Sec. 2. Findings

387 words·~2 min read·/bill/114/s/1605/rs/section-2

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Congress makes the following findings: Over the last 50 years, economies around the world have experienced significant and sustained growth that has been fueled by support to regional infrastructure and integrated trade agreements. Unfortunately, many countries and their economies are isolated and will require greater support to benefit from regional integration of markets, infrastructure, and trade promotion-type policies. By connecting isolated economies around the world, there exists the potential to increase investment opportunities and support market-based growth.

Developing countries, international organizations, and regional economic bodies have increasingly realized that key drivers to economic growth must involve greater cross-border collaboration and regional economic integration. The Millennium Challenge Corporation

(MCC)plays a unique role in economic development throughout the world and pursues its mission of reducing poverty through economic growth by making time-bound grant investments through data selectivity, country ownership, and a focus on results. The MCC’s compacts have increased access to reliable power, built highway corridors, and improved business climates, thereby promoting economic growth and cross-border engagement within MCC partner countries. The MCC’s extensive analysis has concluded that a regional approach to poverty reduction, under the right circumstances, can present opportunities to take advantage of higher rates of return on investment and larger scale reductions in poverty. This increased flexibility would promote economic growth and cross-border engagement between and among countries, creating larger and more compatible markets and enabling the United States private sector to compete more effectively and partner with the host-country private sectors. The MCC is developing new partnerships in Asia, including implementation of current compacts in Indonesia and the Philippines, new compacts for Mongolia and the Philippines, and MCC’s first-ever compact engagement in South Asia. In Central America, the MCC’s work in road infrastructure could potentially have had an even greater impact had the roads connected across borders. In Africa, neighboring countries could collaborate on a regional power pool, connect land locked countries to transport, or address other policy, institutional, and logistical issues that hamper trade. To make a coordinated regional investment across several countries work, the Board of Directors of the MCC would need to select a block of countries at the same time to coordinate project development and compact signings, which is unrealistic, or be able to enter into a concurrent compact with one of those countries, for which it currently lacks authority.