Uzma Ashraf Barton, Ph.D.

Dr. Uzma Ashraf Barton leads work on domestic resource mobilization (DRM), public financial management (PFM), and economic research and analysis across an expanding portfolio of field projects. She also provides technical advisory and manages new business development.

Uzma brings 18 years of experience negotiating, designing, implementing, and leading governance reform projects with national governments and development finance institutions (DFIs) across Asia and Africa. Her expertise focuses on broadening fiscal space, increasing own-source revenues, competitiveness analysis, introduction of new laws (VAT) and regulations, analysis, due diligence, and use of technology. Uzma worked extensively on legal aspects of financial inclusion and market development at the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and Chinese DFIs’ impact including Renminbi’s rise at the Atlantic Council. Informed by her implementation of complex tax reform projects of more than US$149 million, her field experience exercising all tax functions (enforcement, audit, tax-broadening, legal), and her leading the Prime Minister’s governance reform agenda at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (Islamabad), Uzma understands the weaknesses in the design and delivery of public sector reforms.

Uzma’s book Rethinking Finance (Kluwer 2017) provides focus at regulatory weaknesses. She co-edited Abraham and the Secular (Pelgrave 2021), and has extensively published elsewhere. She has a PhD and Master of Laws (LLM) in Finance Law and serves as the Vice President of Membership & Sponsorship for the International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management.

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