by JOHN QUIGLEY
Maria Antonieta Alva is the finance minister of Peru steering an ambitious recovery package during a devastating pandemic, and she is winning praise for its generosity to small businesses and ordinary citizens.
Everyone calls her Toni. Mothers take selfies of her with their children, and street hawkers push bracelets into her hand as presents. Artists sketch her portrait and post them to social media. TV networks vie for interviews and run profiles asking, “Who is Maria Antonieta Alva?”
The answer: She’s the 35-year-old finance minister of Peru steering an ambitious recovery package during a devastating pandemic, and she is winning praise for its generosity to small businesses and ordinary citizens.
“From a Latin perspective, Peru is a clear leader in terms of macro response,” said Ricardo Hausmann, a Harvard economist who was Alva’s professor and is leading a team of experts advising Peru and 10 other countries on mitigating the effects of coronavirus. “You could have imagined a very different outcome if Toni weren’t there.”
Appointed only last October, Alva is increasingly seen as a central figure in President Martin Vizcarra’s cabinet, part of a rising generation of new leaders, and spends a great deal of time explaining public policy to a nervous public.
“She’s very good at communicating and that’s become much more important in the current context,” said Carlos Oliva, Alva’s predecessor in the post.
While Alva’s the only woman, she is part of a group of millennial finance ministers in the region, including Argentina’s Martin Guzman, 37, the Dominican Republic’s Juan Ariel Jimenez, 35, and Ecuador’s Richard Martinez, 39.
These aren’t easy times to oversee policy and it remains to be seen whether Alva survives. Some economists forecast a drop in GDP of more than 10% this year, the worst in decades, along with mass unemployment. She also has to contend with a populist agenda from the congress (where the government has no representation) that undermines the ministry’s, with elections less than a year away.
Her office said Alva wasn’t available for an interview.
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