Gustavo Blacutt Alcalá, vice-president of the Central Bank of Bolivia, has a magnificent view of La Paz, the commercial capital of the Andean country, from his 24th-floor office in a city that stands at 3600 metres. A lawyer from the city of Potosi, where the wealth of silver made it a byword for extravagance in the Spanish language centuries ago, Mr Blacutt was educated there and in the Complutense University in Madrid. Recently appointed to his post by president Evo Morales, he is that rarity: a manifestly happy central banker.
Perhaps he is one of the happiest central bankers in a country that is beginning to cease to be one of the world’s poorest. He and his fellow directors have reason to be. The foreign reserves are shooting up as hydrocarbons and mining bring in unexpected wealth: the government has very healthy budget and trade surpluses and foreigners are beating a path to the country’s airports and its store of energy and minerals. The score of senior Chinese bankers and industrialists that Mr Blacutt had seen in March had, he said, told him of their interest in the export items his country had to offer and in infrastructural schemes in Bolivia itself.
