Alfonso Prat-Gay

Alfonso Prat-Gay (born 24 November 1965) is an Argentine economist and politician.

Prat-Gay was born in Buenos Aires in 1965, the son of Jorge Prat-Gay.

He earned a degree in economics from the Universidad Católica Argentina in 1989, and obtained his master's degree in 1994 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a PhD candidate.

In 1994, Prat-Gay joined JP Morgan in New York City and went on to work for the bank in its Buenos Aires and London branches until 2001.

He co-founded APL Economía, an economic consulting firm.

He was also President of the Central Bank of Argentina from December 2002 to September 2004, and was elected National Deputy for the Civic Coalition in the 2009 elections.

A decade later, as Minister of Economy in the Macri administration, he lifted 4-year-old capital controls on the Argentine currency, a mere 6 days after taking office.

His work earned him Euromoney's Central Bank Governor of the Year award.

Prat-Gay is also a member of Washington D.C. based think tank, The Inter-American Dialogue.

He is considered an orthodox liberal who has a good image in the markets and fluent contacts abroad.

However, Prat-Gay has been a political ally to leftist Victoria Donda and some economists like Javier Milei consider him to be a socialist or a socialdemocrat.

It was the first time that Argentina participates since 2003.

The last president was Eduardo Duhalde.

In December 2002, Prat-Gay was named President of the Central Bank of Argentina, at only 37 years of age, and served until September 24, 2004.

He won the 2004 Euromoney Central Bank Governor of the Year award for his work for having reduced the inflation from 40% to 5% while maintaining an economic growth of 8%.

He completed his term and rejected President Néstor Kirchner's offer to renew his position for another six-year term, due to disagreements with the president on the independence of the Central Bank, anti-inflationary policies, and on negotiations on defaulted bonds.

Prat-Gay is Chairman of Tilton Capital, an asset management company he co-founded in 2005 with Pedro Lacoste.

He is president of Fundación Andares para el desarrollo de las Microfinanzas ("Andares Foundation for the Development of Microfinances").

His clients at Tilton Capital included the late María Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, former chairperson of Argentina's largest concrete manufacturer, Loma Negra.

Prat-Gay's work for Mrs. Fortabat came under scrutiny after revelations that Tilton Capital facilitated tax evasion and capital flight for Fortabat and other clients, including the entirety of Mrs. Fortabat's billion-dollar payout for her sale of Loma Negra in 2005.

The vice president of JP Morgan Argentina at the time, Hernán Arbizu, declared that Prat-Gay managed much of this wealth in an offshore hedge fund of his creation with put options against the Argentine peso.

He joined the Civic Coalition, led at the time by Elisa Carrió, and was named as Carrió's choice for Minister of the Economy had she won the 2007 presidential election.

Prat-Gay led the Civic Coalition's party list for the city of Buenos Aires in the 2009 congressional elections, and was handily elected.

As a Congressman, he worked on projects such as increasing banking security, preventing money laundering and drug trafficking, and an extensive deregulation of the Argentine financial system.

He was a main voice of the opposition in Congress on economic issues.

He was named head of the Civic Coalition caucus in the Lower House following Elisa Carrió's poor showing in the 2011 presidential election.

He was appointed executor of the Lacroze de Fortabat estate following Mrs. Fortabat's death in 2012.

Prat-Gay co-founded the Juntos UNEN ('Together They Unite') alliance with centrist UCR Congressional caucus leader Ricardo Gil Lavedra, and Victoria Donda of the leftist Freemen of the South Movement in January 2013.

He declared his candidacy in July for a seat in the Argentine Senate ahead of the 2013 mid-term elections.

Following the election of Mauricio Macri to the presidency on 2015, he became Minister of Economy.

Prat-Gay was appointed Minister of Treasury and Public Finance in December 2015, by the new President Mauricio Macri.

One of the first changes to economic policy from the Macri administration, just seven days after he had taken office, was to remove the currency controls that had been in place for four consecutive years.

The move signified a 30% devaluation of the peso, and was met with both criticism and praise.

Prat Gay eliminated export taxes on wheat, corn, meat and fishing, the industry and mining, while it promised to lower the tariff on soy 5% every year.

For the next year, he eliminated the Advance Affidavits of Importation (an import control program) and extended Careful Pricing (a price control program) for six months.

Since 2016, began the removal of energy subsidies (for electricity, gas and water) and transport subsidies (for bus, train and subway), which caused a huge increase in prices.

He avoided to use a shock therapy and introduced the changes gradually.

On January 19, Prat Gay and Macri went to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with Sergio Massa and part of his cabinet looking for investments.

He had meetings with various business representatives, politicians and journalists.

Some of them were US Vice President Joe Biden, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, the founder of Virgin Group Richard Branson, CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, the Queen of the Netherlands, President and CEO Coca-Cola, Muhtar Kent among others.