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Suman Bery is an Indian economist, academician and writer who is appointed as vice chairperson of NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) in April 2022. He served for 28 years at The World Bank and left as Lead Economist in 2000. He has been a non-resident fellow at Think-Tank Bruegel (an economic policy research institution in Brussels), and a Global Fellow in the Asia Programme of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington D.C. He was the Director-General (Chief Executive) of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in New Delhi.
Wiki/Biography
Suman Kumar Bery was born in 1949. He did his schooling at The Doon School in Dehradun, and he won a scholarship to attend an English boarding school, Oakham School, United Kingdom. He obtained an undergraduate degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. He attended Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University to pursue a master’s degree in public affairs.
Physical Appearance
Height (approx.): 5′ 6″
Hair Colour: Salt and Pepper
Eye Colour: Dark Brown
Family
Parents & Siblings
There is not much information about his parents. He has three older brothers
Wife & Children
He is married but there is not much information about his wife.
Career
Suman Bery started his career through Young Professional Program at The World Bank in 1972. He served as an economist in Public Finance Division from 1973 to 1979. He served in different positions at various divisions over the tenure of 28 years like Senior Economist, Division 1C and Yugoslavia Division (1980-1984), Division Chief at the National Economics Management Division (1984-1988), Division Chief at Latin America Region Country Operations Division, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay (1988-1992), and Economic Adviser, Economic Advisers Unit, Latin America Region (1994-1997). At last, he served as Lead Economist in Latin America Region Country Operations Division, Brazil Anchor before leaving The World Bank in 2000. During the period from 1992 to 1994, he served as a special consultant for the Reserve Bank of India in Bombay. In 2001, he joined the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) as Director-General (Chief Executive) in New Delhi. During his tenure at NCAER, he also served as a member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Economic Advisory Council and Reserve Bank of India’s Technical Advisory Committee on Monetary Policy. He almost served a decade in NCAER and left in 2011. From 2012 to mid-2016, Suman was appointed as Chief Economist at Shell International, based in The Hague in the Netherlands. He was part of the senior leadership of Shell’s global scenarios group. He remained the Global Fellow in the Asia program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC between April 2019 and December 2022. On 30 April 2022, he was appointed as the Vice-Chairperson of NITI Aayog. He was a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, a senior fellow of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, and a member of the Board of the Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, New Delhi at the time of his appointment in NITI Aayog.
A photograph of Suman Bery welcomed at NITI Aayog’s office by the former CEO of NITI Aayog, Amitabh Kant
Publication
He was the co-author of the book Energizing India: Towards a Resilient and Equitable Energy System published by SAGE Publishing in 2016.
Cover Page of Book Energized India
He contributed to the Indian Policy Forum journal from 2006 to 2011.
Favourites
- Food: Italian
- Restaurant: Sushi Mizutani in Tokyo, L’Auberge de L’Ill in Alsace, and Union Square Café on 16th Street in New York
Facts/Trivia
- Suman Bery is known to have profound knowledge of food and wine. In an interview, he said
But I really hit my stride in the World Bank when Rakesh and I used to entertain as bachelors and we did a lot of the cooking from Madhur Jaffrey’s first cookbook!”
- In an interview, Suman Bery revealed what his wife thinks of his food choices
although my wife does tease me that I am the only person she knows who thinks English food is something to be craved.”
- For more than a decade, he was the monthly columnist for an Indian newspaper, Business Standard.
- Rakesh Mohan, former deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India deputy governor and Suman Bery’s predecessor at NCAER was one year senior when Suman Bery went to Oakham School.
- In an interview, Bery revealed that
the 1966 devaluation almost ended his plans to go up to Oxford. His father, working with Caltech, the oil company that was later nationalised to become Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, had had to take loans to part-finance his education.”