Ocampo: a good pick, but faces colossal tasks

COLOMBIA - In Brief 30 Jun 2022 by Andrés Escobar Arango
President elect Gustavo Petro announced José Antonio Ocampo as his pick for Finance Minister. Ocampo, a Ph.D. from Yale and one of the best-known Colombian economists abroad, has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.Currently a professor at Columbia University, he has been a member of the Committee on Global Thought and co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue from said university, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.Mr. Ocampo has had a long career in the Colombian public sector as Minister of Agriculture, Director of the National Planning Department, Minister of Finance and, more recently, member of the Board of the Central Bank.Among the possible candidates for Minister of Finance, Ocampo was undoubtedly the heavyweight. Although his track record as a fiscal hawk while Finance Minister under President Ernesto Samper is lukewarm at best and is considered by many as a precursor of the 1999 fiscal crisis, he is not new to markets and has extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of the country’s central administration. His appointment signals moderation by Mr. Petro and should be well received by investors, all things considered.His first order of business will be to pass the 2023 budget in Congress; incidentally, while working for the Sergio Fajardo campaign, Mr. Ocampo computed Petro’s spending package at a whopping 11% of GDP, which means his task of reining in spending should be a colossal o...

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