Overview
The Office of the Under Secretary for International Affairs
advises and assists the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of
the Treasury in the formulation and execution of United States
international policy. These responsibilities include the development
of policies, and guidance of the Department's activities in
the areas of international monetary affairs, trade and investment
policy, international debt strategy, and United States participation
in international financial institutions. The Under Secretary
coordinates United States economic policies with the finance
ministers of other G-7 industrial nations and prepares the
President for annual economic summits.
The Assistant Secretary (International Affairs) supports
the Under Secretary and supervises the Office of Program Services
and six Deputy Assistant Secretaries, who are each responsible
for one of the following deputates:
- International Monetary and Financial Policy
- Asia, the Americas, and Africa
- International Development, Debt and Environmental Policy
- Trade and Investment Policy
- Eurasia and the Middle East
- Technical Assistance Policy
The functions and responsibilities of the Deputy Assistant
Secretary (DAS) are defined by the Assistant Secretary, and
the DAS serves under the policy guidance of the Assistant
Secretary. Each DAS supervises a number of offices managed
by Directors.
The DAS (Technical Assistance Policy) supervises the Office
of Technical Assistance and serves as a principal policy advisor
to the Assistant Secretary (International Affairs).Develops,
evaluates and implements Treasury policies and positions on
economic and financial assistance to countries in eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union.The Deputate plans and
formulates Treasury policies with respect to technical assistance
for other countries, primarily those with transitional or
developmental economies. It serves as principal Treasury representative
in interagency meetings and international negotiations concerning
provision of economic and financial assistance to foreign
countries. It provides timely and pertinent policy advice
to senior Treasury officials to include legislative proposals
and administrative actions that relate
to technical assistance.
Since 1990 and 1992 respectively, the U.S. Treasury's Office
of Technical Assistance has provided advisors to governments
in (1) Central and Eastern Europe and (2) the former Soviet
Union to assist in the transition from command to market economies.
In the typical mission, a Treasury resident advises a senior
finance ministry or central bank counterpart in one of several
areas: tax policy and administration; government debt issuance
and management; financial institutions policy and regulation;
budget policy and management; and the prevention, detection
and prosecution of financial crimes. These resident advisors
are supported by short-term experts and technicians.
More recently, the U.S. Treasury has addressed challenges
in other parts of the world – assisting the South African
Department of Finance in restructuring its budget office and
process; working in the Haitian Finance Ministry to improve
apportionment and budget execution; and helping resolve the
banking crisis in Indonesia.
In centrally planned economies, planning officials made decisions
and finance officials facilitated implementation. U.S. Treasury
advisors work to explain such concepts as budgeting as a decision
making process; tax policy as more than a means of financing
the annual government budget; treasury bill markets to replace
central bank monetization of deficits; banking as a system
of intermediation rather than financial accounting. Our challenge
is to work within these governments as experts, but not as
outsiders.
The initial challenge facing these countries has been daunting.
In all cases, they and their parliaments had to process an
extraordinary amount of new fiscal and financial legislation
– organic state and local budget laws, annual budgets,
laws establishing treasuries, systems of intergovernmental
finance, customs laws, trade treaties and laws, organic central
bank laws, commercial banking laws, a total revamping of tax
administration structure along functional lines, laws on tax
collection and taxpayers' rights and on financial fraud and
corruption – and to see them through to enactment and
implementation.
The implementation of financial sector reform requires the
staffing, training, and reorganization of Ministries of Finance
and Interior, Treasuries, and Central Banks and the parallel
development of private markets in banking, government debt,
private debt and equities. What is most difficult and a continuing
enterprise for these countries is establishing a culture of
markets – a way of thinking about the proper form of
economic relationships – that in most developed countries
has evolved over the course of several hundred years and has
been made manifest in a highly sophisticated institutional
structure taken for granted by citizens. These peoples are
pressed to create the infrastructure and its spirit in a matter
of years. Some countries have been more successful than others;
all are still in process and will be for many years to come.
The other pages in the introductory section of this site
describe the Treasury program's five teams and some of their
missions. It should be noted that most of the program's successes
consist of small, but nonetheless important victories –
giving daily advice, ideas, and perspectives to senior counterparts
on a wide range of issues.
As countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
have progressed, Treasury's mission has begun to shift. For
example, an early substantial mission to the Baltic republics
has been phased down after achieving many of its initial goals.
While missions to certain countries are being phased out altogether,
the program to assist in the implementation of the Dayton
accords has resulted in a substantial mission in Bosnia. At
the same time, it has become clear that useful missions could
be performed in other parts of the world. Resident Treasury
missions are underway in Haiti and South Africa, intermittent
work has been conducted in Egypt and Bolivia, and Treasury
has responded quickly to the need for technical assistance
to Indonesia to cope with its banking problems. The prospects
for work in other parts of the world are positive
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