Poonam Gupta is the Director General of National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), India’s largest economic policy think tank; a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister; and Convener of the Advisory Council to the 16th Finance Commission.
She joined NCAER in 2021 after working at senior positions for nearly two decades at the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC. In between Gupta taught at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Maryland (USA) and as a visiting faculty at ISI, Delhi. She has also been the RBI Chair Professor at NIPFP and a Professor at ICRIER.
She is currently on the Boards of NIPFP and GDN (Global Development Network), a member of the World Bank’s advisory groups for ‘Poverty & Equity’ and the ‘World Development Report’, a member of the Development Advisory Committee of NITI Aayog, and of FICCI’s Executive Committee. She was the Chair of the Task Force on Macroeconomics and Trade during India’s G20 Presidency.
At NCAER, Gupta leads the work on issues related to Economic Growth, International Financial Architecture, Central Banking, Maro Economic Stablity, Public Debt, and State Finances.
Her research has been published in the top scholarly journals, and in the IMF and World Bank publications. Gupta has nearly fifty widely cited research papers and an edited book on India and China (with Barry Eichengreen) to her credit. Her work has been cited in the Economist, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. She has been writing regular columns for Business Standard and Economic Times.
Gupta holds a Master’s degree and PhD in Economics from University of Maryland, USA, and a Master’s degree in Economics from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. She won the 1998 EXIM Bank award for her PhD on international economics.