Presentation of the Economy and Development Report (EDR) 2021 in the Caribbean

Sergio Díaz-Granados has extensive experience in public and private service, both nationally and internationally, with special emphasis on regional development and integration issues. Before assuming the presidency of CAF, he served as Executive Director for Colombia at the Inter-American Development Bank. He previously held the positions of Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism of Colombia, Vice Minister of Business Development and President of the Boards of Directors of Bancóldex and ProColombia. He also has been a congressman and chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee of the Colombia’s House of Representatives.

Registered Engineer with two degrees in Civil Engineering and two postgraduate degrees in Law. He has over 40 years’ experience in the construction industry. To date, he has served as an elected PNM Member of Parliament for 29 continuous years and as a Cabinet Minister in six PNM Governments for an aggregate Cabinet experience of over 18 years.  He has served as Minister of Works and Transport; Minister of Local Government; Minister of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education; Minister of Health; and Minister of Finance. After the PNM’s victory at the General Election in 2020, he was reappointed as Minister of Finance.  

Christian Asinelli is a political scientist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA), has a Master's degree in Public Administration and Policy from the Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA) and postgraduate degrees in Urban Economics (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) and in Sociourbana Management (FLACSO). In 2019, he received his Ph.D in Political Science from the National University of San Martín (Argentina). During the last sixteen years he has been appointed in different roles in the public sector and the international arena: Alternate National Director of the State Modernization Project at the Chief of Staff of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Nation (2005); Deputy of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (2007-2010); Undersecretary of Evaluation of Projects with External Financing of the Chief of Staff of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Nation (2011-2014); Corporate Director of Institutional Development of CAF (2014-2017); President of the Fundación Banco Ciudad (2019) and Undersecretary of International Financial Relations for Development, Secretariat of Strategic Affairs, Presidency of the Nation. He was a Fellow of the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Program (2010), the Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies-MIT (2011) and the Singularity University Executive Program (2017). He is the author of the books Buenos Aires: The city we have, the city we want (Buenos Aires, 2009); Modernization of the Argentine State: policies, management and professional scene (Buenos Aires, Edition, 2015) and Financing Development: The role of multilateral banking in Latin America (Buenos Aires, 2021).

Leads CAF’s institutional relationship and engagement with governments and private sector clients in the Caribbean. She has close to 25 years’ experience in multilateral negotiations, development management and international finance, having formerly served as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Global Affairs at The University of the West Indies, Assistant Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curaçao and St Maarten; Chief Technical Advisor, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Consultant, The World Bank, Washington DC and Programme Specialist, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris.

He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the Carlos III University of Madrid and a Master's Degree in Economics from the same university. He also has a BA in Economics from the National University of Córdoba (Argentina). His research interests focus on the macroeconomic aspects of economic development and international trade in emerging economies.

He is Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from Columbia University. He has a career of twenty years in the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago holding positions of Senior Economist, Director of Research and Deputy Governor. In addition, he has made significant contributions to developing the economies of small vulnerable CARICOM countries through his work as Chairman of the CARICOM Development Fund. He worked as Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Is an economist, a past President of the Barbados Economics Society and a former analyst at the Central Bank, where he was in charge of modelling the macroeconomic business cycle and assessing the stability of the financial system for more than 10 years. In the 2018 general election, he successfully contested the Christ Church East Central seat for the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) becoming a member of Parliament and being appointed Minister in the Ministry of Finance. He holds a BSc Economics & Mathematics degree (UWI) with First Class Honours, MSc Econometrics degree (Manchester) and is a trained National Accounts statistician (IMF Institute).

Expert in Strategic Foresight, Market Research, and Competitive Intelligence in logistics, transportation, maritime development, and ports. During more than 15 years, Sabonge led the areas of Planning, Marketing, and Business Development of the Panama Canal Authority. During his tenure at the Panama Canal, Sabonge led the transition planning of the transfer of the Canal from the U.S. to the Panamanian Government. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana as Mechanical Engineer, and has a master’s degree in Maritime Development from the School of Law, University of Panama.

International trade lawyer who, over the course of her twenty-year career, has advised governments and private stakeholders on international trade matters, with a focus on dispute settlement under the auspices of the WTO. She is in charge of co-ordinating the Masters in International Trade Policy Programme, in which she also lectures in law and trade aspects of Caribbean regional integration. She researches, writes and produces commentaries on international trade dispute settlement regimes, climate change and trade, WTO reform, trade and gender issues, regional integration and investment policy, among others.