Dr Ali Salman is the founder and Executive Director of Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME), an independent economic policy think tank in Islamabad, ranked amongst top 100 think tanks in Asia-Pacific region. Ali Salman is also CEO of Islam and Liberty Network (L) Foundation, registered in Malaysia. Ali has served as CEO of Malaysia’s prominent independent think tank, Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS) from 2018-2020. 

In 2021, Dr Ali published a book “Islam and Economics: A Primer on Markets, Morality and Justice” by Acton Institute, USA, which has been translated in several languages.

As a policy adviser, Ali has made contributions in the areas of long-term planning, economic governance, digital policy, industrial policy, innovation policy, cleantech, education policy and youth policy in Malaysia and Pakistan. He has developed a unique perspective on public governance by bringing in a threedimensional focus on business, public finance and economics in the policy frameworks.

Dr Ali has remained actively engaged with the government as an economist and public policy expert over years. He is a contributor and co-author in two background papers for the three years growth strategy for the Planning Commission. He has advised the Competition Commission analyzing economic implications of legal decisions. He has also served on the Board of Punjab Saaf Pani Company as an independent director, a government owned company for provisioning of clean drinking water. 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 helped the authorities and donors to use his report as evidence to scale up the programme significantly, which now caters to more than one million students.

Dr Ali holds doctorate in Policy Research and Practice, from the University of Bath, UK, where he wrote thesis on “Policy discovery through a complexity lens: case studies of economic reforms and policy practice in Malaysia and Pakistan. 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 has conducted training workshops in Pakistan and other countries. He writes op-eds for Express Tribune, a partner publication of the New York Times. Ali has taught courses on Economics and Entrepreneurship as an adjunct faculty in the Government College University Lahore.