Reserve Bank chief to be Chile’s new finance minister

SANTIAGO: Chile’s leftist president-elect Gabriel Boric, whose victory at the polls last month unsettled the markets, on Friday named the country’s Central Bank governor as his finance minister in a young, diverse and woman-majority cabinet.

Mario Marcel, an independent politician and former member of the Socialist Party, with which he maintains strong ties, announced his resignation as Reserve Bank chief overnight.

The 62-year-old had held various roles under center-left governments from 1990 to 2008.

He was appointed Reserve Bank governor by Socialist former president Michelle Bachelet for a five-year term that started in late 2016 and continued under her center-right successor Sebastian Pinera.

Marcel was the favorite of the markets, which view his appointment as a sign of moderation in the economic reforms Boric had vowed to implement.

Boric, painted by his detractors as a “communist,” succeeded in mobilising record turnout in the December 19 vote, and garnered nearly 56 per cent of votes cast, compared to 44 per cent for ultra-conservative Jose Antonio Kast.

In an alliance with Chile’s Communist Party, Boric campaigned on promises of creating a “welfare state,” increasing taxes and social spending.

Kast, in turn, had pledged to protect the neo-liberal economic model left behind by Pinochet, credited with Chile’s relative wealth but blamed for a yawning gap between rich and poor.

Investors reacted nervously to Boric’s victory, with the SP IPSA index closed 6.18 per cent down the day after the election, while the Chilean peso ceded 3.4 per cent to the US dollar to reach an historic rate of 876.

‘Diverse backgrounds and training’

Boric had vowed in his first official address to “expand social rights” in Chile, but to do so with “fiscal responsibility.”

“We will do it protecting our macro-economy,” he said.

As interior minister, Boric chose Izkia Siches, 35, a surgeon who in 2017 became the first president of the Medical College, a professional association of physicians.