Debapriya Bhattacharya

Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya is a macro-economist and public policy analyst. Currently, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) in Dhaka, where he served as its first Executive Director. He is also a member of the CPD Board of Trustees. He is the Convenor of the Citizen’s Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh- a network of more than 150 partner organisations from civil society and the private sector.
Being appointed by the immediate Interim Government of Bangladesh, Dr Debapriya led the committee for the preparation of the “White Paper on the State of Bangladesh’s Economy – Dissection of a Development Narrative” (November 2024).
Dr Debapriya is the former Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and UN Offices of Geneva and Vienna. He was the Special Advisor on LDCs to the Secretary General of UNCTAD, President of the governing board of UNCTAD and Coordinator of the LDC Group in the UN System.
He is a ranking member of, among others, the United Nations Committee for Development Policy (CDP), a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN General Assembly, and a former member of the Supervisory Board of BRAC International, which operates across 10 countries in Africa and Asia. He is also a member of the founding Board of The Starling Institute, which is the successor of Project Starling that was launched in 2023.
He was a member of a number of high-level bodies formed by the Government of Bangladesh, including the Macro-economic Policy Advisory Committee, the Banking Sector Reform Committee, the Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Committee on Utilisation of Gas Resources and the Task Force on “Foreign Aid”.
He also held several visiting positions at academic institutions in the USA and Europe and has undertaken numerous consultancy assignments overseas.
He served as the General Secretary of the Bangladesh Economic Association for three consecutive terms. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).
He is the founding Chair of the Southern Voice – a network of more than 50 think tanks and also the founding Chair of LDC Monitor.
He is regularly featured in the local and international media.
Dr Debapriya holds a Master’s and PhD in Economics from the Plekhanov Institute of National Economics, Moscow. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. He was a Senior Fulbright Fellow and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD), Washington, DC.