Akhtar, Shamshad

Governor, State Bank of Pakistan, Karachi, Pakistan Shamshad Akhtar took over as the fourteenth Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan on January 2, 2006, for a three-year term. Prior to her appointment, Akhtar served as Director General, Southeast Asia Department, for the Asian Development Bank (ADB). She also held the position of Director, Governance, Finance and Trade Division for the East and Central Asia Department of ADB. She has been ADB’s Coordinator for the APEC Finance Ministers Group from 1998 to 2001 and has served on a number of ADB committees. Before joining the ADB, Akhtar worked for ten years as an economist in the World Bank’s Resident Mission in Pakistan and briefly with the planning offices of both the federal and Sindh governments. Akhtar has presented numerous papers on economics and finance at international conferences, seminars, and symposia. She has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Punjab, an M.Sc. in Economics from the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, an M.A. in Development Economics from the University of Sussex, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Paisley College of Technology in the United Kingdom. She was a post-doctoral Fulbright Scholar and was a visiting fellow at the Department of Economics, Harvard University, in 1987.