Economy and Finance appoints a new coordinator for BECAL and confirms its consolidation as a public policy

Asuncion, IP Agency.- The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) appointed career official Fátima Franco Leguizamón as Interim Coordinator of the National Scholarship Program “Carlos Antonio López” (BECAL), dependent on the General Directorate of Training for Development, of the Human Capital Management Department of the Vice Ministry of Human Capital and Organizational Management (VCHGO) of the MEF.

The institution confirmed that BECAL has been consolidated as a public policy after being included within the structure of the Vice Ministry of Human Capital and Organizational Management (VCHGO).

According to MEF Resolution 14/2024, which approves the VCHGO organizational chart, the BECAL Program is part of the General Directorate of Training for Development. In 2015, BECAL was born as a project executing unit and since the creation of the MEF it has become a dependency, under the name of General Coordination, maintaining the criteria of excellence for the training of advanced human capital (CHA).

The new interim coordinator of BECAL joined the MEF through the University Internship Program. Franco Leguizamón is an economist from the Catholic University “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción” and has a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, United States, where she was a Fulbright scholar. She is a specialist in Applied Macroeconomics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

The institution reported that during her professional career at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), she held positions within the Vice Ministry of Economy and Planning (VEP), leading the Department of Macroeconomic Projections, the Department of Fiscal Projections and the Department of Macrofiscal Situation in the General Directorate of Macrofiscal Policy. She was Technical Coordinator of the MEF Management Support Program in matters of social policy and employment, and economic analyst in the Directorate of Economic Studies.

His career also includes appointments and participation in international forums and organizations. He served as a representative of the MEF in the Macroeconomic Monitoring Group (GMM) of Mercosur. Since 2016, he has been teaching International Trade in the Economics program at the Catholic University “Nuestra Señora de la Asunción.”

Led by an Inter-Ministerial Strategic Coordination Committee

BECAL continues to be led by an Inter-Ministerial Strategic Coordination Committee, coordinated by the General Coordination, dependent on the General Directorate of Training for Development, and directly linked to the fulfillment of the goals and scope of the Program with the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) and the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt).

The Program was created to allow Paraguayan professionals to train at the 300 best universities in the world. This year, a new component was added to encourage more people to add their knowledge as advanced human capital: National Postgraduate Programs. Thus, in February of this year, the First Call for Masters and Doctorates in Paraguay was launched, with more than 100 scholarships available, of which more than 70 were for Masters and 30 for Doctorates.

At the end of the first half of this year, 3,390 scholarship recipients had been selected in 128 calls for applications, of which 2,151 had completed some modality, including returned scholarship recipients and university students who studied languages ​​in Paraguay.