
26/05/2016
Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal is a Mexican economist and currently Secretary of Economy of Mexico.
He was Chief Economist of the Brazil Section and Associate Economist in the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1988 to 1991. In the latter year he joined the North American Free Trade Agreement Affairs Office, based at the Embassy of Mexico in Washington, D.C., directing it until 1994.
He has held different positions in the Mexican Federal Government. From 1994 to 1997 he was Chief Clerk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; in 1997 he became Undersecretary of Tourism Development; and from 1998 to 1999 he was Technical Secretary for Planning, Communication and Liaison at the Ministry of Trade and Industrial Development.
He was elected as a Federal Deputy and served from 2000 to 2003. At the state level, he was Head of the Executive Office of the Governor from 2003 to 2006, being elected to the Congress of the state of Nuevo León in the latter year as Local Deputy for the First District, and was the coordinator of his parliamentary grouping in the Nuevo León legislature. More recently, he has served as Federal Deputy for the Second District of Nuevo León, Chair of the Economics Committee, a member of the Finance and Public Credit Committee and Chair of the Mexico-United States Friendship Group in the Chamber of Deputies in the parliamentary session from 2009 to 2012, Business Liaison Coordinator in Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidential campaign and Deputy Coordinator of Economic Policy in President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto’s transition team.
In the academic sphere, he has been a full-time Professor at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León and Assistant Professor at Arizona State University and the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his degree in Economics at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León and pursued graduate studies in Economics at Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania.