Introducing Ziad Alahdad, Former Director of Operations and Former Lead Energy Specialist, World Bank
Ziad retired from the World Bank in 2006 as Director of Operations. He served as chief of the country offices for Romania and Turkey. In Romania he helped the country reverse its economic decline thereby securing its path to European integration. In Turkey he managed the turnaround of one of the Bank’s largest country portfolios (US$3.5 billion). He was deputy chief of the Central Asia office which he helped establish.
He helped set up and manage the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program, a global pre-investment effort and the longest lasting special program in the Bank’s history. He established and managed a regional energy program in Central and Eastern Europe which provided policy and pre-investment support for major regional efforts. He managed many World Bank projects, including the following path-breaking billion dollar operations: (i) the Russia Oil Rehabilitation Project, the World Bank’s largest ever investment operation and its first in Russia: and (ii) the Oso Condensate Project in Nigeria, the first joint World Bank/IFC petroleum sector operation.
He was the World Bank’s energy advisor in Pakistan, where he earlier served as a senior executive in the natural gas industry (Sui Gas Transmission Company, now SSGC) and as GM/CEO in the public sector.
He has published widely and represented the World Bank in over 200 international forums and media events. He has given talks at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Atlantic Council, Yale, Princeton, Fletcher, MIT and Georgetown University, as well as at other universities and professional institutions in Central and East Europe, Central Asia, East and West Africa, Turkey, Pakistan and the Russian Federation.
In the area of Integrated Energy Policy for Pakistan, his most recent publications are: (i) “Putting it All Together” in the book “Pakistan’s Interminable Energy Crisis: Is There a Way Out” published by the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars (2015); (ii) “Pakistan’s Energy Sector: From Crisis to Crisis – Breaking the Chain” published by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (Oct. 2012); (iii) “Turning Energy Around” in the book “Pakistan Beyond the Crisis State”, Maleeha Lodhi (ed), published by Columbia University Press, C. Hurst of London, Oxford University Press (2011).