Azucena Arbeleche is an economist and corporate director with more than 25 years of experience in public finance, sovereign debt management, capital markets, and economic policy. She currently serves as Director of Banco Itaú Uruguay and Banco Itaú Chile. From 2020 to 2025, she was Minister of Economy and Finance of Uruguay.
As Minister, she led Uruguay’s economic strategy through the pandemic and the most severe drought in a century, preserving macroeconomic stability while advancing structural reforms. During her tenure, Uruguay implemented a new fiscal rule framework, strengthened its monetary policy regime to anchor inflation expectations, enacted a comprehensive social security reform, and promoted infrastructure investment and deeper trade integration, including the political agreement between Mercosur and the European Union.
She is internationally recognized for integrating climate and environmental objectives into sovereign financing. Under her leadership, Uruguay issued an innovative sustainability-linked sovereign bond tied to climate and nature targets and secured a World Bank loan with interest rate incentives linked to methane emission reductions.
Recognizing that artificial intelligence offers developing countries a historic opportunity to accelerate productivity and leapfrog stages of development, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, under her mandate and in coordination with other public agencies, created the Uruguay Innovation Hub. This public-private initiative promotes technology-based entrepreneurship through startup acceleration, biotechnology-focused company-building programs, and co-investment alongside venture capital and angel investors.
Previously, she served as Director of Uruguay’s Debt Management Unit, playing a central role in regaining investment grade status and strengthening domestic capital markets. She has also advised the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on debt management and local market development across Latin America, Africa, and Europe. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Macroeconomics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
