Angel Gurria, the incoming head of the OECD, is a former Mexican finance minister who steered his country out of an economic crisis and now wants to help other governments with needed reforms. Gurria, 56, will be invested in his post as secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris Wednesday, and will officially take the reins on June 1.
The goal of the OECD is "to share experiences and not give advice", and what it has to offer is a wealth of knowledge "from some of the best experts in the world on whatever topic - taxes, genetically modified seeds, the environment", just to name a few, Gurria said in a recent interview with AFP.
His own expertise comes from serving in several government positions in Mexico, including deputy finance minister (1988-1994), foreign minister (1994-1998) and finance minister (1998-2000).
Mexico is the only Latin American member of the OECD, an organisation that provides policy analysis on a vast range of issues to its membership, consisting of 30 leading industrialised nations.
Gurria is seen as a liberal, market-oriented economist. He played a key role in rescuing Mexico from a financial crisis in 1994, when the country was facing a mountain of debt repayments totalling 28 billion dollars (22 billion euros).
Working with then US President Bill Clinton and other international financial institutions, Gurria as foreign minister was the architect of the rescue package that pulled Mexico back from the brink.
"He is a great financier. He has a very good reputation in economic circles," said Miguel Gonzalez Ibarra, economics professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
"In 1994, he was called on to deal with the problem. He is a specialist in rescheduling debt and the so-called 'financial screen' is one of his successes: without it there would have been a crisis," the professor added.
The son of a banker, Gurria has also built his reputation in the rescheduling of public debt through experience in Argentina, as a negotiator of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States and Canada, and in trade agreements with the European Union.
He was a member of the team that negotiated the entry of Mexico into the OECD in 1994 and developed close relations with the organisation. In 1999 he chaired the OECD's annual ministerial council meeting and was responsible for several developing countries being invited to attend for the first time. He has said he wants more attention paid to the voices of small nations.
Gurria served in the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, but left government when current President Vicente Fox of the right-wing National Action Party came to power. Now he takes over the leadership of the 2,000-employee OECD from Canadian Donald Johnston.
Gurria told AFP that the member countries, while generally believing that the OECD can help them improve policies and choose the most needed reforms, are often confronted with the timing of the next election, so that decisions are often taken with a near-term, not a long-range, view.
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