Reza Baqir

Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School and Managing Director and Global Practice Leader for Sovereign Advisory Services, Alvarez and Marsal

Dr. Reza Baqir served as the 20th Governor of Pakistan’s central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan, from May 2019 to May 2022. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and Managing Director and Global Practice Leader for Sovereign Advisory Services at Alvarez and Marsal. During his time as Governor, Dr. Baqir negotiated a new IMF program in 2019, successfully completed six subsequent reviews to restore financial stability and growth, and led the country’s financial response during the Covid-19 pandemic. He led several institutional reforms including the liberalization of Pakistan’s foreign exchange market from a fixed to a flexible regime, revision of the central bank law to strengthen its independence, Roshan Digital Accounts for overseas Pakistanis, and several digitization initiatives to promote efficiency and inclusion in the financial sector. Previously Dr. Baqir spent 19 years with the IMF and 2 with the World Bank where he held numerous senior policy and country positions in East Asia, Middle East, and Europe. He started and headed the IMF’s office in Egypt as Senior Resident Representative and headed the IMF's Debt Policy Division which oversees IMF’s work on assessing debt sustainability and sovereign debt restructuring. Dr. Baqir resigned from the IMF for public service in his home country. Dr. Baqir’s research has been published in the Journal of Political Economy and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, amongst other journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and an A.B. (Magna cum Laude) in Economics from Harvard University. His views on emerging markets’ economic challenges and sovereign debt have been covered frequently in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, and CNBC.