Roberto Pocaterra

Roberto "Bobby" Pocaterra Silva (1 October 1941 – 22 April 2016 in Caracas, Venezuela) was a Venezuelan economist, professor and politician. He was twice congressman of the Congress of Venezuela, Minister of Finance and president of the Banco Industrial de Venezuela.

Biography He studied at the San Ignacio de Loyola School in Caracas and later attended the San Jose boarding school in Mérida as a teenager. As a student activist in this city, he participated in the national protests that preceded overthrow of Marcos Perez Jimenez on January 23, 1958.

He began studying Medicine but later switched to Economics at Andrés Bello Catholic University, from which he graduated. Thanks to a scholarship from the Fundación Polar, he studied a master at Pontifical Gregorian University.

In 1989, he proposed to Congress the modification of the Income tax Law and the creation of the Value-added tax (VAT), which were approved two years later.

That same year, he was appointed Chief executive officer by the annual assembly of L-Bank, a cooperation system between European and Latin American private banks, made up of 22 commercial banks.

Between 1990 and 1992, during Carlos Andrés Pérez's second term, he held the position of Ministry of Finance. As part of his management, in 1991 he negotiated a US$19.7 million international financing from foreign banks for Venezuela and the modernization of the customs system at the country's airports, mainly the Simón Bolívar International Airport.

In 1993, he internally contested within Accion Democratica the possibility of being a candidate for mayor of Caracas, but the party opted for Claudio Fermín who ultimately lost the election to Aristóbulo Istúriz.