Ministers of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Dr. Omar Zakhilwal
Minister of Finance

Dr. Omar Zakhilwal is the Minister of Finance as well as the Chief Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan. Prior to his current position, Dr. Zakhiwal served as the President of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA), a member of the Supreme Council of Da Afghanistan Bank, Acting Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, and the Chief Advisor to the Minister of Rural Development of Afghanistan.

Since 2003, Dr. Zakhilwal has been part of many initiatives pertaining to economics and development issues in the country. He was the author of the first Afghanistan National Human Development Report, released by UNDP in February 2007. He also worked as an Afghan counterpart to the Ottawa based North-South community-led development project in sustainable peace building, as well as on a number of other development related initiatives. Moreover, he has done consulting work for the World Bank, UNDP, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and other organizations.

Dr. Zakhilwal has written numerous articles in English on political, economic and social issues pertaining to Afghanistan for such prominent newspapers, magazines and journals as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Ottawa Citizen, Forum of Federation Quarterly, Human Rights Tribune, Al-Ehram and many other publications.

Dr. Zakhilwal obtained his BA (Honors), MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Winnipeg, Queen’s University and Carleton University in Canada respectively. Prior to his return to Afghanistan, Dr. Zakhilwal served as a Senior Research Economist at Statistics Canada and taught economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.