Capacity Development Talk: Supporting COVID-19 Spending Transparency through Digital Platforms

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Location: AV CORE

 

Transparency in managing the response to COVID-19 is key to ensuring its legitimacy and accountability. The IMF has been working with countries to increase COVID-19 spending fiscal transparency. In this session, the Fund will highlight the digital platforms that support such actions – and feature the case of Honduras, which has made substantial progress in disseminating information about how funds to combat the COVID-19 were used.

Moderator

Martin Caudron

Communications Officer, IMF

 

Martin Caudron serves as Communications Officer in the Global Partnerships Division of the International Monetary Fund, where he helps develop and implement capacity development communications and fundraising strategies. He joined the IMF from the Delegation of the European Union to the United States.

Speakers

Laura Gores

Economist, IMF

 

Laura Gores is an economist at the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department on a secondment from the European Court of Auditors. Laura mostly works on fiscal transparency and control of COVID-19 spending in Francophone Africa and Central America. Prior to joining the IMF, Laura had lead performance audits of the EU’s development aid and structural funds. She previously worked at the Secretariat General of the EU Council and at the Financial Commission of the French Parliament. Laura holds Master’s degrees in Finance and Public Administration from the University of Münster (Germany), Sciences Po Paris, and the École Nationale d’Administration (France), as well as a PhD on the EU’s trade relations with the Caribbean ACP countries.

Juan Pablo Guerrero

Network Director, Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency

 

Juan Pablo Guerrero is the Network Director of the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency, a multi-stakeholder action network to advance fiscal transparency, public participation and accountability in countries around the world. He was a founding Commissioner of the Federal Institute for Access to Information & Data Protection in Mexico (2002-2009), where he subsequently was the Secretary General (2013-14). Between 2009 and 2013, he was the manager of the Mentoring Governments for Transparency Program at the International Budget Partnership. Before 2003, he was a university professor at the CIDE (Center for Research & Teaching in Economics) in Mexico (1994-2003) specialized in public administration reform for accountability, anticorruption and fiscal transparency. He started his career as news reporter and correspondent in Washington & Paris, where he studied master and PhD programs in public policy (SAIS-Johns Hopkins University and Sciences-Po).

Roxana Melani Rodriguez

Vice Minister of Finance and Budget, Honduras

 

Roxana Melani Rodriguez is currently the Vice minister of Finance and Budget of the Ministry of Finance. Under her management and leadership, she has promoted innovative fiscal transparency and control measures for budget execution, such as the identification of  COVID-19 spending and the response to hurricanes Eta and Iota, promoting social oversight mechanisms, and opening consultations on the General Budget of the Republic through workshops with different members of civil society, private companies, academia and vulnerable groups.

Before joining the Ministry of Finance, she served as a professor at the Technological University of Honduras. She holds a Master's degree in Business Management and a degree in Industrial Engineering, with specializations obtained in prestigious institutions worldwide

Gerardo Una

Senior Economist, IMF

 

Gerardo Una is Senior Economist at the Public Financial Management Division (M2) of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF. He provides capacity development support to governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asian countries, on treasury management, public investment, and financial management information systems (FMIS). Currently he is leading digital innovations and public financial management initiatives at the Fiscal Affairs Department. He has published recently two IMF Special Series on COVID-19 notes on digital solutions for direct cash transfers and enhancing digital solutions to implement emergency responses. He previously worked at the Ministry of Finance of Chile, the Ministry of Finance of Argentina, and the Ministry of Finance of Paraguay.