Alejandro Werner resigns from the IMF | He’s the current boss …

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that Alexander Werner, director of the Western Hemisphere Department, will step down on August 31. The general manager of the organization, Kristalina Georgieva, said that “Alejandro has led the Department through difficult times and today he leaves him on a solid footing to continue the work of supporting our countries throughout the region.” Werner was one of the people responsible for the $ 57 billion mega-credit approved for the administration of Mauricio Macri.

Werner was born in Argentina but raised in Mexico. In this country, he held the post of Director of Economic Studies at Banco de México and was subsequently appointed Undersecretary of Finance and Public Credit at the Mexican Ministry of Finance. After more than ten years of experience in the public sector, Werner joined BBVABancomer de México as head of corporate and investment banking. He has held various academic positions in Mexico, Spain and the United States, and in 2007 he was named “Young World Leader” by the World Economic Forum.

As Diego Rubinzal explained in a note published in 2019 in a supplement Cash of this newspaper, Alejandro Werner’s father, Manuel “Lito” Werner, was an accountant from Buenos Aires closely linked to the Minister of the Economy of Perón’s third government, José Ber Gelbard. When the alma mater of the CGE was appointed Minister of the Economy, ‘Lito’ served as the virtual chief of staff of the economic team. In April 1977, the Werner family (the couple and their two young children Martín and Alejandro) left for Uruguay fleeing the military dictatorship, after a short stay in Montevideo, they ended up living in Mexico.

Werner made a stint at the IMF in 1995 as part of the Program for Economists, but it was in 2013 that he became head of the Western Hemisphere Department. For Argentina, Werner became relevant in 2018, when Macri went to the IMF as the last bailout of a financial timba economy that was in decline and threatened to take everything. Werner and Italian Roberto Cardarelli, head of the IMF’s mission in Argentina, were primarily responsible for the $ 57 billion mega-credit, below the first guideline of French Christine Lagarde and North American David Lipton.

The departure of Werner joins the departures of Lagarde, Lipton and Cardarelli, with whom there are no longer the most famous faces of this operation which was not only ruinous for the country but is suspected within the organization itself, as happened with the series. packages before convertibility began in 2001.

The credit to Argentina was part of the IMF’s “exceptional access policy”, which aims to “provide a framework to guide decisions to grant loans to member countries for amounts in excess of normal limits, in order to cover particularly large imbalances in the balance of payments “. The granting of this special line defines four criteria to justify access to financing, one of which is that the external debt of the member country has a high probability of being sustainable.

Barely a year after its approval, with presidential elections approaching, the deal collapsed as the Fund failed to make the final disbursement promised to Macri. Finally, at the start of Alberto Fernández’s administration and before the renegotiation with private bondholders, the IMF admitted that Argentina’s debt was not sustainable.

“I would like to express my deep gratitude to Alejandro for his great competence, good judgment and advice and thank him for his excellent service and support. His in-depth knowledge of the region and his extensive experience in the public and private sectors, as well as in academia, have been invaluable. Alejandro has played a pivotal role in advising the IMF to regional authorities on issues such as the fight against corruption and inequality, as well as in initiatives to promote inclusion and sustainable growth, thereby helping to significantly improve performance. economic outlook for the region. farewell words.