BUENOS AIRES – Argentine President Mauricio Macri made on Tuesday two important Cabinet appointments.
The president named the erstwhile head of the Sociedad Rural agrarian employers’ association, Luis Miguel Etchevehere, to head the Agroindustry Ministry and the deputy health minister, Adolfo Rubinstein, to move into the top spot in the Health Ministry.
Cabinet chief Marcos Peña said on Tuesday that Ricardo Buryaile would be leaving his post at the head of the Agroindustry Ministry to become ambassador to the European Union, while Jorge Lemus would be stepping down as health minister.
The Cabinet changes come nine days after the governing party obtained a clear victory in the nationwide legislative elections.
Macri, Peña said, had asked Etchevehere to lead what he described as a second phase “of simplification and promotion of development of the entire agroindustrial sector in Argentina.”
Buryaile, as Argentina’s new envoy to the EU, will focus on negotiating the trade accord between the European bloc and Mercosur, the talks on which have already been under way for years.
At the Health Ministry, the naming of Rubinstein, up to now the head of Health Promotion, Prevention and Risk Control, means the “continuity of the policy that has been pursued to date, of ... health coverage as the main axis of work,” Peña said, adding that – at least for the moment – there will be no further ministerial changes.
Before the present changes, the latest adjustment in the Cabinet had come last July, when Oscar Aguad and Alejandro Finocchiaro took over the defense and education portfolios, respectively, replacing Julio Martinez and Esteban Bullrich, who left those posts to mount senatorial campaigns.
Last May, after her resignation, then-Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra was replaced by Jorge Faurie, and in December 2016 Macri’s economic chief, Alfonso Prat-Gay was fired and replaced by two ministers: Luis Caputo as head of Public Finances and economist Nicolas Dujovne as the top Treasury official.
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