Biography: Suma Chakrabarti

Last updated: July 2003

Suma Chakrabarti became Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development on 18 February 2002.

After spending two years in Botswana on an Overseas Development Institute Fellowship, Suma Chakrabarti joined the Overseas Development Administration in 1984 as a senior economic assistant providing advice on macroeconomics issues and UK aid projects. In the late 1980s he went as part of the UK Delegation to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington as the Executive Director’s Assistant. Suma then returned to England and the ODA holding various roles, including Private Secretary to Baroness Chalker and later Head of Aid Policy and Resources Department.

He moved to the Treasury in 1996, where he held a number of key posts mainly in the public services and general expenditure. In 1998 he joined the Cabinet Office and was responsible for creating a new central unit (the Performance and Innovation Unit) to support the Prime Minister in examining medium- to long-term issues that cross public sector institutional boundaries.

In early 2000, he took over as Head of the Economic and Domestic Affairs Secretariat in the Cabinet Office (working closely with the Prime Minister’s Private Office and Policy Unit), combining this during 2001 as Head of the Dome Sale Unit in the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions.

In 2001, Suma Chakrabarti was appointed to be DFID’s Director-General, Regional Programmes where he has had responsibility for leading and managing over 1,200 staff in over 50 countries (covering Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America), devising and implementing a wide range of development programmes.

He is married with one daughter.

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