Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado (Spanish pronunciation: [rafaˈel βiˈsente koˈre.a ðelˈɣaðo]; born 6 April 1963) is an Ecuadorian politician and economist who served as the 45th president of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017. The leader of the PAIS Alliance political movement from its foundation until 2017, Correa is a democratic socialist and his administration focused on the implementation of left-wing policies. Internationally, he served as president pro tempore of the UNASUR. Since 2017, he has been living with his family in Belgium.
Born to a lower middle-class family in Guayaquil, Correa studied economics at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil, the University of Louvain (UCLouvain), and the University of Illinois, where he received his PhD. Returning to Ecuador, in 2005 he became the Minister for the Economy under President Alfredo Palacio, successfully lobbying Congress for increased spending on health and education projects.
Correa won the presidency in the 2006 general election on a platform criticizing the established political elites. Taking office in January 2007, he sought to move away from Ecuador's neoliberal economic model by reducing the influence of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He oversaw the introduction of a new constitution, being reelected in 2009 and again in the 2013 general election.
Correa's presidency was part of the Latin American pink tide, a turn toward leftist governments in the region, allying himself with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela and bringing Ecuador into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in June 2009. Using its own form of 21st century socialism, Correa's administration increased government spending, reducing poverty, raising the minimum wage and increasing Ecuador's standard of living. From 2006 to 2016, poverty decreased from 36.7% to 22.5% and annual per capita GDP growth was 1.5% (as compared to 0.6% over the previous two decades). At the same time, economic inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, decreased from 0.55 to 0.47. By the end of Correa's tenure, the 50% drop in the price of oil since 2014 had caused Ecuador's economy to enter a recession, resulting in government spending being slashed.
After leaving office, Correa feuded with his successor, Lenín Moreno. Since leaving office in 2017, he has lived in self-imposed exile in Belgium, which granted him asylum. Correa continues to exercise political influence in Ecuador through social media and as a leading figure in his political party. Ecuadorean politics remains polarized between pro- and anti-Correa forces.
In 2018, a judge in Ecuador ordered a warrant for Correa's arrest after he failed to appear in court during a trial surrounding the kidnapping of his political opponent Fernando Balda in 2012. Interpol rejected requests by the Ecuadorian government to issue a red notice requesting Correa's arrest in connection with the kidnapping case, calling it "obviously a political matter." In 2020, Correa was tried in absentia by an Ecuadorian criminal court, convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for public contracts from 2012 and 2016, sentenced to eight years in prison, and banned from seeking office for 25 years. Correa has denied all wrongdoing, and has called the charges against him politically motivated attempts to discredit his movement.
Correa's father was Rafael Correa Icaza, born in Los Ríos Province, Ecuador, while his mother is Norma Delgado Rendón (born 1 September 1939). He had three siblings; Fabricio Correa, Pierina Correa and Bernardita Correa. Having grown up in the coastal city of Guayaquil, he has described his family background as being that of the "lower middle class".
When Correa was five, his father was arrested and imprisoned for three years after attempting to smuggle illegal narcotics into the United States. Publicly acknowledging this incident while president, Correa stated that "I do not condone what he did [but] drug smugglers are not criminals. They are single mothers or unemployed people who are desperate to feed their families". Correa was 18 when he was told about his father's actions.
While living in Guayaquil, Correa was highly involved in the Boy Scout program. When he was 17, despite his family facing financial hardship, a family friend paid for him to be educated at an elite local school, where he excelled. During his secondary studies he was president of the Lasallian Student Cultural Association ("ACEL" in Spanish). Correa then obtained a scholarship to study at the Universidad Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil (UCSG), a private higher education institution in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in economics in 1987.
When attending UCSG, he was elected President of the Association of Students of Economy, Audit and Administration (AEAA) and, later on, President of the Federation of Students (FEUC) of the same education center, a position which in 1986 allowed him to preside over the Private Universities Students Federation of Ecuador (FEUPE).
Following the conclusion of his studies at UCSG, Correa worked for a year in a mission at a kindergarten run by the Salesian order in Zumbahua, Cotopaxi Province, where he taught Catholicism and mathematics. It was here that he furthered his faith in Catholicism, and developed a working understanding of the Quechua language spoken by most of Ecuador's indigenous people. He then secured a scholarship to study economics further at UCLouvain in Belgium, where he met Anne Malherbe Gosselin, whom he married and has three children with. He later received a Master of Arts in Economics from UCLouvain in June 1991.
Correa was able to afford a university education with the aid of funding grants. He continued his studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Master of Science in economics in May 1999, and a PhD in economics in October 2001.
Returning to Ecuador, Correa secured a position at the University of San Francisco in Quito, where he taught economics. At the same time, he worked as an economic adviser to state and international agencies. During this period, Ecuador experienced a banking crisis and the government of President Jamil Mahuad replaced the Ecuadorean sucre currency with the U.S. dollar. Correa was highly critical of this dollarisation policy, arguing against it in various academic publications that he produced at the time.
Between 1992 and 1993, during the presidency of Sixto Durán Ballén, Correa was a director at the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) in Ecuador, tasked with administrative oversight and supervision of improvement programs for the national educational system. The improvement programs were funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
On 20 April 2005, Correa was appointed to the position of Minister of Economy and Finance in the government of President Alfredo Palacio, having previously advised Palacio before his ascension to the presidency. As finance minister, Correa met with a number of Latin American presidents, including Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. He established himself as both a political maverick and a staunch critic of economic liberalization.
During his four months in charge of the portfolio, Correa was skeptical of signing a free trade agreement with the United States and declining advice from the International Monetary Fund, instead working to increase Ecuador's cooperation with other Latin American countries. Arguably his most notable decision within the Ministry of Finance was to reverse the fact that surpluses from oil sales go directly to prepay Ecuador's foreign debt and instead go to investment in health and education. After the World Bank stopped a loan, citing changes in the oil revenue stabilization fund, Correa resigned from Palacio's government. He had also proposed the issuance of government bonds at a lower interest rate than the 8.5% prevailing one at that time. Venezuela's government was buying half of the new bond issue. Correa claimed in his resignation letter that the sale was done with full presidential authorization, but cited lack of support from the president as a factor in his decision to resign. When Correa resigned as minister, polls showed he had the highest credibility of any official in the administration at the time, with 57% of Ecuadorians saying that they trusted him.