People: Brazil likely to replace deputy with San Francisco Fed economist

Brazil: Deputy governor of the Brazilian central bank Tiago Berriel will likely be replaced by a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco economist, governor Roberto Campos Neto announced on May 9.

Berriel is reported to be leaving the position he held for three years for personal reasons. He will end his term after the June monetary policy meeting.

Neto has nominated the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s research adviser, Fernanda Feitosa Nechio, to fill the soon-to-be-vacant seat. Nechio still has to be approved by the Senate before taking over.

Nechio joined the San Francisco Fed in 2015, and has held three positions there including economist and senior economist. She has previously been a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro.

Nechio’s research areas are monetary policy and international finance. She has published a number of related papers, including her most recent: Using Brexit to identify the nature of price rigidities; and Inflationary effects of trade disputes with China, in which she analyses the price effects of the trade and political fallout.

Lithuania: The Bank of Lithuania appointed a new monetary policy board deputy chair, Asta Kuniyoshi, on May 7. It also reappointed Marius Jurgilas for a second term as a member of the board.

Kuniyoshi previously headed the budget policy monitoring department at the National Audit Office of Lithuania. She started her career at the Ministry of Social Security and Labour in 1994, and moved onto the Ministry of Finance in 2001. From 2007–12, she held the position of financial adviser at the Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the European Union.

Jurgilas has been a member of the board since 2013 and has previously held a position as an economist at the financial stability research department of the central bank of Norway. Before then, he was at the Bank of England, also as an economist.

The board consists of the chairman, two deputies and two members of the board. Kuniyoshi and Jurgilas have been appointed for six-year terms under the central bank law.

South Africa: The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) has appointed Christopher Loewald as the sixth member of its monetary policy committee.

Loewald’s appointment will take effect on June 1, at which point he will move from heading the policy and research departments at the central bank. In his current role he is responsible for forecasting, global economic analysis and the editing of the monetary policy review.

Prior to joining Sarb in 2011, he spent 13 years at the National Treasury in several policy roles, according to the statement. During this time he was involved in developing South Africa’s inflation targeting and exchange rate policy frameworks.

Loewald also spent time heading the Treasury’s international economics department, where he established the economic policy for engaging with the G20. He was also placed as acting head of the budget office for a short period in the mid-2000s.

As deputy director-general for economic policy from 2006–11, Loewald worked on economic growth and governance with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Loewald’s diverse experience in economic policy is reflected in the research papers he has published, including work on nominal GDP targeting, monetary unions and fiscal policy.

Australia: The Global Foreign Exchange Committee elected Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Guy Debelle as chair on May 22.

Debelle will succeed Simon Potter, executive vice-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He will sit as chair for a two-year term.

The committee is a forum that brought together more than 20 central banks and a number of trading bodies to develop a global code of conduct in May 2017. It aims to promote a robust, liquid, open and appropriately transparent forex market.

Israel: The head of the Bank of Israel’s currency department, Ilan Steiner, will be stepping down from his position at the end of August.

Steiner has held the position for five years, overseeing the introduction of a new series of banknotes. He also made improvements to the department’s management and analysis of information, regulation and infrastructure, according to the central bank’s statement.

The Bank of Israel won Central Banking’s 2019 award for currency management.