Fatima Yasmin, a senior bureaucrat, has been appointed the country’s first woman finance secretary, according to an official announcement on Thursday.

She will transfer to the new assignment on July 11 from the finance ministry’s Economic Relations Department where she has been serving also as a secretary since February 23, 2020. 

She succeeds Finance Secretary Abdur Rouf Talukder who has been named as the governor of Bangladesh Bank, according to the Public Administration notification.

In another development Planning Commission member (secretary) Sharifa Khan is joining ERD as secretary on July 11, said a Public Administration notification.

Fatima, also the first woman ERD secretary of Bangladesh, joined the Bangladesh Civil Service in 1991.

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She obtained an MBA from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Dhaka. She also obtained a master degree in development economics from the Australian National University.

Fatima  was also a Public Policy Fellow at the US State Department's Hubert H. Humphrey at Rutgers University in the United States. She has completed the Executive Program from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

ERD's new secretary Sharifa is also a 1991 batch officer of BCS. She held various posts in the Ministry of Agriculture, BPATC, Deputy Commissioner's Office, Dhaka, WTO Cell and Ministry of Commerce.

Sharifa served as a counselor at the Bangladesh High Commission in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2011 to 2017. She has been serving as the Member (Secretary) of the Planning Commission since February 9, 2021.