In 1975, as a teenager, Emilia Pires left East Timor for Australia as a refugee, with her parents, brothers and sisters. At the time, she and her family believed they would be able to return after only a few days. However, exile lasted for 24 years before Pires was able to return to East Timor. Pires began her professional career as a junior public servant in the Victorian Government in her early 20s. She then rose to senior management level. Before becoming Minister of Finance, Ms. Pires held senior positions with:
World Bank, Senior Aid Management Specialist in West Bank and Gaza, where she advised both the Ministries of Finance and Planning of the Palestinian Authority and donors on aid coordination to the economic sector
UNTAET’s Head of the Planning Commission Secretariat as well as the Chief of the National Development and Planning Agency, and
Chief of the National Development and Planning Agency.
Minister of Finance
Some of Pires' main achievements are:
Timor-Leste Transparency Portal was launched in early 2011, enabling the public to search, evaluate and analyse State expenditures in real time. The reforms helped lead to the reduction by 19 countries of the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index
Emilia Pires was selected to be the first Chair of the g7+, the first forum of its kind giving fragile and conflict-affected countries a voice and place to share issues and ideas. Pires held the role until May 2014, when Minister Kaifala Marah of Sierra Leone took over.
Until June 2014, Pires co-chaired the International Dialogue of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding with Denmark and later with Finland, and
To improve service delivery, Pires corporatised the Ministry of Finance increasing decentralisation of some functions to line Ministries, like parts of the procurement process.
Co-authored "How will the Macroeconomy be Managed in an Independent East Timor? An East Timorese view" with East Timor President of the Republic, H,E. Jose Ramos-Horta in 2001, published in the IMF’s Finance and Development Magazine.
Co-authored "National Ownership and International Trusteeship: the Case of Timor-Leste", with Mr. Michael Francino in 2007, published in Boyce James K. and Madalene O’Donnell in the Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuilding.
Pires has also been invited to act as Keynote Speaker at various high-level forums:
the Senior Level Forum on Development Effectiveness in Fragile States in London organized by DFID, OECD, World Bank, UNDP and European Union
the "Deepening Voice and Accountability to fight poverty" Dialogue sponsored by the Communication Implementers in Paris
the 3rd High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness held in Accra, Ghana where she co-chaired the session on "New Development Challenges and New Development Partnerships: the Relevance and Urgency of Aid Reform"
