H.E. Mr. José Sánchez-Fung

José R. SÁNCHEZ-FUNG is the Dominican Republic’s ambassador and permanent representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, Switzerland. Ambassador Sánchez-Fung is currently serving as vice-president of UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Board, chairperson of the WTO’s Working Group on Trade, Debt and Finance, chairperson of the Working Party on the Accession of Equatorial Guinea to the WTO, and coordinator of the 39-country SIDS Group at UNCTAD.

Preceding the appointment in Geneva, Dr Sánchez-Fung was ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Dominican Republic to Switzerland based in Bern. 

Before joining his country’s foreign service, Dr Sánchez-Fung taught economics for over two decades at the University of Nottingham (Ningbo, China), Kingston University London (with tenure), and the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK).

He currently holds an adjunct professorship at Western Michigan University’s department of economics.

Dr Sánchez-Fung’s academic research focuses on open-economy macroeconomics and monetary policy, and development economics and policy; central banks and their policies is a key theme in his long-term research agenda. He is co-author of the textbook Monetary Economics in Developing Countries (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2007).

Ambassador Sánchez-Fung’s national public service includes working in the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic in the role of director of economic research and voting member of the monetary policy-making Open Market Committee. He has also served as an honorific advisor to the Dominican Republic’s Senate - the upper house of the national parliament.       

Sánchez-Fung holds an undergraduate degree in economics from PUCMM in Santo Domingo, and MA and PhD degrees in economics from the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. In 2016 he attained fellowship of the United Kingdom’s Higher Education Academy.