Dr. Murtaza Syed was appointed as Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan by the Federal Government for a period of three years, in pursuance of Section 10(4) of the State Bank of Pakistan Act 1956 (amended). He assumed his responsibilities on January 27, 2020.

Dr. Syed has more than 20 years of experience in macroeconomic research and policy making. He worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 16 years before resigning to join SBP. At the IMF, he was involved in IMF programs and surveillance of emerging markets and advanced economies; including Australia, Canada, Colombia, the Euro Area, Germany, Greece, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. He also served as the IMF’s Deputy Resident Representative in China between 2010 and 2014 and as IMF mission chief to Macao. He started his career at the IMF in the Fiscal Affairs Department before moving to the Asia and Pacific Department, where he worked on a variety of emerging markets and developing countries, including Laos, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan.

Dr. Syed began his career in the late 1990s as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Islamabad-based Human Development Center under former Finance Minister of Pakistan, Dr Mahbub ul Haq. Later, he worked for the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a London-based public policy think tank, where he conducted research projects on business investment and employment behavior, as well as evaluations of Latin American antipoverty programs.

Dr. Syed has a PhD in economics from Nuffield College at the University of Oxford. He has published papers on a variety of macroeconomic issues, including fiscal and monetary policy, financial stability, economic crises, investment, demographics, poverty and inequality. He has also delivered lectures on public policy at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.