Appointment of a new economist

Ms. Lorena Ruiz Moreno has been hired to serve as an economist for the Secretariat. Ms Ruiz will join the Secretariat by July 2014. She is the seventh to serve in the position of economist in the history of the Secretariat dating from 1947. Her predecessors are: Mr. T.S. Robertson, July 1947 to January 1951; Mr. J.C. Santley, June 1951 to March 1963; Mr. Elton Thigpen, September 1963 to May 1973; Dr. H.S. Singh, September 1965 to August 1987, Mr. Carlos Valderrama, June 1988 to April 2007 and Dr. Alejandro Plastina, June 2007 to May 2014.

Ms. Ruiz is a citizen of Colombia. She holds a B.A. in Business Administration from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and a M.S. in Economics from the Universidad de los Andes, both in Colombia.

Ms. Ruiz has worked at the Confederación Colombiana del Algodón, the Coordinating Agency for Colombia, since 2003. In her capacity first as statistician and then as economist of that organization, she gained experience in evaluating the impact of subsidies on cotton production and other products in Colombia; analyzing the pass-through of prices in the domestic cotton market as well as in the world; and evaluating the costs, yields and profitability of transgenic cotton. She has designed and implemented a monthly survey to monitor cottonseed prices and also developed a report about the production costs of raw cotton. She has also prepared annual statistical reports and is the co-author of several publications. In addition, Ms. Ruiz has attended four ICAC Plenary Meetings and is familiar with the work of our organization.

Ms Ruiz has a deep understanding of the market dynamics and human elements behind the statistics, having worked extensively in the field with cotton growers. The breadth of her experience in data analysis and her practice in dealing with representatives from different segments of the market provide her with the commensurate depth of knowledge to render the services members expect from the ICAC.