WASHINGTON – Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has appointed Harvard University economist and former minister Ricardo Hausmann as his envoy to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which is based in Washington.
The appointment, which dates from February 28, was released today by Guaidó envoy in Washington, Carlos Vecchio, on his Twitter account.
Guaidó, who in January was proclaimed interim president of his country, reported the designation of Haussmann as “Venezuela’s chief governor” before the IDB in a letter addressed to the president of the IDB’s Board of Governors, Nicolás Dujovne, who is the minister Argentine Treasury.
Haussman is director of the Center for International Development and professor of Development Economics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Between 1992 and 1993 he served as Minister of Planning of the second Government of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela, according to his academic profile at Harvard.
Then, between 1994 and 2000, he was chief economist of the IDB.
In January 2018, Haussman published an opinion article in the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional in which he advocated an international military intervention against the government of Nicolás Maduro.
“The National Assembly (Parliament) could dismiss Maduro (…) Given this vacuum of power, the Assembly would appoint a new government constitutionally, which in turn could request military assistance to a coalition of friendly countries , among them, Latin Americans, North Americans and Europeans, “said Haussman.
The president of the IDB, the Colombian Luis Alberto Moreno, already endorsed in January the self-proclamation of Guaidó as president of Venezuela and expressed his interest in “working” with him.
Moreno, in fact, went last week to the meeting of the Lima Group held in Bogotá in which the majority of American countries that support Guaidó ruled out, for the time being, a military intervention against Maduro.
The IDB suspended loans to Venezuela in May last year for non-payment of arrears of 88.3 million dollars.
As a consequence of this default, “under the IDB’s rules on payments in arrears, the Bank can not perform any loan activity with Venezuela until its arrears come due,” it said in a statement.
At that time, the total loan debt of Venezuela with the regional financial institution was 2,011 million dollars, of which 212.4 million were in arrears, although only a portion had exceeded the 180-day delay limit. (EFEUSA)
