MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian named IMF Deputy Managing Director

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato, proposed this week the appointment of Murilo Portugal to the position of Deputy Managing Director who will be succeeding Agustin Carstens.

Mr. Portugal was until recently Deputy Minister of Finance of Brazil and served as an Executive Director of the IMF from 1998 to 2005. Carstens last week left the IMF to accept an appointment in Mexico President-elect Felipe Calderon's transition team

"Murilo Portugal is ideally qualified to succeed Agustín Carstens as Deputy Managing Director of the IMF. Murilo possesses economic skills and rich experience in the government of a major emerging market economy, and, in addition, knows the Fund extremely well, having served as an Executive Director for seven years", said Mr. Rato on making the announcement.

IMF Managing Director added that Mr. Portugal's experience of the Executive Board and his perspective as a senior policy-maker and a leading reformer in his native Brazil would be great assets as a Deputy Managing Director of the IMF.

"I am delighted and honored to be proposed for the position of Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, especially the prospect of coming back to work at the Fund, an institution with a superb staff and a fine tradition of consensus-building. I regard this as a rare opportunity to serve all the IMF's 184 country members at a time of great importance for the Fund as it implements its Medium-Term Strategy. And I hope that, in particular, I can draw on my experience as a policymaker in Brazil and as the representative for a wide range of countries on the IMF's Executive Board to engage the Fund even more effectively with its entire membership" said Mr. Portugal.

Mr. Portugal's appointment, which will be considered by the IMF Executive Board in the coming days, would be to a five-year term.

The Brazilian officer who is currently 58 was Deputy Finance Minister of Brazil from 2005-06. From 1998 to 2005, he was Executive Director at the IMF, where he represented Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guyana, Haiti, Panama, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. From 1996 to 2000, he was an Executive Director at the World Bank Group and before that served in senior positions in Brazil, including as the Secretary of the National Treasury, and at the Office of President, and at the Finance and Planning Ministries. He has also served as member of the board of the Banco do Brasil and on corporate boards.

Portugal possesses degrees in law and economics, was educated at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and at the universities of Cambridge and Manchester in the U.K

IMF has three Deputy Managing Directors, one of them usually the US representative, which acts as number two of the multilateral organization. They are John Lipsky from the US; Takatoshi Kato from Japan and eventually Portugal as successor of Carstens.