Dr. Shamshad Akhtar

Dr. Shamshad Akhtar

Former Acting Finance Minister, Pakistan - Former Under-Secretary-General, United Nations & Former Governor, State Bank, Pakistan

Dr. Shamshad Akhtar served for a period of two and a half months as virtually Economy Minister of Pakistan in the Caretaker Government handling a mix of finance, revenue, economic affairs, statistics division, planning and development as well as industry and commerce areas.

Broad-based development experience of about 37 years at leading multilateral institutions: including the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and served as Governor of Central Bank of Pakistan.   Development experience is spread over Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. 

Managed highly competent professional staff ranging close to 500 or so in Multilateral Development Institutions and in the central bank managed 4 institutions with over 5000 staff.   Developed and implemented country and regional strategies, restructuring of organizations, human resource policies and incentive mechanisms.  Conducted dialogue with the Heads of States, the Boards of multilateral development banks, private sector and parliamentarians and senators.

Areas of expertise range from macroeconomic policy management to sector-specific policies, legal and regulatory frameworks development and implementation.  In addition to macroeconomics including growth policies, public finance and monetary policy and management, have advised various governments and the private sector in specific areas of public and private sector governance, poverty, privatization, public-private partnerships and energy, agriculture and other sectors.  Over the years also advised a number of countries on financial sector (both banking and nonbank sectors) policy, legal and regulatory frameworks and conducted assessments of central banks. 

As Pakistan’s Governor of Central Bank, was Nominated Asia’s Best Central Bank Governor by the Emerging Market Groups in 2006 and Bankers Trust in 2007.  Nominated as top ten of Asia's Women in 2008 by the Asian Wall Street Journal.  

Since September 2018, serving on 12 member Global Advisory Council as global advisory for China’s Belt and Road Initiative for a period of 5 years.  This global advisory council reports to Minister of Foreign Affairs and prepares report for the BRI Summit. 

At the same time serving as Chairperson of Karaadanz – a nonprofit organization – working on innovative and digital financial inclusion now position to establish a credit guarantee mechanism and nonbank financial inclusion. Offering support to various institution on a range of development topics.