Peruvian lawmakers appointed three members to the Central Bank’s board of governos on Thursday, a decision that was delayed for two years.
The new Central Bank directors are Drago Kisik, Gustavo Yamada and Francisco Gonzalez.
Yamada received his doctorate in economics from Columbia University, and is currently the dean of the Pacifico University’s faculty of Economics and Finance. He has worked as a senior economist with the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C.
Gonzalez was Peru’s Agriculture Minister in 2003 to 2004, during Alejandro Toledo’s administration. Prior to his cabinet post, he worked at the Banco Regional del Norte. He studied industrial relations at Cornell University.
Kisik is an economist who has a master’s degree from Oxford University. He is currently a director at the Lima-based consulting firm Macroconsult, a director at cement producer Cementos Lima, insurance company Mapfre Peru, Rio Alto Mining and other firms, according to financial daily Gestion. In 2001, Kisik was the vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Lourdes Flores.
The economists will join Central Bank President Julio Velarde and three other directors currently serving on the board. Velarde and the other directors were ratified by President Ollanta Humala in 2011, Velarde continuing as chairman, to which he was appointed in 2006 by President Garcia.
Velarde and the three directors had been working without a full board for two years due to delays caused by disagreements within Congress on the naming of the remaining directors. Although there was never an overly serious disagreement about possible bank candidates, most of Congress wanted to bundle the vote in with the election of a Public Ombudsman and of judges to the Constitutional Court. Both of the latter have raised sharp differences among lawmakers, who earlier this year attempted a cross-benching trade-off to stack the court with judges overtly favorable to former Presidents Alan Garcia and Alberto Fujimori, and appoint a questioned candidate to the Ombudsman office. The strong public outcry forced them to annul those appointments, and both institutions continue without heads.
