Remarks by President Obama and President Funes of El Salvador after Meeting

Oval Office

3:56 P.M. EST

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Hello, everybody.  I want to welcome President Funes and the First Lady of El Salvador to the United States.  Bienvenido.  We are very grateful and honored by his visit.  I’ve been following the President since his election nine months ago and have been very favorably impressed by the steps that he’s taking to try to break down political divisions within the country and move it forward with a spirit of progress and focusing on prosperity at every level of Salvadorian society.

Obviously the friendship between our two countries in part is the result of the 2 million Salvadorians who are here in the United States working, sending remittances back to El Salvador.  Those ties provide an outstanding foundation for continuing cooperation in our two countries.

That cooperation has to be based on mutual interest and mutual respect.  We’ve discussed ways that we can continue to improve our trading relationship.  Over half of El Salvador’s exports go to the United States and over one-third of its imports come from the United States, so we already have strong economic ties there. But I very much applaud the President’s vision that growth in El Salvador has to be balanced and reach all aspects of Salvadorian society; that it has to be socially inclusive.  And we want to assist in any way we can in making sure that there’s adequate credit and infrastructure and other tools that can bring about the long-term prosperity within El Salvador.

And there are some wonderful projects that we can do multilaterally.  For example, I know the United States, Brazil and El Salvador jointly are interested in pursuing additional measures that can expand biofuels and energy development that could be good for all three countries.

We also discussed security issues in the region.  I think that there has been progress within Central America, but we still have concerns, obviously, about drug trafficking, about gangs.  The security challenges obviously are connected to the economic challenges within the region and we want to be supportive not only in addressing the symptoms that we see in terms of crime, but also the root causes, and I know that’s something that the President cares deeply about as well.

And finally, I want to congratulate President Funes in the leadership that he’s already shown both regionally and internationally.  His pragmatic and wise approach to the situation in Honduras I think helped to contribute to a solution in that country that promises long-term stability and peace.  The generosity of the Salvadorian people towards Haiti in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake there I think is another example of his vision for a region that supports each other