President of Bolivia begins official visit to Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Dec 15 (ACN) The President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, H.E. Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, will begin an official visit to Cuba this Wednesday, after participating in the 20th ALBA-TCP Summit.

During his stay, the distinguished visitor will hold official talks with the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and other high-ranking leaders, and will carry out other activities of interest.

Arce Catacora, born in La Paz on September 28, 1963, holds a degree in Economics from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, in 1990, and received a Master's degree in Economics from the University of Warwick, England, where he studied in 1996 and 1997. He also graduated as a general accountant in 1984 from the Instituto de Educación Bancaria.

He spent most of his professional career at the Central Bank of Bolivia, from 1987 to January 2006, when he became Minister of Finance until 2009, when he was appointed to the Ministry of Economy and Public Finance. He is the author, together with Carlos Villegas, of the Productive Social Community Economic model that has been applied in Bolivia since 2006.

On January 19, 2020, he was elected presidential candidate for the general elections of that same year, for the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS). On October 18 he won, in the first round, with 55.11 % of the votes, and on November 8 he was sworn in, together with his vice-president, David Choquehuanca.

He has received several awards and recognitions for his academic career in the economic sciences, among them, the titles of Dr. Honoris Causa from the Universidad de los Andes and the Universidad Franz Tamayo. For his administrative work, between 2015 and 2016, he deserved distinctions for the best Minister of Economy, and was selected among the eight most outstanding in the region in the performance of that function.