Guest:

Dr. Jaya Josie is retired from the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) BRICS Research Centre, South Africa. He is now a visiting professor at Zhejiang University International Business School. He is an economist in development economic policy research in public finance, fiscal policy, trade and investment, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and infrastructure finance targeting sustainable development, inequality, unemployment and poverty. He led the HSRC South African BRICS Think Tank (SABTT) team that prepared the BRICS Think Tank Council’s (BTTC) recommendation, “Towards a Long Term Strategy for BRICS”, that was endorsed by the Sixth BRICS Heads of State Summit in Fortaleza Brazil in July 2014. He was a lecturer in the Department of Economics and the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape; the first coordinator of the Macroeconomic Research Group (MERG) in South Africa, and the first Director of the National Institute of Economic Policy (NIEP) of South Africa. He was also the director of the Development Economic Services unit at Ernst and Young, South Africa, and subsequently became the Deputy Chairperson and head of research of the South African Financial & Fiscal Commission (FFC). He is active in the South African BRICS Think Tank and Academic Forum, and led the HSRC BRICS Research Centre participation in the G20 think tank group (T20). He was a member of the Statistics Council of South Africa, the academic committee of the International Monetary Institute (IMI), Renmin University Beijing, and the academic committee of the Centre for Internet Finance and Innovation (CIFI), Academy for Internet Finance (AIF) Zhejiang University, Hangzhou. He is fluent in both English and French.