Surprise picks for Central Bank board

COLOMBIA - In Brief 03 Feb 2021 by Andrés Escobar Arango
President Duque announced today that Ana Fernanda Maiguashca and Gerardo Hernández, members of the Board of Banco de la República since 2013 and 2017, respectively, will be replaced by Bibiana Taboada and Mauricio Villamizar.The year started with wide speculation as to who was going to be replaced and who their replacements would be. There was no surprise regarding Maiguashca and Hernández walking out the door, but the appointment of Taboada and Villamizar was in no one’s radar.The reasons for the surprise are twofold. One would expect board members of a Central Bank to be seasoned economists, both in the academic and policymaking worlds, but it turns out both of them are around 40 years old. Second, in the case of Ms. Taboada, her professional experience is quite unrelated to macro policy or financial regulation and supervision; Mr. Villamizar, on the other hand, has worked at the Central Bank since 2014.Both have graduate degrees from American Universities. Ms. Taboada has a Masters in Public Policy degree from Harvard University. Mr. Villamizar has a Ph.D. in Economics from Georgetown University.Ms. Taboada worked in development issues at the IADB for a number of years and was Deputy Director of the Social Prosperity Department, in charge of implementing social policy in Colombia. Mr. Villegas worked in the research department of the Central Bank and was appointed Technical Deputy Director back in 2018, when Juan José Echavarría was governor.Regarding the independence of both vis-à-vis the government, some doubts have surfaced, especially regarding Ms. Taboada, since her mother, Alicia Arango, has been minister of labor and minister of the interior during the Duque ...

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