At USAID, we believe that private enterprise is the single most powerful force for lifting lives, strengthening communities, and accelerating partner country self-reliance. Incentivizing greater private sector investment helps unlock new financing streams—and greater choice of approaches and partners—for development.

To unlock enterprise-led growth, USAID helps advance reforms to governing laws, regulations and policies to ensure fair and open market competition and level the playing field for legitimate players—including the U.S. private sector—with a focus on driving their engagement in the development of infrastructure and the digital economy.

We work at the bilateral level and through regional platforms including the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to build partner capacity to increase regional economic connectivity and foreign direct investment.

USAID contributes to interagency initiatives including the Infrastructure Transaction and Assistance Network, which enhances U.S. Government efforts to advance sustainable infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific, and the Digital Connectivity and Cybersecurity Partnership, which improves partners’ digital connectivity and expands opportunities for U.S. technology exports.

USAID brings extensive experience to the table. Our past achievements in this area include:

• In India, between fiscal years 2014 and 2019, USAID established 54 private sector partnerships that have leveraged $505 million in additional financial resources toward shared U.S.-India development goals, which equals nearly five years’ of USAID annual assistance to India.
• USAID assisted with the development and 2018 launch of the ASEAN Single Window (ASW), a tool that is accelerating trade among the organization’s ten Member States by enabling the electronic exchange of customs information and trade data. The ASW became fully operational in early 2020, when the final Member States successfully exchanged live data through the system with technical support from USAID. In addition, in collaboration with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, USAID initiated discussions in September 2019 with the ASW Steering Committee on an agreement to simplify the electronic exchange of trade documents with the United States’ single window equivalent.

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