The year 2021 was another strange year, affected by the pandemic. I also held four jobs during the course of the year (according to LinkedIn, I worked 14 months, because I ended and started jobs in mid-months).
At the beginning of the year, Vanessa and I had been finalizing 9 months of essentially staying at home (we had returned from Peru and Ecuador in February 2020, when the pandemic hit in the U.S. in March).
However, a new job as a “Climate Finance Expert” for the EuroClima+ Programme of the European Union (through the French Development Agency) required that I had to go to Bogotá, Colombia to start the job.
I was able to get one of the first Pfizer vaccines before travelling (but Vanessa was not able to).
So, I started the new job, but essentially continued to have all meetings via videoconference (Zoom, WebEx, Teams, etc.).
At the end of January, we had to fly back to Miami, to get the second Pfizer dose (and also for a periodical medical treatment). The idea was to stay a few days and fly right back to Bogota. I got the second dose of the vaccine. I thought I had some mild secondary effects. However, when I took a COVID-19 PCR test (to fly back to Colombia), I tested positive. Thankfully, Vanessa (who was not yet vaccinated) did not get it. It was a fairly mild episode, given, I suppose that the first vaccine dose had generated some immunity. I had a bit of fever and malaise, but not more severe symptoms.
In any case, we were forced to stay in Miami. When I finally tested negative, we flew back to Colombia. Bogotá was having a second wave, and many restrictions were in place (including that I could only go to the office a couple of days per week). I was finally able to convince the good folks at the AFD that it did not make much sense to be paying an AirBnB apartment just to work from home (considering especially that all meetings continued to be virtual). So back to Miami we went. Vanessa was finally able to get the first dose of the vaccine.
I should also mention that since July 2020 I had been working remotely (and part-time) for a Mongolian green housing project financed by the Asian Development Bank. Even though initially the idea had been for the team to stay in Ulaanbaatar (Ulan Bator in the good ol’ days), finally we were only able to work remotely.
So, I was merrily working remotely on the two climate finance related projects from Miami, when the Ecuadorian elections took place. I had campaigned in the first round for my friend César Montúfar (contributing to his campaign program), but in the second round I strongly supported Guillermo Lasso. He was the candidate competing with the Correista (Chavista) candidate.
Against initial expectations and polls, Lasso managed to pull off an upset in the second round, in part thanks to expanding his proposals to incorporate some center and center-left initiatives (such as increasing the minimum wage, defending women/LGBTQ/ environmental rights and issues), and committing himself to fighting childhood malnutrition, something that the nominally leftist Correa had failed to do in 10 years, with more than $360 billion in fiscal revenue.
Lasso named as Economy and Finance Minister Simón Cueva, a centrist and prestigious economist, who had previously worked at the IMF and in academic positions.
In a surprising move, Simón asked me to join his team as Vice Minister of Economy. I had been considering public service in Ecuador (I even thought about running for member of the National Assembly, representing migrants in North America), but even so the proposal took me a bit by surprise. I am a center-left economist (leaning towards social-democracy), so I had not expected to join the government of a center-right former banker. But I accepted, given my trust in Minister Cueva, and also the urgent need to address the severe economic, social and health crisis that Ecuador was facing. So, I moved to Quito (I could not serve as Vice Minister remotely 😉).
I had never held public office in Ecuador, except for a six-month period when I was the Representative of Ecuador on the IMF Board of Directors in 2006 (before Correa). I had to regrettably leave my consulting work for EuroClima+/AFD and for the Mongolian ADB green housing project.
As I said, the challenges were manifold. The initial thrust was to put into motion and finance a massive vaccination drive, that ramped up to the point in which 12 % of the total population of Ecuador received a dose in a single week. President Lasso had offered to vaccinate 9 million people in his first 100 days in office, which at the time seemed like an overly ambitious goal, but in fact the goal was met.
The second effort was to renegotiate the terms of an “Extended Fund Facility” with the IMF, that would enable Ecuador to receive $1,500 million in 2021. The initial program sought to increase fiscal revenue by 3 % of GDP (about $3 billion) in 2022; the thought was that this could be accomplished by raising the Value Added Tax (VAT) by 3 points (to 15 %); this, however, is a regressive tax, and it seemed unlikely that the Assembly (dominated by left and center-left parties) would approve it.
The Ministry team was able to negotiate with the IMF to reduce the amount of additional revenue expected and designed a direct taxation fiscal reform that would only affect the 3.5 % of the population with the highest income (as well as the 0.1 % of the population with the highest net worth).
Even though this was a very progressive (some called it a social-democratic) tax reform, in the end the majority of the “leftist” and "center-left" parties in the Assembly did not vote in favor of it, but simply let it become law by not taking a position (under the terms of emergency laws, if a proposed law is not adopted or rejected in 30 days, it comes into force automatically).
A greater effort was required to reactivate the economy, boost private sector investment and employment. In the period through September, sales, tax revenues, private investment and employment all started to recover (from their pandemic lows). The progress in vaccination helped, as well as some multilateral credits that were channeled towards small and medium enterprises. Here is a summary of some accomplishments:
In August, I was notified that a consulting position for which I had applied many months before (in 2020, actually) had been approved. This was a long-term (five years) contract to work as a “Green Economic Policies Expert” for a new EU NDC Facility, which would work to assist developing countries in strengthening their climate action plans (NDCs, as well as long-term low-emissions development strategies, National Adaptation Plans, etc.).
Given the uncertain tenor of my work at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the fact that this new job was essentially my dream position, I unfortunately had to leave the Ministry on September 20th.
The European Union funded project required that we move to Brussels. I had to get a short-term visa to be able to travel, and was just about to do so, when there was a new spike in COVID-19 infections in Brussels and new restrictions were imposed. So, it was decided that it did not make sense for me to travel to Brussels and work from a hotel room. We are now in the process to obtain a long-term residence permit for Belgium and will likely travel next year.
So COVID-19 thwarted our travel plans twice; modified jobs to be remote three times; but thankfully did not make us severely ill or worse (thank you Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech researchers!).
All of our immediate family members have been vaccinated, and not one of them contracted a severe case (although some less immediate relatives did regrettably succumb to the disease).
It has been, without doubt, a strange and weird period, and to be honest, working remotely has become somewhat tiresome and frustrating.
We did see my parents, my siblings, my nieces, my son Pablo, his wife, and my granddaughter Nelia Luna throughout the year, and we will see Vanessa’s family at the end of the year.
I also published my first novel, “The Last Human”, a science fiction novel that is a call to action to confront climate change and other existential threats to humanity (including, yes, pandemics).
I hope that by expanding vaccination globally, and continuing to observe other precautions (masks, social distancing, remote working) we will finally defeat the pandemic in 2022.
