Global Development: Views from the Center
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November 29, 2005
Angel Gurria, New OECD head, is also CGD board member
Posted by Lawrence MacDonald at 01:03 PM
Jose Angel Gurria, a former minister of finance and foreign affairs in Mexico, and a member of CGD’s board of directors, has been named head of the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the Paris-based club of 30 rich and middle income countries committed to democracy and market economies. Angel Gurria is the fifth person to head the OECD since its creation in 1961, and the first from a developing country. The selection process appears to have been a model of transparency (especially compared to the secretive guessing game that surrounds the selection of the president of the World Bank). The resumes of the six candidates and the deliberations that led to Angel Gurria’s selection are available on the OECD Website
What’s in store? The FT has just published an interesting interview that John Authors conducted with Angel Gurria last month. In it he addresses several sensitive questions, including whether the OECD should admit the “Big Four” economies (Brazil, China, India, Russia) that are not currently members. Asked whether the OECD “should become the forum for resolving global imbalances,” he replied unequivocally:
AG: Yes. The OECD should promote everything that’s consistent with its mandate, which is to make the world economy work better. That means dealing with external imbalances or current account imbalances or currency imbalances. It should be a central meeting point. The more you engage with members you have to look at what works for them and what doesn’t. This is potentially an extremely exciting institution. It’s natural for people to gather there and discuss.
Congratulations Angel! The OECD is going to be an interesting place to watch.
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Comments
Angel has been a key member since 2001 of the Latin American Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (or CLAAF), that I chair. His clear ideas about central issues for development will serve him well in his new post as chief of the OECD. I particularly remember his insights about how the lack of access of small and medium size enterprises to credit constitutes an important impediment to growth. Along with other committee members, Angel proposed a number of new ways to deal with this problem, including the design and implementation of new financial instruments with and without government support (see, for example, the statement the CLAAF issued after our last meeting here at CGD Putting Pension Funds to Work in Latin America: New Financial Instruments
to Help Deepen Financial Markets- PDF).
Angel now has a chance to have his ideas heard and implemented beyond the Latin American region. He recently said that he wants the OECD to become a "Knowledge Institution", a forum for exchange and transmission of ideas between governments around the world. Knowing his enthusiasm and dedication I am sure he'll succeed in achieving his vision.
Posted by: Liliana Rojas-Suarez at November 29, 2005 01:52 PM
The development community should be enormously pleased at the appointment of Angel Gurria to head the OECD. He is the first head of this global club of mostly rich countries to come from a developing country. That has presumably shaped his view that, the OECD, being more of a think tank than a lender or implementer of programs, "should be the secretariat of the globalization process. Period." (from his interview with the FT)
Among his lesser-known contributions, he was an effective and insightful co-chair, along with former U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Paul Volcker, of a report published in 2000 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called "The Role of the Multilateral Development Banks in Middle-Income Countries". So he knows about development banking—from his own experience in Mexico and at the global level. Let's see if he can help influence the approach other global institutions, including the World Bank, take to the management of globalization.
Posted by: Nancy Birdsall at November 29, 2005 03:35 PM