Dr. Rafael Romeu, President and CEO of DevTech, is an economist specializing in fiscal policy, debt restructuring, and public finance data systems, with over two decades of experience in macroeconomic surveillance, structural reform, and enterprise-scale fiscal reporting. His career spans multilateral, government, and private-sector leadership, with core expertise in debt sustainability analysis, AI-enabled financial systems, and cross-border public expenditure management. He currently oversees all aspects of DevTech’s business operations and serves as DevTech’s representative in professional forums.

From 2001 to 2014, Dr. Romeu served at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he held senior roles covering numerous countries. Two of his most prominent assignments were as the IMF desk economist for Venezuela—where he led the final Article IV consultation and conducted macroeconomic oversight during the 2007–2009 period of extreme oil price volatility, which included a record spike to $147 per barrel followed by a collapse below $40—and as lead advisor to Spain from 2010 to 2014 during the global financial crisis, supporting structural fiscal reforms in pensions, subnational deficits, and tax policy. Across these assignments, his work informed sovereign debt restructuring, fiscal consolidation strategies, and long-term sustainability analysis.

Dr. Romeu co-authored “Fiscal Prudence and Profligacy in the Advanced Economies” (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2015), which introduced a historical database of primary balances from 1800 onward and provided empirical models of fiscal sustainability, solvency thresholds, and macro-fiscal risk. His work bridges economic theory with operational data tools, contributing to IMF frameworks and government policy modeling across advanced and emerging markets.

Since 2014, Dr. Romeu has served as President and CEO of DevTech, where he oversees corporate strategy, operations, and delivery across technical portfolios. He leads teams implementing fiscal data systems, AI-integrated analytics platforms, and large-scale government reporting solutions. This includes U.S. statutory congressional reporting under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961—such as the Overseas Loans and Grants Report (“Greenbook”)—and the architecture of ForeignAssistance.gov, which reports all U.S. non-military foreign assistance.

His advisory engagements include nearly a decade supporting the Government of Puerto Rico following its $122 billion debt default, focusing on fiscal restructuring, sustainability modeling, and statutory oversight. He has also advised the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on fiscal policy systems aligned with long-term sustainability objectives under Vision 2030.

Dr. Romeu is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Finance from the University of Maryland, College Park.