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Masood Ahmed is Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Middle East and Central Asia Department. He has previously held positions in the IMF, the World Bank and the UK Government's Department for International Development, working on areas that included international economic policy relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade, and global economic prospects. He is an active writer on economics and the Middle East, including as a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.
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Early life
Masood Ahmed was born and raised in Pakistan. He obtained his graduate and post-graduate degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics, where he also served on the economics faculty.
Career
Masood Ahmed has been Director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department since November 1, 2008. Before taking up this position, Mr. Ahmed was the Director of the External Relations Department in the IMF since May 1, 2006. Between 2003-06, Mr. Ahmed served as Director General for Policy and International Development at the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID). Between 2000-03, Mr. Ahmed was Deputy Director in the IMF's Policy Development and Review Department. In this role, he served as the senior staff focal point for taking forward the IMF's policy work in support of low income member countries and its relationship with the World Bank and other development agencies.
Between 1979 and 2000, Mr. Ahmed held a number of positions in the World Bank. He worked for 10 years on country programs and projects in different regions and, for a further 10 years, on international economic policy relating to debt, aid effectiveness, trade and global economic prospects. As Vice President for Poverty Reduction and Economic Management, Mr. Ahmed was the senior World Bank manager responsible for the development of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper approach as well as the HIPC Debt Initiative. He also served concurrently for a year as Acting Vice President for Private Sector Development and Infrastructure. He will be serving the Center for Global Development (CGD) as new president, succeeding founding president Nancy Birdsall, who is stepping down after 15 years. He will join CGD in early 2017, after leaving his current position as Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the IMF. The Center for Global Development works to reduce global poverty and inequality.