Doria will have Meirelles, Zeina Latif, Ana Carla Abrão and Vanessa Rahal in the campaign

The governor of São Paulo, João Doria (PSDB), announces this Thursday (16) at least the first four names of the Economic Committee of his campaign for the Presidency of the Republic in 2022.

According to the toucan’s interlocutors, they are: Henrique Meirelles, Ana Carla Abrão, Zeina Latif and Vanessa Rahal Canado, confirming the governor’s expectation of having at least three women in the group.

It could still have two or even four more members. There is speculation at Palácio dos Bandeirantes that one of them might be economist Persio Arida, one of the parents of Plano Real and the ex-husband of Ana Carla.

According to the governor’s allies, he and other names are negotiating release with their employers to join Doria’s team, and may not be announced right now.

Former Finance Minister Meirelles, who holds the area’s portfolio in the São Paulo state government, will be the group’s spokesperson. He even put himself as his coordinator, but Doria told the leaf in the week before last there would be no subordination relationship.

Today, the secretary is the main poster boy for the toucan’s management in the economic area, which brings some showy numbers, such as growth above the Brazilian average and the recovery of investment capacity to levels not seen since before the 2015-16 recession —the state has BRL 50 billion for works and the like in the 2021-22 biennium.

Economist Ana Carla Abrão was secretary of the Fazenda de Goiás from 2015 to 2016, where she gained fame as organizer of the public machine. She is a civil servant at the Central Bank, where she worked, and before going to Goiás, she was at Tendências consulting and at Itaú. Since 2017, he has been head of the Oliver Wyman office in Brazil.

She approached Doria when the toucan was mayor of the capital, working on his fiscal management board. When the state was hit by the pandemic in 2020, he became the head of the economic committee to fight the coronavirus. Having passed through Congress, she has been working for years on projects for reforming the state with former BC president Arminio Fraga.

Zeina Latif, on the other hand, is another well-known name in the market, considered one of the most influential economists in the country. She had an academic career linked to USP, later going to Tendências. From 2002 onwards, he worked at BBVA, HSBC, ABN-Amro Real, ING Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.

In 2012, she joined Gibraltar Consultoria, where she is today, and in 2014 she joined XP Investimentos, where she was chief economist. It came out in 2020, after an episode in which she would have criticized the government of Jair Bolsonaro — she herself preferred to talk about the end of the cycle.

Vanessa Rahal Canado is the least known name among the team’s general public. She was the special advisor to the minister Paulo Guedes (Economics) for the tax area, having worked on all the main projects of the government’s tax reform.

Vanessa, a professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas, left her post earlier this year. She did not want to polemic, but in Brasília her departure is credited to differences in the conduct of negotiations between the Ministry and Congress under the command of Arthur Lira (PP-AL, Chamber President) and Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG, Senate President ).

The economist will work on Doria’s tax reform project. In conversation with the reporter in New York, Meirelles has already said that he welcomes the proposal of the states under discussion in Congress, which now lacks the federal dimension.