A top Brazilian policymaker has been named IDB vice president for planning and administration.
The new IDB official, Paulo de Tarso Almeida Paiva, was most recently Brazil’s minister for planning and budget, a position in which he also served as his country’s IDB governor. His long career in public service also includes terms as labor minister and president of Brazil’s national privatization board. He has also taught at the School of Economics at the University of Minas Gerais, his home state.
In the newly created post of vice president, Paiva will oversee the IDB’s support departments responsible for finance, legal, strategic planning and budget, human resources, information technology and administration, as well as the departments charged with carrying out integration and regional programs and economic research.
The Bank also has an executive vice president, a position that is held by K. Burke Dillon of the United States.
In an interview shortly after he joined the Bank, Paiva said that improving coordination between the support departments and their operational counterparts will be one of his major priorities. “The Bank has a clear idea of what it must do to address the main problems in the region,” he said. “It also has a set of tools to do the job. The challenge is how to do its job as efficiently as possible.”
Paiva holds a master’s degree in demography from the University of Pennsylvania and a degree in geography from the Federal University Juiz de Fora in Minas Gerais. He served as president of the Brazilian Association of Population Studies from 1985–88.