The Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Romania and Bulgaria, Guillermo Tolosa, made the following statement today in Bucharest:

“Mr. Reza Baqir has been appointed as the new mission chief for Romania and will visit Bucharest during January 12-15 to be introduced to the authorities. He replaces Andrea Schaechter who has ended her assignment after two and a half years, as per usual IMF career rotation policies”.

For more information on Romania and the IMF, please visit: http://www.imf.org/external/country/ROU/index.htm

Reza Baqir, IMF Mission Chief to Romania

Curriculum Vitae

Mr. Baqir, a citizen of Pakistan, is the new IMF Mission Chief to Romania. Prior to this appointment in the IMF’s European Department, Mr. Baqir served as Chief of the IMF’s Debt Policy Division for four years in the Strategy, Policy, and Review Department. In that capacity he oversaw the Fund’s work on the design and implementation of IMF policies related to sovereign debt sustainability and restructuring in member countries.

He helped design debt and fiscal policies in several crisis-affected countries including Cyprus, Ghana, Greece, Jamaica, Portugal, Ukraine, and others. Mr. Baqir also represented the IMF at the meetings of the Paris Club for several years.

Mr. Baqir has served at the IMF for fifteen years. His previous positions include Deputy Chief of the IMF’s Emerging Markets Division and IMF Resident Representative to the Philippines. He has previously worked at the World Bank (Washington, DC), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), and the Union Bank of Switzerland (Zurich, Switzerland).

Mr. Baqir’s research has been published in several journals of the economics profession, including the Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Mr. Baqir holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. (Magna cum Laude) from Harvard University.