The new ILO Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, José Manuel Salazar Xirinachs, took charge of his position on June 1st. He has pointed out the importance of promoting inclusive growth that may create more and better jobs, not only as a short term policy for the current economic slowdown the region is experiencing, but as a way to close productivity gaps and reduce the inequalities that characterize the region.

Before assuming the Regional Direction for Latin America and the Caribbean, José Manuel Salazar Xirinachs worked as the Assistant Director General for ILO’s Policies, in the Organization’s headquarters in Genève.

Salazar started working in ILO in 2005 as Executive Director of the Employment Sector in Genève, Switzerland, with an Assistant Director General level. He had global responsibility over the Organization’s work regarding employment promotion.

His work in the ILO’s headquarters involved issues such as employment policies, companies’ development, vocational training, labour markets’ analysis, employment services, informality to formality transitions, relationship between trade and employment, youth employment promotion and other related issues.

Prior to working at ILO, he was Chief Trade Advisor and Director of the Trade Unit at the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington (1998-2005). This Unit worked together with the IDB and ECLAC as Technical Secretary in the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations.

From 1997 to 1998 José Manuel Salazar was Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica, a period that included Costa Rica’s Chairmanship of the FTAA process.

The new Regional Director of ILO has a Masters’ Degree on Economic Development and a PhD in Economics from Cambridge University, England. He has also developed a very important academic role.

He is the author of several publications, the last of which is a work written by the UNCTAD and ILO called Transforming Economies: Making Industrial Policy work for growth, jobs and development.