Staff

Prior to METAC, Mr. Chami was Division Chief in the Middle East and Central Asia Department (MCD) where he led missions to Jordan, Yemen, and Mauritania. While on leave without pay from the IMF, Mr. Chami spent a few months in Lebanon during 2005-06 to help the Lebanese government in the preparation of the main document for the Paris III donors meeting. Mr. Chami also worked on several countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. Before joining the IMF, Mr. Chami was Director of the Graduate School of Business and Management at the American University of Beirut where he taught economics for six years and served as an advisor to the central bank of Lebanon.

Before joining METAC in January 2005, Mr. El Radi was for three years the IMF Monetary and Financial Systems Department resident advisor in banking supervision at the Central Bank of Syria, where he assisted with the development of the supervisory framework and staff capacity building. His previous assignment was at the Banking Control Commission-Banque du Liban—which started in 1983—included senior supervisory functions in on-site inspections and off-site supervision.

Senior economist at the IMF Statistics Department, Mr. Austin has fifteen years experience in macroeconomic statistics. Prior to joining the IMF in 2000, Mr. Austin was responsible for compiling balance of payments and national accounts statistics at the Bureau of Statistics in Guyana, South America. At the IMF, he has worked in the areas of balance of payments and external debt statistics, and the IMF's data dissemination standards, providing technical assistance and training to a number of European and Middle Eastern countries.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Australia since 1980, Mr. Nadarajah worked in the accounting and internal audit development in the central banks of Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Timor Leste, and Syria. He has had accounting, tax and audit experience in Malaysia and the United Kingdom since 1963, and he worked for the IMF as a technical expert in Mongolia, Kosovo, Timor Leste, and Syria between 1995 and 2006.

Mr. Ahern worked for fifteen years in the New Zealand Treasury and had roles in the areas of tax policy, expenditure analysis, and budget management. For the four years from 1997 to 2000 he was the New Zealand Budget Director. From December 2000 until September 2004, Mr. Ahern worked on IMF public financial management assignments in Kenya, Malawi and Armenia.

From 1996 to 2005, Mr. Hamad was head of the Canadian technical assistance program to the Ministry of Finance in Lebanon, in charge of the tax administration and tax system reforms. Since 2003, he was a member of the IMF Fiscal Affairs Department panel of experts. He ran a tax and accounting practice in Canada in the 1990s. Prior to that, he worked as management consultant in modeling financial information systems in the Middle-East and North Africa.