Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

Obama Wants Egyptian Students to Get More from College

Secretary of State John Kerry in March 2013 shakes hands with now-deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

President Obama wants to ensure all American adults obtain at least a year of college or career training while regaining America’s role as “world leader in college completion,” the U.S. Department of Education recently touted. The Obama administration then launched a new program to bring about such developments – in Egypt.

According to a U.S. Agency for International Development “concept paper” that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor obtained through routine database research, “Egypt now confronts a serious knowledge and skills deficit” that impedes its ability to compete globally.

U.S. taxpayers, some of whom this September will pay upwards of $45,000 annually for their own college educations, now face the additional burden of helping Egyptians make better use of their advanced degrees.

Those degrees are failing to produce adequate returns on their investments, USAID says, leading to “educated unemployment,” a phenomenon in which Egyptian college grads “are almost 10 times as likely to be unemployed than individuals with primary educations.”

USAID’s Higher Education Partnership Program hopes to bring together the government of Egypt, Egyptian institutions of higher learning and the private sector in a collaborative effort to meet the needs of this North African nation’s business community.

The U.S. has an interest in helping Egypt as it “transitions towards a democracy,” the document said.

The agency said the Egyptian education system – containing 35 universities and eight regional technical colleges consisting of 45 middle technical institutes – is the largest in the Middle East and North Africa. Egypt, however, has failed to invest “sufficient resources for these institutions to flourish as engines of knowledge transfer and creation.”

Existing institutions are struggling to “produce graduates with the skills employers seek, posing constraints for growth opportunities, particularly in high skilled economic sectors.”

USAID noted that the nation “is steeped in a tradition of education and scholarship,” pointing out that Egyptian scholars have made significant advancements in the sciences, engineering, mathematics and medicine dating back to “Pharaonic times and the Islamic Caliphate.”

Despite such an “impressive legacy,” Egypt currently lacks the infrastructure and labor force necessary “to transform the country into a vibrant center of innovation and economic prosperity.”

The agency issued a Request for Information, or RFI, to solicit feedback from contractors potentially interested in carrying out the endeavor, which could create up to 20 “university and technical college partnerships” focusing on a range of “shared priority areas” among private industry and the respective governments of Egypt and the United States.

The Obama administration in 2011 separately had been planning to provide technical assistance to Egypt to explore the creation of a nationwide system of community colleges. It remains unclear whether it ever carried out that initiative, as a thorough search of the FedBizOpps contractor database produced zero contract awards for the endeavor.

The following is a rundown of other recent U.S. foreign aid-related developments. The list is by no means exhaustive, but simply offers a snapshot of additional federal spending, both small and large.

AFRICA

The Bureau of the Public Debt at the U.S. Department of the Treasury is buying a 10-seat Toyota Land Cruiser for the U.S. African Development Foundation in the Liberian capital of Monrovia. Other than offering 14 pages of contract clauses and vehicle specifications, Treasury disclosed little else about this procurement.

Treasury separately is buying a Toyota Fortuner 4×4 for the foundation’s Malawi operations and a Toyota Land Cruiser for its Zambian facility.

KYRGYZSTAN

USAID is recruiting private-sector advisers for deployment to Kyrgyzstan, officially known as the Kyrgyz Republic, to help manage a $50 million portfolio of U.S.-funded development projects.

“Because of its proximity to South Asia and its potential to contribute to stability in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Kyrgyz Republic is of considerable geopolitical and strategic interest” to the U.S, the agency says in a Personal Contracting Services notice.

The base salary range for both the Senior Development transition specialist and the senior private sector development specialist is $84,697-$110,104.

MOZAMBIQUE

USAID will deploy an education specialist to Mozambique to help implement this southeast African nation’s new basic education program. The contractor annually will earn between $85,000 and $110,000.

Separately, USAID plans to build six rural health centers across Mozambique potentially costing $10 million. It also intends to construct three pharmaceutical warehouses costing upwards of $5 million each.

PACIFIC ISLANDS

USAID is launching the Pacific-American Climate Fund, a project to provide grants for endeavors whose aim is to “reduce long-term vulnerabilities associated with climate change and achieve sustainable climate-resilient development.”

Subject to the availability of funds, USAID expects to have a budget of about $24 million devoted to climate change adaptation efforts in island countries such as Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Samoa and Solomon Islands.

PAKISTAN

USAID is deploying to Islamabad a senior adviser for government-to-government direct assistance. An agency solicitation did not disclose further details about the position.

WORLDWIDE

The latest contract in USAID’s International Rule of Law Technical Assistance Services project has been awarded to Casals & Associates Inc., a subsidiary of government contracting giant DynCorp International.

The agency did not specify how or where Casals will provide services in the endeavor, which is based on the United Nations principle that “all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the state itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights law.”

Up to $500 million in Indefinite Quantity Contracts, or IQCs, could be given to Casals and other selected vendors over the next five years.

This article originally appeared June 28 via WND. Rights gave reverted back to the author, Steve Peacock, under agreement with WND.

 

USAID Dumping $50 Million into Central Asia Trade & Reform Project

$50 million in contracts recently were awarded to four vendors under an initiative that seeks to promote economic growth in Central Asia, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) revealed today. Contracting documents indicate that the program will benefit "failed states" that have poor banking and other economic policies and institutions: 

"A wealthier, healthier and more stable Central Asia will be characterized by increasing trade and investment between countries among which economic interests are aligned. It will also be characterized by the establishment of mutually beneficial commercial ties with neighboring countries such as Russia and China."

The $50 million figure encompasses an estimated ceiling for the Macroeconomic Foundations for Growth program (Solicitation #SOL-176-11-00000-2), for which the agency awarded indefinite quantity contracts, or IQCs, to Chemonics International, Inc., Deloitte Consulting, LLP, Pragma Corporation, and AECOM International Development. The vendors each will receive an unspecified number of  "task orders" over five years, during which time they could execute a variety of potential initiatives in the nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Chemonics, Deloitte, Pragma, and AECOM will provide training, research, and technical and advisory services that USAID hopes "will improve the macro environment for business enterprise formation and growth, trade, and domestic and foreign investment" in Central Asia.  The project will seek to accomplish those goals through:

1) Legal and institutional reform;

2) Financial sector reform and expansion;

3) Economic policy and institutions development;

4) Trade and investment, and:

5) Addressing exogenous shocks, assistance to ease the adjustment to exogenous economic and financial shocks that cause short and medium-term development problems affecting the national business environment and potential to generate economic growth.

6) Stabilization – Crisis Assistance Projects.

Although USAID technically awarded the contracts on July 1, the agency did not announce them via the Federal Business Opportunities database until July 11.

SNAPSHOT: Hundreds of Millions of Gallons of Jet Fuel Used in Support of U.S. Ops in Afghanistan

Occasionally U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor will take a look at various facets of government spending; a snapshot, if you will, of a particular use of taxpayer funds. Today, the Monitor looks at how much the federal government spends on jet fuel in support of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Calls to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops from and Central Asia have increased since Osama bin Laden’s death, but decision-makers have made clear that such a drawdown of troops is not happening any time soon. As the White House, Congress, and media pundits ponder and expound upon what, if any, changes should be made to U.S. policy on the issue, one thing is certain: U.S. military jets will continue to fly into, out of, and around Afghanistan.

But how much will this cost U.S. taxpayers?

A review of contracting documents obtained via federal database research sheds light on that question.

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), for example, currently is soliciting bids to provide close to a half-billion gallons of jet fuel over two years, beginning December 2011, to the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan. Manas is a primary support base for U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere in USCENTCOM’s area of responsibility.

“The Transit Center at Manas has four missions: Air Refueling, Airlift, Onward Movement of Troops and Humanitarian Assistance,” the U.S. Air Force says in its official description of the base. “They do this with the help of 850 military members and 750 U.S. and host nation civilian employees and contractors—the vast majority belong to the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing and others to various tenant units.

Although the solicitation did not provide an estimated cost, DLA is requesting bids on the provision of 208 million gallons of jet fuel for a one-year period, with two potential six-month option periods for an additional 104 million gallon each.

Those totals include 36 million gallons that the contractor would hold in reserve monthly—a service that enables the contractor to assess an additional multi-million dollar fee.

DLA in Nov. 2010 awarded to Mina Corp. a one-year contract for 240 million gallons of jet fuel—which, calculated at the then-going price of $3.24 a gallon, brought the value of the contract to $778 million, according to a Transit Center Jet Fuel Procurement document.

The contract price-per-gallon on Feb. 1 was upped to $3.80 a gallon to “reflect current market conditions,” according to the document.

In 2009 DLA awarded a contract valued at $327 million (plus a $3.7 million fuel-reserve fee) for 105 million gallons. That contract also had gone to Mina Corp.

Placing these expenditures into context—and indirectly confirming that such costs will continue to be borne by U.S. taxpayers into the foreseeable future—are remarks that Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) made during this morning’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing “Steps Needed for a Successful 2014 Transition In Afghanistan.”

Committee Chmn. Kerry emphasized that the terrorist leader’s death marked a turning point in U.S. policy for Afghanistan—but when and how the U.S. will make that turn remains unknown.

“Osama Bin Laden’s death was more than a critical triumph in our fight against terrorism,” Kerry said. “It provides a potentially game-changing opportunity to build momentum for a political solution in Afghanistan that could bring greater stability to the region and bring our troops home.”

Despite this acknowledgement, Kerry made clear that he was not referring to an abrupt departure of U.S. forces.

“A precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan would be a mistake and I, for one, would take that option off the table,” he said. “Instead, we should be working toward… a presence that puts Afghans in charge—and presses them to step up to that task—at the same time that it secures our interests and accomplishes our mission of destroying Al Qaeda and preventing Afghanistan from ever again becoming a terrorist sanctuary.”

Kerry said it was “unsustainable” for the U.S. to continue spending $10 billion monthly on military operations there.

He also said that the Afghanistan government was even less  capable, financially and otherwise, of filling a void that would be left by a hasty U.S. exit.