Ali Salman

Ali Salman is Executive Director of Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME), an independent economic think tank that he founded in 2013 in Islamabad. He has served as CEO of Malaysia’s prominent independent think tank, IDEAS from 2018-2020. He is also a co-founder and CEO of Islam and Liberty Network, a global platform for researchers and academics active in the Muslim majority countries. Ali is author of “Islam & Economics: A Primer on Markets, Morality, and Justice” (Acton, 2021).

Ali has remained actively engaged with the government as an economist and public policy expert over years. He has advised the Competition Commission analyzing economic implications of legal decisions. He has also served on the Board of Punjab Saaf Pani Company, a government owned company for provisioning of clean drinking water in Pakistan. Ali played an instrumental role in writing Pakistan’s first youth policy while working with the Government of the Punjab. His evaluation of Government’s Education Vouchers scheme, published by Alternate Solutions Institute, helped the authorities and donors was used as evidence to scale up the programme significantly, which now caters to more than 500,000 students.

Ali has taught courses on Economics and Entrepreneurship as adjunct faculty for several years in the Government College University Lahore. Ali holds master’s degrees in Economics, Public Policy and Business Administration. He is recipient of Fulbright Scholarship, Royal Netherlands Fellowship and Charles Wallace Fellowship. He writes op-eds for Express Tribune, a partner publication of New York Times.

As a nation, we cannot come out of the vicious circle of poverty and dependence without creating wealth. I founded PRIME to improve our understanding of which policies, rules and regulations that we need to help create wealth for all those who are ready to make an effort.