Born in Simla, India on 14 September 1938, Shahid Javed Burki was educated at St.Mary’s Academy, Rawalpindi; Government College, Lahore; Christ College, Oxford University; and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received M.Sc. in Physics from Government College; attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received M.A (Hons) in Economics; and went to Harvard University as a Mason Fellow from where he received MPA. He studied for Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard but did not complete his studies.

In 1960 he joined the Civil Service of Pakistan and held the positions of Deputy Commissioner Sheikhupura (1964); Director West Pakistan Rural Works Program (1964-65); Deputy Secretary Foreign Aid (1965-67); Deputy Secretary (Economics),

Governor of West Pakistan (1969); Economic Consultant, Ministry of Commerce (1971-72). He resigned from the CSP in 1974.

In 1974 he joined the World Bank as Senior Economist in the Policy Planning andProgram Review Department. Promoted as Division Chief, Policy Planning in 1975 he served in that position until 1981. In 1982 he was promoted as Director International Relations Department and looked after the World Bank’s relations with international organizations. In 1987 he moved over as Director China Operations. During his tenure China became the largest borrower from the Bank with lending of over $3 billion a year. In 1994 he was promoted and appointed Vice President Latin America and the Caribbean a position in which he served until the end of 1999 when he took early retirement. During his tenure, the World Bank successfully dealt with a number of crises in the Latin American countries including Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. 

He took leave of absence from the World Bank in 1996-97 to serve as Finance Minister in the care-taker administration appointed by President Farooq Leghari. During his tenure, Pakistan successfully negotiated the release of a stalled tranche by the IMF, obtained a $500 million low-interest loan from the Government of China and prepared an ambitious program of structural adjustment to revive the troubled Pakistani economy and sustain a relatively high rate of GDP growth into the future.

After retiring from the Bank he joined the Emerging Markets Partnership, a private equity firm established by Mr. Moeen Qureshi. While with the firm he was the Chief Executive Officer of EMP-Finance. Upon leaving the firm in 2004, he launched a career in the academia, founding in 2006 the Institute of Public Policy in Lahore in association with the Beaconhouse National University. He was also invited to join as Visiting Fellow the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, a Washington-based think-tank and as Senior Visiting Fellow, the Institute of South Asian Studies and the National University of Singapore.

Over time he has contributed more than a thousand articles to the pages of the Pakistani and foreign newspapers. He has authored or co-authored more than two score books on a variety of subjects in development economics. The books were concerned with developments in China, Latin America, South Asia and Pakistan. His books on Pakistan include Pakistan Under Bhutto, 1971-77 (London, Macmillan); Pakistan: A Nation in Making (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press); Pakistan Historical Dictionary (Lehnham, Maryland, Scarecrow Press) and Pakistan’s Economy Under Musharraf (Karachi, Oxford University Press).

Mr. Shahid Hamid has served as the Governor of Punjab, and Federal Cabinet Member in capacity of Advisor to the Prime Minister on Establishment. As a senior lawyer of the Supreme Court, he is renowned for handling key cases of national importance, such as the Missing Persons case of Balochistan. 

A former officer of the Central Superior Services (CSP) of Federal Government of Pakistan, Mr. Hamid has worked at grass root level in various Districts and Sub-Divisions of Pakistan. He is also a Director of the Institute of Public Policy (IPP) with the Beaconhouse National University (BNU).