Dr. Reza Baqir is Managing Director and Global Head of Sovereign Advisory Services at Alvarez & Marsal. He is also a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, he served as the 20th Governor of Pakistan’s central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan, from May 2019 to May 2022, and before that worked at the International Monetary Fund for nearly 20 years.
During his time as Governor of Pakistan’s central bank, Dr. Baqir negotiated a new IMF program, successfully completed six subsequent reviews, 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.
During his time at the IMF Dr. Baqir 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 during 2017-2019 and was IMF Mission Chief for Romania and Bulgaria previously. He also headed the IMF's Debt Policy Division for four years which oversees IMF’s work on sovereign debt restructuring, assessing debt sustainability, and related sovereign debt policies. In this capacity, he represented the IMF at the Paris Club for four years. 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.
Dr. Baqir’s views on emerging markets’ economic challenges and sovereign debt have been covered frequently in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, CNN, and CNBC.