BB appoints chief economist

Professor Akhand Mohammad Akhtar Hossain, an economist with extensive national and international experience, has been appointed as the chief economist of the Bangladesh Bank, effective from 1 July.

Hossain began his academic career as a lecturer in the Department of Economics at Jahangirnagar University in 1981, where he served for approximately one year.

His career includes a long and distinguished tenure at the University of Newcastle in Australia, where he served for nearly three decades and retired as an associate professor of economics in 2020. He has since maintained an affiliation with the university as a conjoint (honorary) associate professor, according to a press release.

In 2024, he joined United International University as a Professor of Economics, from which he will take a leave of absence to assume his new role at the Bangladesh Bank.

Throughout his illustrious career, Hossain has held several significant positions across renowned institutions. He served as an international economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-Singapore Regional Training Institute for three years and as the World Bank's Resident Economic Adviser at the Bangladesh Bank, where he focused on macroeconomic policy-oriented research.

He has also held visiting academic positions at several prestigious institutions, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, the University of Delhi, Bank Indonesia, the Bank of Thailand, the University of Melbourne, the University of Malaya, and the University of Tasmania.

In 2009, he was a research fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. In 2016, he served as an academic visitor at Kent Business School of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom.

Hossain obtained his honours and master's degrees in economics from Jahangirnagar University. He later pursued postgraduate studies in Australia, earning an MA (Honours) in economics from the University of Melbourne and a PhD in economics from La Trobe University.