Supachai Panitchpakdi (, , ; born 30 May 1946) is a Thai politician and professor. He was Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 1 September 2005 to 31 August 2013. Prior to this, he was the Director-General of the

World Trade Organization The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland that regulates and facilitates international trade. Governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that g ...

(WTO) from 1 September 2002 to 1 September 2005. He was succeeded by Pascal Lamy.

Education

Supachai studied in primary and secondary education at Saint Gabriel's College and Triam Udom Suksa School. Then he received his

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional prac ...

in economics, development planning, and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in economic planning and development at the Netherlands School of Economics (now known as

Erasmus University Erasmus University Rotterdam ( ; abbreviated as EUR) is a public university, public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century Christia ...

) in Rotterdam. In 1973, he completed his doctoral dissertation under supervision of Professor

Jan Tinbergen Jan Tinbergen ( , ; 12 April 1903 – 9 June 1994) was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the ana ...

, the first Nobel laureate in economics. In the same year, he went to

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

as a visiting fellow to conduct research on development models.

Political careers

In 1986 Supachai Panitchpakdi was appointed as Thailand's Deputy Minister of Finance, but when parliament was dissolved in 1988 he left politics and became president of

Thai Military Bank TMBThanachart Bank (TTB) (; hai Military Thanchart Bank ) is a Thai bank based in Bangkok. It has been listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) since 23 December 1983. Piti Tantakasem was appointed CEO effective January 2018. , TMB was ...

. In 1992 he returned to politics and became deputy prime minister until 1995, responsible for trade and economics. During the

Asian financial crisis The 1997 Asian financial crisis gripped much of East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide economic meltd ...

in November 1997 he returned to be deputy prime minister and also became minister of commerce.

World Trade Organization

On 22 July 1999 he was elected to become Director-General of the

, sharing the post with Mike Moore when a decision could not be reached. Taking the second half of the six-year term, he entered office on 1 September 2002.

UNCTAD

In March 2005 he was appointed Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) following his term at the WTO, a post he took up in late-2005. He was appointed for a second four-year term in September 2009. Keen to reform and revitalise the organisation, he has established a Panel of Eminent Persons to oversee the start of reform of UNCTAD.

Selected works

He published numerous books, including ''Educational Growth in Developing Countries'' (1974), ''Globalization and Trade in the New Millennium'' (2001) and ''China and the WTO: Changing China, Changing World Trade'' (2002, co-authored with Mark Clifford).

References

External links