BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 10
Trend:
Javier Piedra, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and Dr. Kaush Arha, US G7 Sherpa for Blue Dot Network at USAID; Caleb McCarry, Counselor to the Chief Executive Officer at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation; J. Steven Dowd, U.S. Executive Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development; and many other high-level speakers joined the live webinar to talk about the potential private sector financing for infrastructure projects in the Greater Caspian Region through the Blue Dot Network initiative.
Caspian Policy Center (CPC) in collaboration with USAID, brought together top foreign policy experts from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and senior representatives from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan to discuss the current landscape of the Blue Dot Network initiative and its economic policy and infrastructure development implications for the Greater Caspian Region countries. The live webinar which was broadcasted in English with a synchronous translation into Russian was held in coordination with the embassies of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan to the United States.
CPC’s Executive Director Efgan Nifti opened the event with welcome remarks that were followed by introductory comments from the webinar’s keynote speaker Javier Piedra, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia at USAID and moderator Dr. Kaush Arha, US G7 Sherpa for Blue Dot Network at USAID.
“The Blue Dot Network has the potential to help the Caspian region build a broad set of partners around the world. As the Network grows and becomes more defined, understanding it may be crucial to navigate infrastructure investment and international development,” said Mr. Nifti.
“The Blue Dot Network will bring together governments, the private sector, and civil society under shared standards of global infrastructure development. The Network will certify infrastructure projects that demonstrate and uphold global infrastructure principles,” followed Mr. Piedra.
“There are tremendous infrastructure needs that cannot be met without private sector investments. The Blue Dot Network is the initiative to get more private sector investments into the infrastructure sector, particularly in emerging economies,” added Dr. Arha.