Mastering the art of fiscal, monetary policymaking
Whenever the seven-member Monetary Board (MB) meets, one seat is saved for the only woman member of the highest policymaking body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
We’re talking about Rosalia De Leon, whose years of public service have helped steer the Philippine economy towards high growth.
Fondly called “MBM Lea,” De Leon stands as a holistic economic policymaker who has a clear and effective grasp of both fiscal and monetary policy.
She had the privilege of serving as the national treasurer of the Philippines, a position she held under three presidents before joining the BSP.
“This professional journey has been immensely fulfilling,” De Leon says in a 2023 blog for World Bank-backed Financial Protection Forum.
Long career
De Leon’s journey to becoming the empowered and influential woman that she is now started in the halls of Department of Finance (DOF)—where she worked soon after gaining a bachelor of arts degree in economics from the University of the Philippines in 1981.
She finished her Master of Arts in Development Economics at Williams College in the United States in 1991.
De Leon assumed key positions in the DOF.
From September 1995 to August 1998, she was the director for International Finance Group (IFG). She later became the Finance Secretary’s chief of staff from July 2005 to June 2010.
De Leon served at the IFG again in July 2007 after being appointed as Undersecretary, a position she held until November 2012.
During that time, she spearheaded several landmark transactions of the government, including the issuance of global peso notes and several liability management exercises to reduce funding costs, extend maturity profiles and re-denominate foreign exchange debts of the state to local currency.
But her work did not stop in the Philippines.
De Leon served as advisor to the executive director of the Asian Development Bank from August 1998 to August 2004.
She was likewise the alternate executive director at the World Bank Group in Washington DC from January 2015 to January 2017, covering the Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
“When I first started working in the Department of Finance, I was very interested in the field of international finance. I would observe how multilateral agencies like the World Bank and ADB, and bilateral countries supported the Philippines in their development roadmap,” she says in the same 2023 blog.
Career highlights
“At the time, the Philippines was facing a lot of challenges and was highly reliant on foreign assistance… This made me think of ways in which we could improve the system so as to maximize the utilization of all this foreign assistance,” she adds.
Perhaps one of the highlights of De Leon’s career is becoming a three-time national treasurer who directed the country’s borrowing, investment and capital market development policies.
And since becoming an MB member in September 2023, she has shown time and time again her deep understanding of both fiscal and monetary policy.
But when she’s not wearing her economic policymaker hat, De Leon knows how to have fun.
“Sundays are for me to rest and catch up with friends,” she says.
