been a very important one and it started with the washington meeting in 2008 and through the london summit in the pittsburgh summit in 2009 they really asked the question how do

we -- in the midst of a financial crisis and how do we make sure it never happens again? i think the the work that the g20 has done over the years we have seen very good cooperation among the g20 to deal with the most acute phases of the crisis, but we are now faced with the fact that recovery is disappointing. it has never really taken hold as strongly as we would like. yes we have in our most recent outlook downgraded growth a little bit. we have been saying for some time that we see growth with the most rapid growth in emerging markets. with some recovery but not strong enough recovery in the u.s. and a few other countries. and still quite disappointing situation in europe where they eurozone remains in session.

i think matt you're absolutely right that one of the more substantial revisions this time has been that the emerging market world has slowed somewhat. now to keep it in perspective is still the fastest growing part of the world and it's always hard to gauge exactly how high growth can be for how long in the emerging market world but i think we are seeing some slowdown and we are looking at the reasons for that. but we also downgraded growth in other parts of the world, everywhere except japan at least a little bit. again keeping this all in perspective i think the main point that i want you to take away is that growth has slowed somewhat in the latter part of last year and the first part of this year. we see it accelerating with some recovery this year and into next

year. what we see growth as remaining insufficiently strong to deal with the challenge of creating jobs at a pace that will allow countries to reduce unemployment rate satisfactorily and coming back to her subject of the day i think what that means is there is an important role for the g20 , which has of course countries from each of the country categories advanced emerging, different regional distributions. each of the countries in the g20 to play a part apart to work together in the g20 to try to find ways to through collective action to contribute to a stronger recovery. we have been speaking about that for some time and we will continue to take it out. >> i do want to come back to the policy response from the outlook

itself be mentioned here. a sort of began to see a schizophrenia in a and away about europe because on the one hand in april we seem palpably relieved that the euro area is not about to break up and this time the expression as you just said again that europe is not performing well enough but you show it accelerating our returning from recession to positive growth fairly significantly over the next 18 months. how should we think about europe now? be. [inaudible] >> has been afflicted by the crisis. i think it has taken a number of important decisions. europewide decisions and country decisions that have greatly reduced detail risk of quite an acute crisis but we still see a recession and we still see very significant problems and peripheral countries and a weakening of growth in the core

countries. when we go through this we don't see unfortunately we don't see a single silver bullet. bullet. it's not as though there is one policy that is heavily pushed and growth is restored. rather our recipe includes seeking action, policy action on every margin where there is some room to provide health and that is we do believe that the stronger monetary policy accommodation is necessary, that we have seen it kind of banking fragmentation across europe and a failure of banks to provide credit and supportive recovery so we think there is work for the european central bank and others in europe to try to work on including the distribution for the monetary policy that provides an impulsive and that is felt more broadly.

we see a job for continued fiscal adjustment but adjustment at a pace that is determined country by country, where countries that really need to adjust quickly do so for countries that have some elbow room to provide support to their economies and a range of structural reforms that can be supportive of growth, raising potential growth over time. leslie we see an important role for improving some of the architecture of europe itself. it's been in a sense an imperfect currency zone and economic union. it's a single market for goods but it's in the european union. 27 markets for banks with individual supervisors. we have been pushing among other things banking union with a whole set of steps that we think will help improve the functioning of the banks and capital markets in europe and

provide growth and i think that agenda now has certainly been taken off and is progressing and on the presumption that monetary policy will provide some more accommodation and that the plans for banking union and some of the fixes to the architecture go forward. on that jesus we see in the coming year. >> let me bring ksenia into the conversation before we talk about the role of the g20. let me ask you as a russian economist, russia is doing reasonably well and as the ambassador indicated not many of the problems that many of the yet other countries we are talking about today here half. first of all what is the outlook for russia but more broadly when you look at the world what do you see and what do you worry about in terms of the macroeconomic picture? >> well i agree with his assessment but russian is concerned with the global

economy. russia's growth has slowed down but this year particularly and we believe that it's largely a result of several global tendencies including a recession in europe and a slowdown in some european countries and including -- russia. so the global growth slowdown in trade is a challenge for russia as well as for all the g20 economy and this is why it's important for our economies to maybe come up with some ideas on how we are going to address this issue. how we are going to move forward. let me say a couple of words personally as an economist rather than a government official.

i think our world went through several stages of the crisis. a decline in 08 as a result of the financial meltdown. then a recovery which was in some countries fueled high extensive monetary and fiscal policies. but now it looks like the world is going through structural adjustments which we all knew were supposed to happen. i was thinking mainly about china for example. china needed to go through some structural adjustments in order to get out of this deficit between the two countries and i

think that some adjustments happened in the united states and -- for these adjustments. .. significant financial markets. united states, going to scale

down government bonds. i think that the impression was that there will be an overgrowth breaks will be able to the rescue of their nontraditional policy. the financial sector will be less. a number of years to come. even after because central banks will have to the get out of the non-traditional policies. it's also something which base to be dealt with by financial ministers and central banks. whether there would like to era

oppose or how. it's a big area which is on the agenda right now. >> i want to ask. if i don't someone in the audience will. but let me take this back up to the detailed level again. it's interesting you talk about rebalancing. this sort of feels as though the pittsburgh firm work which has that big adjectives. the talk about the framework itself, the mutual assessment under the framework, you don't hear as much discussion of that. is that because we have solved the problem or a my mischaracterizing or rearm and that? was rolled as the g20 impose on the firm work? >> u.s. carrier poured question. as i said before, our premise is that there is a need for more

growth virtually everywhere. there is no single silver bullet. you have to look at every margin . global rebalancing is one of those margins. there has been -- it is gone down somewhat. look at the chinese surplus. you can look at other bounces around the world. they have gone down somewhat. the question is whether those imbalances of gone down because of rebalancing or because economy slowed and exporters are exporting and importers are importing. i think not in a permanent way. there really is still work to be done to promote rebalancing and

that that can be a significant ginger reader to strengthening global growth. what i think we need is a g20 process of peer review, something that the g20 has talked about really from its inception but has not made enough of. i hope that as this russian presidency goes on and reid finished with the leaders, into the assyrian presidency that follows all we did have a process where we can sit down to dinner and have a more serious pier review, not a general one, one that is more specific or countries can talk quite earnestly about what they feel others could do to make a contribution and perhaps in that way and through that dialogue reach some agreement on collective action.

>> that sounds like a good idea. this is a group of the main economies in the world. they have an opportunity to review. is this going to be part of the russian agenda? i you framing the macro discussion? want to specifically get set your theme of gross. >> right now we discuss. we started to discuss how we will address the issue. but clearly the top picks here discussing now. but things which david is speaking about, the process within their groups.

but here in the audience, -- >> that would be helpful. >> newcomers. how many different and hello works. it leaders, it happens once a year. and the finance and central bankers. the financial -- apart from that , on the agenda the house

gives from different countries which from the extra level of discussion, the financial ministers. and within the group, the financial track which is actually called the framework. sustainable. in that think that countries need to sit with each other and discuss what's going on. in inside the group until they did we have that discussion. to some extent during those

frameworks -- it was pursued from the beginning. but actually to give it is raising this issue because from the very beginning there's been controversy on of these things. this review. and the separation between the imf and the framework is an interesting thing. and but anyway, this session among finance ministers. and one of the things which i

learned during this process, you have different countries sitting around the table discussing issues of different levels until we are in this multipolar world. distract from the different use. bringing together. i think that this is what we need to understand. i am permanently efficient. right now i think that this is

really about trust between countries with each other because while we are not, some countries still need. others benefit more from something simple. building trust with the discussion is an important task. once one of the issues. >> i personally agree very much. the habits of cooperation that are being billed as one of its real assets and something that people underestimate the importance of. it's actually quite important to get this group of countries that have not had these conversations before and maybe don't have the full amount. i do want to come back to the institutional questions, but we have a lot to cover. one more question about macro. there has been a lot of banks in

the world recently about competitive exchange rate depreciations. yet the imf seems to take a relatively benign view of this. you have been criticized for being not vigilant enough and not outspoken enough about these issues. and the old establishment was to address this set of issues. how do you respond to that criticism and is it fair? >> we have been asked by the ag 20 memberships to look at how policies in any one country spillover and affect other countries, and her doing that. i think when we look at that we identify. and we are on the lookout for policies that are misguided and causing problems or potential problems. most of the focus in the early part of this year was on the

unconventional monetary policy of a number of central banks in different ways at different times, u.s., u.k., european central bank, bank of japan. when we look at those policies we see that clear rationale is there for these policies in a setting where economies are sluggish, below target levels. the banks haven't any -- very much conventional much hurt policy left. another time when fiscal policy is limited by high deficits and high debt. unconventional much our policy has actually been made of various points. either in stabilizing markets

the become liquid and nonfunctional or in supporting a modicum of economic recovery. so we start by recognizing that when countries are pursuing important domestic objectives it is important that uc benefits coming. that has to be the court's consideration. pursue for good reasons we have not seen whether currencies worth -- whether they were getting away from what could be justified by fundamentals and it has since creating imbalances, or spillovers were the liquidity creation of asset purchases are being undertaken under this

rubric of unconventional military policy where raising asset prices in a way that caused asset bubbles are threatened to cause us the polls. and when we look around, we have not seen them. so the currency wars, i think, follow-up on those. pretty much as adjusted, but interestingly if anything the situation is rather the other way around. the capital in the emerging market country that was causing their exchange rate to strengthen, causing them to lose competitiveness and threatening growth. of course, the discussion is now around whether not the fed is going to start to taper and in

essence diminish the amount of unconventional military policy. we think quite the opposite. we have seen capitol flowing out of emerging market countries. their currencies are weakening, and that way the concern is really changing. now, in this episode we again are being asked to look at this process to assess the ways in which markets are reacting to what the fed is doing and saying and that's something that we take into account as we give our advice to emerging market countries about how to respond. so we will be involved in that process. >> if you want to comment on that, i wanted to move on the agenda anti-crime legislation briefly. so appear earlier and gave a good overview of the extensive

way of going to the financial stability board of the requirements, systemic importance and institutions and alternatives and instead of banking and a range of issues. what you see is the main gap in this area. what is russia concerned about? what is being done this year to advance the international financial regulatory to the? >> well, while on guard to see from the very beginning, but that's what i know. instead the loss ok

in order to be more useful. we learned quite a lot because we were told the information about financial transactions right now is as important as

information on final users and producers because only commodity markets, all the intermediary, financial players, they became so big that they can dramatically change the situation on the market. the existing -- existence is to be taken into account. an order to understand how the markets are going to move. i think that's one of the areas. practical solutions. on of the solutions which was -- into a the immigration -- in order to change.

this is just one of these samples how we have the principle of transparency in order to come up with some practical solutions. >> david, on the original sort of topic which was shifted. the united states and other advanced economies hurt themselves and the effectiveness by dragging their feet. >> i think it's important. if the world will call on the imf to go when and deal with the new problems that the world faces, the imf past -- has to have legitimacy. it cannot be viewed as the pawn of any one country or group of countries. the world is changing. this rapid growth of emerging market countries. the changes in economic importance have to be reflected in our government structure

across the whole spectrum. you might want to deal with that. there have been changes in our government structure, changes in our quota system, the way our executive boards governors work, but there has not yet been enough. we have reforms is the bin decided in 2010 and proven by many countries but not yet approved by the united states of america. at think that it is quite clear that the imf serves an important role in promoting global financial stability and global growth. the something that is good for all our members, and in particular good for the united states, so it makes sense for the estates to stand behind the imf as an institution. i know that there is legislation being considered right now to

put forward the increase in government reform that has been proposed and adopted by many countries. i hope that will go through. think it's very hard to see how our role as it needs to a less our government. >> i want to give you an opportunity before we get to the audience talked about the rest of the agenda. you talked about energy. the corruption, the development. you want to quickly summarize what russia wants to get done in some of those areas? >> okay. on trades, we are trying to up build consensus around the

amount of protection. also, we are coming apart. the government process. so we think it's important to in this world would sneeze transparency. and this is an important year because the agenda at the summit. most of the plan was supposed to be completed by the end of this year. so one of them is the comfort

exercise. we analyze everything that goes on. and another one is preparation of the yield. we have coming up with some specific language. it's one little thing. fitted. and let me say one more thing. it will be five years this year. so this means that the accountability exercise is becoming more and more importance.

return this accountability development and from work. end the exercise, number of labor groups, the labor market. more and more important. >> okay. >> one final question. i can resist. having had a little bit of experience in this myself, you've had a tough year and i wonder whether your view on whether that c-span should have a secretary to help with this has changed sell and what advice you would get to the assyrians going ford. >> well.

i'm very proud of my team. >> the enough respect. good job. alexis. i think that is a positive sign. working that. try to get some good people on the team. everything that we're doing from the very beginning. political and practical issues. >> we heard a little earlier about the planning, and i am sure as chile will do a great job. the process of working with the next and the loss is very important and useful part of the

management of this important institution. of going to open it up to questions. we have maybe 15 to 20 minutes. you have a question, raise your hand. with a microphone to identify yourself, and ask a question. >> my question, can you talk a little bit more about whether your view monetary easing as an effective solution specifically for russia and also for other countries in the june 20? >> well, you know, to follow the domestic discussion, as a member of the present administration of trying to minimize my comments as far as the central bank. too many rumors from their governments and the current

administration. is way more independent and people persist. this is why i will not comment on this. >> year following a good tradition because you have all declined to comment. very smart. you want to say anything? >> i just want to say a general point. first, to say that you can answer your question as a general matter, a church policy and macro policy as a whole have to be tailored to the circumstance of the individual countries, and there are some that have economic slack. he looked at the periphery of your opinion of 25, 27% of employment which is a very different situation. in russia unemployment is at an all-time low. russia faces a question, is growth low because demand is low, to man from the rest of the world?

is cold low because it is really not profitable enough to invent? and i think that we just had an annual policy dialogue with russia, not speaking up by church policy person but posture of demand management. i think russia is essentially at full employment. a low unemployment rate, industry, and is going to be hard for russia to boost growth very much. might it a little for a while, but it would be at the cost of pushing up inflation, probably pushing down the kern which would go in the wrong direction, an environment in which it could be war investment and growth. russia has investment between 20 and 22% of gdp. it aspires to grow and an iran a

3 percent and aspires to grow in the neighborhood of 5%. to do that it is to have investment in gdp more in the narrative 25%. and investments toward a 5% of gdp, to do that it is to put its focus principally on creating an environment which second be more business and more investment and in time a more rapid growth rate >> a great authority on this part of the world. he should listen carefully to what he says about the subject. abcaeight. >> i ask this question with grace and humility. the idea that was mentioned is very attractive. if i had a severe correctly, it

happened at the age for love of. here is, behind the suggestion the idea that if these 20 my to move the world economy and the right direction they're needs to be at least some component of this kind of discipline that the peer review might produce. you have seen a lot of peer review at the imf. i wondered what you would add to your suggestion, politically realistic in the elements of review the you think by most move. >> note first that there was in some sense peer review in collective action in washington at the first she 20 and then in 2009 but that the london summit and the pittsburgh summit the leaders said your discussion. they made important commitments. those commitments were strong

enough that they influenced market thinking across the trajectory of the economy. i think peer review as a star at the extra level, but it can finish there. obviously things have to be right. the leaders are dry to sit around and talk about the details, but it is to start with the extra level, be refined to be discussed by finance ministers and then when it -- and there's really a plan the leaders in part political impetus by reviewing with their finance messieurs have suggested in making a commitment. i see it as a three tiered process. as you said, we have peer review with the imf. it is in a way natural that we would propose that this take place. will we do with our members and our executive board. i think that that she 20 is

special because it is the only forum, really the only form of leaders from this wind of a group of countries represent about 85 percent of the gdp. so if this could operate in the way have described, leaders take commitments, i think those could be meaningful commitments and these would be the market's. >> are occurring. somebody over there. >> gary kleiman, kleiman international. want to ask a general question. more generally about the emerging market slowdown and the bricks generally suffering gdp downward revision, financial markets corrections. how does that affect some of the plans for a development bank or

cross investment through their respective sovereign wild swans tobacco those ambitions still priorities on the agenda? how you reconcile that with the g20 process in this upcoming summit in the future? >> well, are a lot of things going on. one of them is the development bank. another one is preserve pool. an equivalent to the imf. the share of responsibility. another is a discussion. the support, would now discuss

how to attract your institutions and multitudes. >> are correct. i thought i saw somebody in the back. maybe not. other questions? >> donnelly with the l.a. times. there's a lot on the agenda. >> well, i think that we would like to see is a discussion on the global economy. some practical things we should discuss by countries.

various commitments on the detailed financial strategy. also, we are going to have ministers of labor and finance. we also hope the play will be will to come out with some jurors did which would reconcile the yield for economic growth, employment. stability on the other. then our -- on trade, the extension of the support, transparency, and the maps to the website, the reproduction website.

exchanging information on regulations of energy solution and transportation in the marine environment and coastal areas. and our development. a year, the civil liberties. yes. the framework on sustainable growth, not is a question for

the audience. >> then they need to take on issues of equality. >> inequality. yes. >> okay. interesting. some damage to ask you. you were present at the creation . now they're taking a stand on that as well. you want to talk about your thinking about that and how they have moved ahead toward? >> we did a paper in march of this year that quantified the fossil fuel subsidies large enough to be debilitating budget balance in fiscal sustainability of a number of countries, especially those in the middle east and africa and that the lack of taking action on externalities', energy pricing

that does not take into account pollution, congestion, and effects on climate change, that these were very substantial in advanced economies, the united states and other advanced economies. our view is that addressing energy subsidies would bring very substantial benefits across the globe and we are working with our member countries to take action on energy subsidies. it is often at a politically sensitive subject for the your talking about subsidies in developing countries, a lack of treating the externalities' it and the advanced economy, but we think it is important enough that this ought to move from discussion to action. now, the commitment in

pittsburgh in 2009, i think the medium term, it's time to get off it. i predict that we will see more action in eliminating possible tool subsidies in the developing countries. did need to do it in order to have enough resources to take care of the people, provide health, education. at the. encouraging all countries to take action, plan and take action and reduce energy subsidies. >> it's important and talking about these issues, and growth and equality, and the fossil fuel case events in the political sensitivity, but the reality is that a lot of this is

going to middle-income people. one is a look at this. abcaeight. any other questions from the audience? i can see everybody. we ended up right on time. let me thank those analysts for joining us. [applause] particularly in our audience, it's really helpful to have people like you join us. i work on international economic issues the bus to mike kicks were cut traditional foreign-policy issues. i think people see their global government story as relevant to foreign policy. i think even the hard economic issues that we have been talking about here, it's intertwined.

i think it's very important for us to have this conversation. appreciate your both taking the time in coming all the way from moscow to join us. [applause] >> up next on c-span2, it is session on president obama's recent trip to africa. after that the foreign minister talks about security concerns of the african sahel region. then another chance to preview september she 20 summit in st. petersburg russia. homeland security secretary general not all tonneau announced today that she will be stepping down from her position after being nominated as the next president of the university of california. secretary a politician and has served as the head of the of

what security department says the beginning of president obama's first term. politico reports that the secretary is expected to remain in the position until september. with the homeland security secretary departure president obama will now be faced with naming a replacement which would be subject to senate confirmation. currently senators are considering changes to rules concerning executive-branch nominations with majority leader harry reid yesterday suggesting the so-called nuclear option as a way for moving forward with current executive nominees awaiting confirmation. this was the topic of discussion at the heritage foundation in washington d.c. here is a little from that event. >> it is true that right now senator reid does not have 60 votes in his caucus. he is supposedly going to use

the nuclear option to change all that. this is not the first time this issue has come up. when senator bill frist was the senate majority leader and was being frustrated by votes on judicial nominations, he proposed the nuclear option. the result was that ag gang of 14, seven republicans and seven democrats worked together and came to the floor and said no. we are not going down the road. that was enough to stop senator frist.

i would hope that as a result of the carcass on monday night there might be a similar group that would come to the floor and say, do not go down this road. i can tell you, having seen what happened to in 1975 when the senate did go down the road, the repercussions was it for years. end the bitterness lasted for years. is not something i would ever wish for the united states senate. the senate is an institution that i love. i worked there for 35 years. and now teach about how congress works at george washington

university. i can remember, frankly, that win this was proposed i went on the cbs evening news and suggested that if a group of senators would come to the floor and say it stop the madness, on the left and is is if you what happened. that's what stopped the senator. i sincerely hope that that is what happens after that carcass on monday night. and a group comes to the floor and says stop the madness. >> that was an event from earlier today hosted by the heritage foundation focusing a proposed changes to set rules.

you can see the discussion in its entirety on line in our video library at c-span.org. and live monday we will of more on the topic with senate majority leader harry reid speaking of the issue of the center for american progress. cbs the remarks live monday at 10:30 a.m. eastern. >> the filibuster and executive branch nomination coming years a segment from washington journal of the capitol hill reporter. >> here to tell us more and explain how we have got to this point, politicos senior congressional reporter. thank you for talking with us. >> good morning. >> first of all, give us a background of what this fight is over.

you are these nominees and where the controversial? >> two of those seven nominees have been opposed by republicans . two groups of nominees. one, the national labor relations board. pelicans a battle over that for years. and the consumer financial protection bureau adds that agency. they don't have a problem with cordray, but they do with the siepi be. it wants to fundamentally change and. the beginning of 2012 when the siepi be nominee was so intense and there was gridlock. president obama used his recent appointment authority and installed them into office, but the caveat was that this happened during the pro forma session of the united states

senate. republicans were furious. they said that this was something that was unconstitutional. this went to court. and now as before the supreme court. democrats would say that this is an unprecedented move by the republicans blocked nominees because they don't like their agency. in the nlrb they say will cease to function if it does not have a full board. many to move forward. here is are we are. you will have to up say these nominees need to be in place. republicans did to drop their objections. fifty-one votes. is moving forward. the process that will allow them to do that by 51 votes. does not been carried up before. that is what is provoking this hour rage among republicans who

say that once you go down that path in the majority will continue to use the nuclear option until the filibuster is gone altogether. in all comes to a head next week >> tell us what happens on tuesday. >> monday evening there is going to be of very rare meeting among senators from both parties in the old senate chamber just off the senate floor. they're going to talk about this potential move. i doubt much will come of this. a dog and pony show. but really the more significant thing is whether mcconnell will allow these nominees to go forward by simple majority rather than a 60 vote threshold to get them across. he continues to demand that it will take an unprecedented step and that is where will see the next several days.

>> why is this a significant? khaled is fundamentally change the way this infarctions? what has been the response? >> well the nuclear option has been turned over many, many years. going back to the 70's when folks were trying to force a change. oftentimes there was so much concern about using this process pates the rules. a two-thirds majority that reveals cuts to revive the nuclear option given the mid-70s . sixty-seven down the 60. then more recently, this year when reed was once again threatening to change filibuster rules. he cut a deal with mitch mcconnell to make the very narrow changes there really did not do a whole lot, particularly

in the eyes of the folks who want to get rid of the filibuster and ordered to up for it in a clear option. if we go down this road will be truly unprecedented. the next congress, future majorities if republicans, maybe even future democratic folks, then they look back to this move and said it has been done before looking because what they're saying is by want to get rid of the filibuster, lower the threshold. how the concelebrants nominees. future majorities my say, want to do it for a judicial nominee which get implication for the supreme court, and the role of courts. we want to get rid of the filibuster altogether for all legislation, amendments, everything. and so that is a really fundamental one altering factor.

turn it into more of a body in which the majority rules, which is what proponents want and what critics relief here because they fear that the senate was meant to protect rights of the minority. >> she told us about what the majority leader in the senate is talking about and what he is with. al are democrats responding to make any dissension? >> really only a handful. yesterday the senate to the credit ones where they discussed the issue, it was almost like it cheerleading session, at least that is always described. virtually everybody was united over this move. then the michigan democrat veteran senators retiring at the end of next year spoke up against it. he was the only one at the meeting to do so. it's possible to lose another vote. a democrat from arkansas is up for reelection next year boys some concerns until me yesterday

was leaning no one in a clear option. there are couple are on the fence. jack reed of ryland is a possible no. people think that he will eventually come around. montana it will probably vote yes. even if those four do vote no, it would be 5050. that would bring in vice-president joe biden who is widely expected to vote with senate democrats if they do this they, certainly have the votes. he's very confident that he has the votes because this is being driven largely by gagger more junior senators who are now composing a majority of the senate's democratic caucus and to actually never served a day in the minority and then are fed up with the filibuster. they see as an impeding -- >> one last questions. don't use the term nuclear because it makes one think of

other things. why the use of this strong a term? >> it's a fair question. proponents of this will say this is the constitutional option. the majority rules. this is something that the senate gets to set its own rules and the constitution. this is complete the constitutional. the nuclear option has been what the media has done in recent years. since 2005 when the republican leader at the time was warning that he would use this to confirm a bunch of george bush judicial nominees. at the time people started calling it a clear option. and it really caught on. i should point out, the republicans and their credit rolls or reversed. reed was furiously arguing against this saying it would blow up the senate.

mitch mcconnell is promoting it. so eight years later. we will see what happens next week. >> thank you for talking with us. >> thank you. >> send of the next washington journal, we will continue the conversation and senate rules. proposed nuclear option with the brookings institution. sit down with foreign affairs magazine senior editor to discuss his article highlighting the gop shift in foreign policy issues. then presidential historian richard norton smith discusses that taped phone calls made by president richard nixon in the summer of 1972. it looks like the impact of those recordings as well as the political climate of the time. all that and your calls on washington channel live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

>> next, president of laws proposed energy initiative in africa that aims to expand the sub-saharan region access to a lecture power. the president announced the plan is trip to africa last month. this discussion as to by the center for strategic and international studies a little less than two hours. ..

>> we look at the role of the private sector in the u.s. development can harness the energy of the private sector and maximize development impact. we are very grateful for this chevron corporation for their and sport content support. i would also like to thank christina perkins has done a great job of bringing us all together today. president obama traveled to africa from june 25 until june 3 in south africa. this is his first trip to the region in his first visit to ghana in 2009.

very warm reception he received in africa was presenting a good opportunity to re-energize u.s. partnerships and engage entrepreneurs and citizens in a new and different light. the president spoke of this paradigm shift in u.s. relations with africa that moves the u.s. away to one with much greater focus on economic growth and sustained development. this details the major shift that is both in the u.s. and in africa where perceptions and the pursuit of commercial interest of profit is seen as part of this for africa. we are moving to the idea that in fact the commercial ties can

help to drive growth in employment and development during times of mutual interest and particularly at among an up-and-coming generation of africans. it is one of the well beings of the community, particularly in rural areas. perhaps the greatest opportunities are africans continued economic growth and those looking to engage in reliable and affordable electricity. it is extremely important and it is truly transformative. so i think the turnout today and

it's got a huge part of this as well. this is really an important opportunity and we make the most of it. we are very happy and he most recently served in ecuador as the deputy director in peru and previously with the office of development which leverages the development authority again. enter has a major task ahead of him. he will be based in nairobi and coordinate the many agencies involved in the shift to it is

what should we look for and we will take a few questions and then we will turn to our panel. we thank the panel. andrew, thank you for joining us. [applause] >> this is quite a crowd for 1:30 p.m. on a friday afternoon in the summer in washington dc. i'm guessing there's a strong appetite for information and you guys have the right person here to be able to speak to you about this. i have been trying to speak about this for several months now. it has now been announced let me

just give you a general overview of how we got where we are today. this is probably the most exciting thing i've seen in the united states. the reason is we are taking this approach and putting this initiative in the field and it is driven by our host government counterpart in multiple u.s. agencies and it is a level of communication that we are having in coordination and it is already making an impact. when i first joined 15 years ago, i was a lawyer by training and i was a lawyer and been

monitored with opec and it was turf battles nonstop and it was extremely frustrating. the one i saw was they were working to better define our missions, forcing people to defend their budgets and be more creative and not as producing great results for. so i think i have learned a lot from that, i think having a structure that we have is absolutely outstanding and connected for greater results. my only hope is that we have the same kind of crowd that we have right now in africa. so africa emerged from a high-level trip it was taken in the white house and other agencies over a year ago to africa and they are looking at what are the constraints to growth in africa and what they saw all around and this was confirmed by several staff members, they are looking at

these countries that are enjoying a high rate of growth that they were not able to keep up with the power production and they are burning and that is what it is really about. how you can help these two countries get on a sustainable path to rapid development at the same time increasing productivity and in trying to promote clean energy solutions. in africa we are not inheriting the old grid that we have of the united states, but we have these opportunities not presented to us in the united states the approach that we are taking is a transactional approach.

the traditional approach was spending a decade or more trying to create the proper regulatory environment so that the private sector would come in and make its investments. we are looking at transactions that are in the pipeline, large energy transactions that have the potential to really be transformational. figuring out what the u.s. government can do from its existing toolbox whether that is technical assistance or loan guarantees, those from the department of energy, perhaps a policy push and what can we do to remove those obstacles or use our tools to expedite these transactions are you basically what we are doing is putting a

large carrot on the table for these host governments and we are saying to them that if you want to increase the amount of electricity by one or two gigawatts, 400 megawatts, you need to make the following reforms. but we are here to help you. we will help you in the private sector have the confidence and we need to make these commitments. now, what does this look like? welcome we take a country where maybe there is a large thermal transaction and it may be that the host government has never negotiated a power purchase before. we can tell you how you would do that. basically provide the government access to legal assistance it needs to negotiate an agreement. at the same time it could be they could do that or perhaps the seller of the equipment wants to provide that

assistance. so when you get these studied for this project can find part of this feasibility. so figuring out how can we push forward, we have these participating agencies, opec, the department of treasury, department of commerce, department of energy, the usda, the department of transportation and the millennium challenge corporation and u.s. african development corporation and the department of state. anything i left off, please let me know. that's a big number. this is a list that could change over time include kenya and tanzania and ghana and liberia nigeria and ethiopia. the amount of buzz with this has

generated -- i'm sorry? >> repeat the countries? ghana and tanzania and ethiopia, nigeria and liberia. there are six of them in total. okay. i was proud of myself for remembering and getting the agencies. but we have seen is not just other embassies and other u.s. agents that want to be part of power africa, but the question is what does it mean to be part of this. well, it really is kind of its own -- it's meant to complement a lot of the activities that are already doing great things from the u.s. government and the department of state and those

with tanzania and ghana and those in the energy sector and the partnership for growth also. you have the office africa in johannesburg and they have people in the field there as well. you have the initiative out of the state department. you have all these different u.s. government initiatives and programs and activities. what it does is it brands the u.s. government's power activities. using existing tools to make sure these are complement each other and we're basically trying to improve the impact and increase impact they are having. we now have additional findings and tools for things like this.

so one of the things we are doing is we have an interagency transactions group and we look at different transactions that are already in the pipeline and its information sharing. this is the best part of what is going on right now. someone from an agency said, oh, maybe we can actually do a feasibility study. it can raise an issue and another person raised a technical point. this is the type of collaboration it is almost like a development that we are having on a weekly basis. the reason i'm picking this up

i'm picking my son up. >> okay. [inaudible question] >> will be working with china? well, we will definitely be engaging with them on us we are increasing the the amount of power onerous and president obama mention us. [inaudible question] >> please wait for the microphone. >> is of as of a month ago, they were talking about it. [inaudible question] >> hello, i just wanted to know

what was the purpose of selecting these ex-countries thank you. >> hello, thank you so much. i come from kenya. we attended this and we need to involve the people to know what we are doing and who are being helped and how to help you make it better than the organizations and companies. >> let me just answer this first round of questions quickly.

your point is a great one. that is why there is a meeting in nairobi and a couple of weeks. this is the first presidential initiative that will be released outside of the united states. although i'm counting on people to come in at 150 years go something like this happened. so we are going to be based out of the african continent and we already have over $14 billion and it's a little bit of the banks providing financing and just about 30 days we have $40 billion in private sector commitments and i would say the majority come from africa. we have african banks and organizations as well. when i mentioned this idea, what we were looking at doing is finding the african legal support facility which is affiliated here so that they would be charged with not just providing legal services to host

governments but doing capacity training for government lawyers so this'll be a sustainable endeavor. this has evolved. a lot of it was determined based on the current transaction. this is somewhat fluid. what we are looking for is that there is a strong host government commitment to make the tough reforms. that could reflect the cost of tariffs, which is very politically unpopular but we want to make sure that there is a strong government commitment to make it part of the reforms. even if we invest billions of dollars, it will not make any difference in the long run unless we make reforms. this initiative is about leveraging and coordination in making different forms that we

create a better enabling environment for the private sector. we could have success and get that success, and i then i think more private sector competition will come into this in a that would be more an issue to take up in congress. we are obviously way. >> any other questions? >> various publicity figures have come out in 20 million people have access. could you give me the figures, can we say what is the current access in africa and it seems

like a much smaller scale. i appreciate it. >> okay. >> any other questions? >> unintimidating and i'm in the peace corps. this is a town where republicans and democrats fight each other, including in this room. it seems to be package for both republicans and democrats, am i correct? you have all of this dealing with the government and president obama occasionally gets criticized. but you're opening the door and leveraging your word for the private sector and that is something that we we talk we talk about morning and at night and in our sleep. >> okay, so you have hit the nail on the head, we have bipartisan support for what we have seen.

it has been 99% positive on this. our mission is not to create jobs necessarily for americans. but the department of commerce is heavily involved. that is what we want to do. this is about creating jobs and opportunities and this is an economic growth initiative. about creating opportunities it creates jobs for people and improve their lives. increased access, refrigeration for medications, that while all come out of this. an issue and that is based on being confident that we will hit those numbers. that is just based on a deal

that we are supporting right now. we have had our technical experts and engineers look at the number of megawatts that will come online. we expect them to come online. so that is aspirational and if we continue this, it goes beyond the five years and i have confidence that we will be able to do that are returned. okay, all of the hands went up when i said that. >> people in the back, my fingers can only point so far. >> no problem. >> my name is steve power. i am part of development products in africa. thank you for your remarks and four speaking. most of the financing organizations who have talked about are concerned with debt. i haven't seen any of them to take risk on the equity. typically that comes from the counterparty and if any part of

your initiative geared towards protecting equity? >> okay, someone way in the back. >> you have a website? >> we had the inner agency turned transactions group that got them out. we are leading the initiative and we have a strong presence. what we are looking at doing is having to one-stop shops on the african continent where we have people trying to develop this. having a place where people are familiar with the transactions

of the different agencies and the same type of thing here in washington, having an outrage that really focuses on this and other opportunities for u.s. companies. >> thank you. how is power africa leveraging its resources protect african workers so they have decent work conditions and wages and safety on the job? >> well, i speak about the equity question. we are not looking at it in the projects themselves, but i won't rule it out in the future. it is something that they need to present for the microcredit activities.

but what we are learning is that one of the biggest risks is sort of the development financing and we are trying to listen to the private sector and find out what are the constraints. as i mentioned earlier and perhaps developing new tools. i cannot tell you what we may have your for now or two years from now and we might have to consult with congress if we can make the case about this and get their support to see if congress agrees with this. we are doing due diligence as much as we can. but how do you select this and we are still sorting out who makes decisions. how workers are treated, environmental implications, it

is still an ongoing discussion that we must have. >> we will take one more round of questions. >> i would like to know why has the congo's enormous potential in africa than neglected because the congo has massive potential and this will provide electricity to the entire continent. thank you. >> on the side of the room in the back? >> i am wondering how you think this will affect the role of a girl in 2015.

>> very good questions. thank you. >> house is being houses being incorporated into the power africa initiative? >> that's a good question as well. >> thank you for it answered my question. is it necessary, if i understand it, is this really a necessary instrument and it's not exactly a paragon of you continue with the initiative. thank you.

>> i find it kind of interesting and amusing that all of a sudden all of these monies that have come out of the woodwork to support this effort, because when we try to raise money they give us ridiculous interest rates, 20% of the bank, for example. there is a project we were involved in and in the end young entrepreneurs raise the money through crowd sourcing. there was no private venture or those kinds of things. so maybe when you talk to these private financiers, they would want to put money towards young people and perhaps they could get associated with this.

>> okay, i will try to address a few of these. i think for about 40 gigawatts of power, it could potentially provide power to 500 million africans. we are not ruling anything out at this time. there is no intent to exclude this and we were sending things out to people from rwanda and other countries, asking for staff to respond to basic questions. because we have to figure out what we are going through. as i mentioned, i we spread

ourselves too thin, we have never had and $7 million it is the amount of money that requires to have a huge impact there is tons of liquidity all over the world. they are not getting the terms they need.

they are meant to help the market and adjust the conditions so that we can create an effect and have an impact so that we don't need to provide this. then they won't they are seeing this as they engage in these transactions. they won't need this and they will need this type of assistance we can focus on other areas and other countries. one last question and i hope it's a good one.

>> hello, i'm bob, and i am a consultant. to what extent are using the internet to coordinate the agencies? >> we are doing better than not, we are taking the phone and calling people. i was at the world bank today and it is really her lead partner on us. we are in investing heavily in this. thank you, everyone. please promise me if i come back here a year from now that you all show up. thank you. [applause] >> why don't we bring our panel of your and we can answer some questions and get started.

[inaudible conversations] >> once again, thank you so much to our panel and i think that that gave us a lot of great information kind of the transactional approach rather than trying to build a regulatory structure and i'm wondering if there are some drawbacks to that as far as we talk through this. we are going to turn to the panel today which is a mix of private sector advocacy and independent analysis. we are going to hear from them

how how important this initiative is and what will be some of the missing elements that we could build out. what is it that we need to be looking for in terms of success and how is this going to help with what we are trying to do. we have to my left, i am not going to go through extensive introductions, but the vice president for programs here at the corporate council on africa is here. they hosted a major discussion with business leaders. honestly the ambassador has a good perspective from the broader private sector community beyond some of those who are engaged. their mission is trying to reach out and pull new players into that. we also have chris, who is here and is the director for business development activity and power.

they have had a strong presence in tanzania. interesting partnerships that they have had already with the government in various ways, i think that chris wants to say a little bit about what the initiative means and how the partnerships have been working. where the opportunities for expansion by on this initiative. we then have been leo who is the director of global policy. he has played a very important role in raising the tremendous development burden it places on africa. dennis also working with the u.s. congress, i believe, on the electric electrify africa project and he can talk about how this mesh together and what

might be missing and kind of what are the critical next steps for the congress and the administration and i think for all of us here to make that happen. finally we have sarah, who is a codirector of the energy program. she has done a lot of great work on climate change. i think the timing of this initiative coming after president obama's speech on climate change offers up some of the dilemmas. someone mentioned the carbon path over here, what are the dynamics within not, the trade-offs, the constraints in terms of climate change and the power africa initiative. each of our speakers will talk will probably 10 minutes or so. we want to leave ample time for comments in conversation with the audience. ambassador, thank you again.

>> it is a pleasure to be here this afternoon as part of this important event. it is important that is transformative. we know that this is part of the process. what has been missing is adequately priced and available electric power. this initiative is a step in changing that. i think projections that china's population will level off over the next three decades, while africa's increases. but i see his africa with a competitor -- competitor

producer. this brings together but private sector interest in the market and u.s. government support in terms of risk mitigation for that investment. make no investment. investment is risky. companies are in business to make money. they do it by accessing and offsetting risk and we need to help them manage their process. i think there have been a number of agencies working in this area, of individually over the decade and certainly we have helped with these available studies. this that we have now will be a game changer. reaching out, the focus on the policy and commitment of african governments is essential. if you ask yourself why did this happen 10 years ago, i think that is the answer. because the criminal is not

there. if it does not common in extra three years, companies will not put their money in. they might pay for the first investment but then if they lose they will not follow up with more. to get where we want to be in 20 years, we are looking for companies to go in with initial deals. they work for everyone's benefit and undergo a second time in a third time and three or four more joined them just like what happened in china over the last 30 years in terms of u.s. corporate engagement and i think the same thing can happen in africa. you have a much freer market in many other countries. and i think that dynamic will change and expand over the coming years also. the thing about this initiative is that it has the capacity, and i think you see that with some of the others, with multiple sources of fuel.

this will transition and natural gas will draw upon that. but there's also other sources of renewable power. i just want to share with you information and it surprised me when i read it. but that is what i want to share. it is expected to surpass in double by 2016. becoming the second most important global electricity soars after cole. global renewable generation is estimated to rise up to 25% of gross power generation in 2018, up from 20% in 2011 and 19% in

2006. the share of non-hydro renewable power has been seen as doubling to 8% in 2018, up from 4% in 2011 and 2% in 2006 read tremendous potential and i mention not because i think we see in this early stage how it is focused on thermal power. i think certainly we are dealing with large population centers, and you have populations spread around the smaller villages powered by renewables, they are probably the most rational answer to provide that access to

power with people living in their village and they can work as as they want and they are not limited in terms of it. i expect that many companies will jump in. many are already there. they started and from that they invested in power generation. you will see much more than that. on monday we had a call into nigerian companies because there was privatization in the delta and they were looking for american parties. i reached out to some members of the them in contact and some of

them will follow up. i expect an explosion of interest and i'm glad to see that stepping in to help companies mitigate that risk. thank you. >> thank you so much. let's hear from chris who is at the heart of this. >> shirt. >> thank you. thank you for hosting this event. honestly this timely and we are extremely happy not just to be here but to have been a central part of this president going out the initiative. just to give you a little bit of background on our company, it is helpful to put it into context. we started off in iraq in 2005 career implementing army corps of engineer contracts went from there to afghanistan where we worked on diesel fire power

plant projects and then when they put out to tender for the work in tanzania, we sort of said, wow, this is great. let's go somewhere where we are not getting shot at. as it happened, the key management have been working together since the early '80s. so it was a perfect opportunity and we had relationships that went back 20 or 30 years and we knew the country and we knew the context and thankfully we were successful and secured two major contracts with them, one for construction of the overhead is tradition and others for the construction of 26 substations.

we took advantage of that which is where president obama spoke last week and it is all sort of blurry right now. been developed another couple of plans that were emergency power plants. we have many of these installed capacity in tanzania in this context it is quite significant. particularly when they have suffered for the last three years, which has left huge parts of the country without power. primarily because it has simply not been there. whether it be climate change, whether it be freak weather

patterns, there just hasn't been enough rain. so when the water goes down, they cannot find hydras and suddenly there isn't enough capacity on the grid. that is what happens across africa, which is why we see over and over again the governments that are paying ridiculous amounts of money on these which are polluting and are ridiculously expensive. but they need the power to keep the economy moving in to keep people happy. it is an economic issue and it is why it happens. we have stepped in to try to fill that gap. in tanzania we also have a couple interesting projects that we are implementing with our infrastructure. these are small but the investor was saying, they are isolated

projects and they reflect and eat those of the company, as much as we are in these projects to do business, we are also creating jobs and local communities and the economies they are. we expect to and flew there to generate electricity, we expect to employ many. we are looking at projects to develop energy projects there and we are pretty far along in the development process. then we are in nigeria as well. we are part of the project that was part of the first

privatization round and we are now looking at the second round to see if their assets that we are interested in acquiring. we are developing a project and we are in pretty much every one of the power africa countries or have plans to be. that is sort of the background behind the company. i will make one additional point about how we do business. as i said before, part of the egos and the core business plan for us is to do development is much as we run businesses. as a result of that and how we translated that in tanzania, we built a training center where we have not trained upwards of -- i forget the numbers, but it's easily two to 400 of them to build overhead power lines to an international standard. we did it in partnership with

the college in idaho and we did that ever own money. that was not part of the tender. we just decided about the way we ought to do business. we employ people. whether we build another one or not, believe me, we would like to build more and we have plans to do more. we have left the work force there that is qualified to continue that work in the future, no matter who is they're doing it, whether chinese or german or whoever. and we do that because it is the right thing to do. honestly it helps our core business there as well. we are well respected because we do that and that helps us on a number of fronts. we are giving something back in a significant way as well. a few comments on the power africa initiative. you know, obviously we are thrilled by this, as are any contractor amount we are a

developer. as i said, we are looking at developing a number of projects in various countries and the most enormous benefit that we see from this is getting a coordinated approach to all manner of the elements of making a deal. we have been involved, working with others as this is developed. we have seen it work. we have a deal and we are talking about the projects, which we are financing or some other providers. and we have seen the process and we have been involved in the process. i think that there are real results because there is a certain urgency. we have a u.s. investor and they have a pipeline and how can we make this happen faster. so we are seeing that already.

i think the piece of it is going to be extremely important. it will depend upon the country. but the idea behind the police this element of power is to put people within ministries. assuming that they are invited and we understand that they are eager to have someone in the ministry. the person becomes the bellybutton for pushing deals and transactions through. as anyone knows who has tried to do these deals in africa. it is hard to get the attention of the guy in order to move something forward. so if you have somebody who is part of the local government focus in the u.s. government focus as to how to get that done, that person will be able to move transactions forward. obviously there is this

important piece whether it is negotiating were working with guarantee issues or whatever it is, the person that sits there will be vital in working with the folks in washington as well. i believe this element is the key. it was something that came up in the president's remarks as well. what he said was, and the message that he delivered to other african governments was you have to move fast. this is an urgent issue. this is a key constraint to development with education and health across the board. it is about power. the more bureaucracy that there is, the more red tape that there is, the slower things are going to move.

and everyone knows that potential. we all look at whatever report it is, no matter who it is when we talk about the cell phones and all of these analogies. but we are continually butter heads up against this bureaucratic inertia. it is sort of one that you are just trying to plow through and move forward. that to the extent that they could have somebody on the ground trying to these things forward and leverages the political influence of the embassy and the aid mission and whoever it is, pushing things forward, i think you will see real progress in all of these functions. the couple points were raised earlier. i just wanted to highlight a few of these things.

i'm going to pair this is common that was raised and how do you take advantage of it. well, you know, those two things go together and there's an enormous amount of equity. what you are finding, what we have found in certain places is that many are coming back to nigeria in order to invest and run funds and invest. we have had -- there are firms that are coming to him and saying, we want to be part of this next round of privatization, how do we do it, who can we do it. and they are saying that we have the cash, we just don't have the technical partnership. so we are finding that the capital is out there, people want to invest, but i think a lot of these projects -- people

are willing to assume a certain level of risk that they would in other places, but we find that the equity equities there and there is a certain amount of management with counterpart guarantees and hoping that we will be able to work through that. that will be a focus of the folks involved with it. i have probably gone over my 10 minute. the final point is not necessarily the most important, but one that plays in here. as i said, they can be high because there is risk. most of that is risk in terms of owning and operating in securing revenue off the project, but there is just as much risk in the development process. i have another set of projects

that promoted to the next that i don't know will go anywhere. we know this is going to happen, but then the next day i'm 180 degrees and i don't know where we are going to go with it. that is the nature of a particularly in africa. to the extent that the u.s. government is able to do two things, it would be enormously helpful to investors. the first is to mitigate some development risk through providing capital. not just this, it's one thing to say well, yes, you can go to the usda and we want to do that. but, you know, i don't know if anyone is here, but they will tell you that it's hard work and there are a lot of restrictions they can be very challenging to get that money to be developed and it can take over a year.

you're trying to develop a project, you don't necessarily want to find that elsewhere, or you just wanted off your balance sheet. so we need to find a way we can streamline these processes to be able to put up developments. the second issue on development risks, the standard rule has always been about 10% which essentially covers your risk. that is not always guaranteed. the changes. i think the u.s. government has found a way to process that better. but i think it is a key element of this initiative has to work through. honestly we are thrilled to have been a part of this. we have incredible exposure of

people who want to work with us and i think that there are enormous opportunities. any number of companies that would like to take advantage of this. the president is accurately focused on it. with that, i will shut up and handed over to you. >> thank you, jennifer. it is so great to be here. chris, if you wait a few minutes over, that's okay. everyone wants to hear from people that are actually doing the tough work on the ground. i am extremely encouraged by the turnout here today and the wide spectrum of people that are brought to this issue, including on the table up front.

the reason for it is because this issue is at the heart of everything. with one campaign it is a grassroots organization of just under 300 million people worldwide, a healthy contingency and this is something that has very much resonated if we are talking about are part over the last year or so. why is that? well, we try to focus the policies and programs and work on what we engage in with what african governments are actually saying. what are they calling for, and we try to focus on those issues and through we can do to help. on this particular issue, if you

look at the surveys, one in five african saved their most pressing concern is a healthy contingent on power. if you look at african businesses, right around 50% say that this is a major constraint to their operations. if you look at african governments, the energy sector of power is in almost every country's blueprint for middle income status by 2020 or the overarching vision is. you see multilateral bodies. ..

will we hear regularly is there is no path of poverty or to prosperity without power. so you have got to engage on this issue. now, the u.s. government is coming to the party probably a little bit late. other actors have been all over the space for m