José Luis Machinea

José Luis Machinea was the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) between December 2003 and June 2008. An Argentine economist, he was appointed on 30 October 2003 by UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. He took up his post with ECLAC on 10 December 2003 and on 9 February 2007 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his reappointment .

Mr. Machinea was Argentina's Minister of the Economy from December 1999 to February 2001. He has had a long and distinguished career in both the public and private sectors. In the 1990s, as well as working as a consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank, he was President of the Fundación Argentina para el Desarrollo con Equidad, (Argentine Foundation for Development with Equity, FADE, 1998-1999), a research institute specializing in Argentina's economic and social affairs. He was Director of Research at the Argentine Industrial Union's Institute for Industrial Development (1992-1997). He has also done consulting work for private companies on macroeconomic, monetary and financial issues.

For more than five years in the 1980s, Machinea held different posts in his country's government, including President of the Central Bank of Argentina, Under-Secretary of Political Economics and Under-Secretary of Planning. Prior to that he managed the Public Finance and the Research Departments at the Central Bank.

Machinea holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota (United States) and has authored many papers on macroeconomics, financial and monetary topics for publication in specialized periodicals and books. He has also been a frequent speaker at round tables on macroeconomic and financial issues, seminars and panels. He has taught macroeconomics, banking and monetary policy at several universities and has been professor of macroeconomics at the Catholic University of Argentina.