Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro speaks in the course of the presentation of the remaining report of the Real truth Fee at the Jorge Eliecer Gaitan theater in Bogota, Colombia June 28, 2022. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez
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BOGOTA, June 30 (Reuters) – Colombia’s leftist President-elect Gustavo Petro on Thursday named Jose Antonio Ocampo as his finance minister, a market place-welcoming decision who will have the obstacle of protecting the powerful efficiency of Latin America’s fourth-largest financial system and passing formidable fiscal reforms in Congress.
Ocampo, 69, who has a Phd in economics from Yale University, is a person of Colombia’s most celebrated economists who formerly served as agriculture minister, minister of finance and director of the national organizing division. He has also held positions in the United Nations.
He has just lately worked as a professor at Columbia College in the United States.
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“This will engage in very well in the sector, he’s a complex male, an economist that everybody recognizes and has normally been progressive, that would seem fantastic to me,” claimed Sergio Olarte, Scotiabank’s chief economist for Colombia.
In the course of the election campaign Petro pledged an formidable tax reform worthy of some 50 trillion pesos ($12.1 billion) to finance social jobs and place general public funds in buy.
He also proposed a pension reform to grow coverage to bigger quantities of elderly very poor individuals, which has caused uncertainty between company and investing communities.
“Jose Antonio Ocampo will be our finance minister (to) make a successful economic climate and an overall economy for daily life,” Petro reported in a information on Twitter along with a picture of the two males standing aspect by side.
Colombia’s currency fell .75% to 4,148 pesos to the dollar in early buying and selling, in line with world wide tendencies thanks to rising risk aversion amid fears of a economic downturn in the United States.
In contrast, the MSCI COLCAP index (.COLCAP) rose 1.68% to 1,369.45 factors.
The election of Petro, a previous M-19 guerrilla, marks a radical change for a country continue to scarred by decades of conflict. Almost 50 percent of Colombia’s around 50 million individuals live in poverty and quite a few voters are pissed off with the appropriate-leaning political establishment.
The President-elect has promised to deal with deep inequality with pension redistributions, cost-free college training and other social courses.
Final week Petro named long-time politician and peace envoy Alvaro Leyva as his minister of international affairs. go through much more
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Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra, Oliver Griffin and Luis Jaime Acosta enhancing by Michael Perry and Grant McCool
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