The government for the first time has appointed a female finance secretary at the Finance Division.
Ms Fatima Yasmin, currently working as the Economic Relations Division (ERD) secretary under the Ministry of Finance, has been posted as the senior finance secretary, according to an order of the public administration ministry on Thursday.
The public administration ministry in another order appointed Planning Commission Member Sharifa Khan as the new ERD secretary.
Both the orders will be effective from July 11 this year.
Fatima Yasmin will replace currently serving Senior Finance Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder. Mr Talukder has been appointed as the Bangladesh Bank governor, to be effective from the first week of July.
Ms Yasmin, a career civil servant, joined the ERD as secretary in February 2020. She is the first female secretary of ERD. Prior to this position, she was the vice-chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) under the Ministry of Commerce, and director general of the Institute of Public Finance (IPF) under the Ministry of Finance.
Yasmin joined the Bangladesh Civil Service in 1991 and later worked in different capacities in the finance, agriculture, women and children affairs, and defence ministries.
Outside the government, she worked for Asian Development Bank, European Union, and the UN's International Jute Organization.
Yasmin obtained her Masters in Business Administration from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka.
She also did Masters in Development Economics from Australian National University (ANU), Australia. She was a Hubert H. Humphrey Public Policy Fellow of the US State Department at Rutgers University, USA.
Moreover, she successfully completed the Executive Program on Leading Successful Programs from John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
On the other hand, Ms Sharifa Khan worked with the Ministry of Commerce as an additional secretary before being appointed as a Member at the Planning Commission.
Ms Khan is an economics graduate from Dhaka University. She also completed another post-graduate degree in Development Economics from Australian National University.
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