Shahid Javed Burki

Shahid Javed Burki (Urdu: شاہد جاوید برکی) is a professional economist who has served as Finance Minister of Pakistan and as a Vice President of the World Bank. Born in Simla, India on September 14, 1938, he migrated to Pakistan along with his family in September 1947 and settled in Rawalpindi, where his father worked as an official in the Pakistan army headquarters. He was educated in Rawalpindi's Presentation Convent and St Mary's Academy. Upon graduation he moved to Lahore to study Physics and Mathematics at Government College. He received his Masters in Physics from Punjab University in 1959. The following year he was chosen as a Rhodes Scholar from Pakistan and went to Christ Church, Oxford to study economics. He received his M.A from Oxford in 1963 and then went to Harvard University as a Mason Fellow for graduate studies in Economics and Public Administration.

Burki joined the World Bank in 1974 as a Senior Economist and went on to serve in several senior positions including: the (first) Director of the China Department (1987-1994), and the Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean (1994-1999). He persuaded the World Bank's senior management, in the immediate aftermath of the Chinese authorities' repression of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, that the Bank should stay actively engaged with China -- a stance challenged at the time by many of the Bank's most powerful shareholder countries. He took a leave of absence from the Bank to serve as Pakistan's Finance Minister in 1996-1997. He retired from the Bank in 1999.

Burki is the author or editor of several books on China (A Study of Chinese Communes, 1969, Harvard University Press), Pakistan (Pakistan Under Bhutto, 1980, Macmillan; Pakistan under the Military: Eleven Years of Zia Ul-Haq (with Craig Baxter), 1991, Westview Press; Pakistan: Fifty Years of Nationhood, 1999, Westview Press; A Historical Dictionary of Pakistan, Scarecrow Press, 1999) and on development (First Things First (with Paul Streeten), Oxford University Press, 1981; and Transforming Socialist Economies: Lessons from Cuba and Beyond (edited, with Daniel P. Erikson), Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). In 2007, he published Changing Perceptions, Altered Reality: Pakistan's Economy under Musharraf, 1999-2006 (Oxford University Press, Karachi).

He spoke at Harvard University in February 2006 at a conference on US-Pakistan relations. He writes an opinion piece for a Pakistani newspaper (the Dawn) once a week. He is also a frequent contributor of opinion pieces to the Daily Times.

Burki is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the recently-established Institute of Public Policy in Lahore, Pakistan.

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box |title=Finance Minister of Pakistan (caretaker)
years=11 November, 1996 - 17 February, 1997
before=Naveed Qamar| after=Sartaj Aziz