Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya (born 1956), a macro-economist and a civil society activist, has been appointed the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the WTO and UN Office in Geneva. He has been also accredited to the UN agencies in Vienna. Dr Bhattacharya will concurrently act as Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Vatican. Prior to his new assignment, he was the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) – a leading think tank in South Asia. He has earlier worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

Debapriya Bhattacharya did his Ph.D. and M Sc. in Economics at Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, Moscow, USSR. His was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, UK. He was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the Centre for Global Development (CGD), Washington D.C.

He was also a Visiting Fellow at the United Nations University-Institute of New Technology (UNU-INTECH), Maastricht and Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. He has conducted joint research with the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), Tokyo and Institute of Development Planning and Management (IDPM), Manchester. He undertook assignments for a number of international organisations including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNDP, UNEP, UNIDO, UNCTAD, ILO as well as bilateral development agencies from the USA, Japan, UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden. Since 2001 Dr Bhattacharya has regularly contributed to the preparation of the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

He undertook short-term overseas assignments in Costa Rica for CARE International, in India for the World Bank, in Nepal for the UNDP, in Sri Lanka for the British ODA, in Malaysia for the EDI, World Bank, Mongolia for the APO, and Bulgaria and Moscow for the UN-DESA.

Dr Bhattacharya regularly participates in high-level consultative bodies of the Government of Bangladesh. He was a member of the Macro-economic Policy Advisory Committee, Ministry of Finance; Banking Sector Reform Committee; Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission; Panel of Economists for the Fifth Five Year Plan (1997-2002), Ministry of Planning; Member, National Committee on Utilisation of Gas Resources, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources and National Committee for Vision 2020, Prime Minister’s Office. Dr Bhattacharya drafted the Industrial Policy (1999) for the Ministry of Industries. He was a Director of Janata Bank (1996-2000), the second largest bank in Bangladesh. He was a member of the Task Force on “Foreign Aid” constituted under the Adviser (Minister) for Planning in the Interim Government of 1991.

He has been a longstanding member of the Advisory Committee on WTO Affairs, Ministry of Commerce, Government of Bangladesh. He prepared the “Trade-related Technical Assistance Need Assessment of Bangladesh” in 1999, the first such country report prepared for support under the “Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to Least-developed Countries” of the WTO. He has also prepared a number of position papers for the Ministry of Commerce relating to WTO negotiations.

Dr Bhattacharya was a member of the official Bangladesh delegation to the WTO Fourth Ministerial Meeting held in Doha (2001) and the Second Meeting of the LDC Trade Ministers held in Dhaka (2003). He played a critical role in the national preparatory process for the WTO Ministerials held in Cancun (2003) and Hong Kong (2005). Dr. Bhattacharya played a guiding role in organisation of the pre-WTO Ministerial International Civil Society Forums on LDC Interests, held in Dhaka in 2003 and 2005.

He remains active in international networks on international trade, migration, development finance and pro-poor macroeconomic policy. He was a member of the “Task Force on WTO” set up by the South Asia Centre for Policy Studies (SACEPS). Since its inception in 2004, he had been faculty member of the Regional Trade Policy Courses (RTPC) for Asia and Pacific organised by the WTO in Hong Kong and Singapore.

He was a member of the founding Panel of Advisory Board of the International Centre for Trade and Development (ICTSD), Geneva. He is currently the Regional Editor of the Oxford Development Studies, Member of the Editorial Board, South Asian Studies, Colombo and Chairperson of the EU-LDC Network.

Dr. Bhattacharya was the General Secretary of the Bangladesh Economic Association for three consecutive terms. He is a member of the governing body of BRAC, largest NGO of the world. He also sits in the Academic Council of the BRAC University.

In the recent past Dr Bhattacharya has played an leading role for promoting good governance in the country and, particularly, spearheaded the civil society campaign for “Clean and Competent Candidates” for parliamentary elections in Bangladesh.

He married to Dr Irina Shebanova, an economist. They have a daughter, Alexandra Bhattacharya, who is reading Law at the London School of Economics (LSE).