Dr. Jomo Kwame SUNDARAM
United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development
Jomo Kwame Sundaram (born 11 December 1952), better known as Jomo KS, is a prominent Malaysian economist, who is currently serving as the United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Economic Development in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). He was also the founder chair of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), and sat on the Board of the United Nations Research Institute For Social Development (UNRISD), Geneva. Jomo is a leading scholar and expert on the political economy of development, especially in Southeast Asia, who has authored over 35 monographs, edited over 50 books and translated 11 volumes besides writing many academic papers and articles for the media.
Jomo is widely perceived to be an outspoken intellectual, with unorthodox non-partisan views. During the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98, Jomo was one of the earliest advocates of capital control measures, which then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad eventually introduced to curb excessive currency speculation. However, when then Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim was imprisoned without trial under the Internal Security Act, Jomo publicly condemned the repression. In late 1998, he was sued for defamation for 250 million ringgit by Vincent Tan, a Mahathir era billionaire.
Named after two African nationalist leaders, Jomo was born in Penang, Malaysia, soon after Jomo Kenyatta was incarcerated in late 1952. He spent his early years studying at Westlands Primary School (1959-63) and later at Penang Free School (1964-66). He later won a scholarship to the Royal Military College (1967-70) where he was selected as Malaysia’s delegate to the World Youth Forum in 1970. He later attended Yale College (1970-73) on a full scholarship. After graduating cum laude from Yale with a degree in economics, Jomo went on to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to obtain his MPA in 1974. He lost his father in early 1974 and returned to teach at the University Sains Malaysia in mid-1974, before beginning work on his Ph.D. at Harvard which he completed in late 1977 while teaching at Yale after earlier teaching stints at Harvard while working on his doctorate. The title of his Ph.D. dissertation is Class Formation in Malaya: Capital, the State, and Uneven Development (1978).
Jomo returned to Malaysia to research his thesis in 1976 before joining the economics faculty of University Kebangsaan Malaysia in early 1977. Five years later, he moved to the University of Malaya, where he remained for more than 22 years. During this period, Jomo was British Academy Visiting Professor and later Visiting Fellow at Cambridge (1987-88, 1991-92), Fulbright Visiting Professor at Cornell University (1993) and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was also founder director of the independent Institute of Social Analysis (INSAN) until late 2004, President of the Malaysian Social Science Association (1996-2000) and Convenor of the first and second International Malaysian Studies Conventions (1997, 1999). In January 2005, Jomo moved to New York City as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development after retiring from the University of Malaya in 2004.
Jomo’s extensive writings have covered industrial policy, privatization, rent-seeking, cronyism, financial liberalization, macroeconomic policy impacts, economic distribution, ethnic relations, Islam and Malaysian history. His better known recent books include Privatizing Malaysia (Westview, 1995), Southeast Asia’s Misunderstood Miracle (Westview, 1997), Tigers in Trouble (Zed, 1998), Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Profits (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Malaysian Eclipse (Zed, 2000) and The New Development Economics (Zed, 2005).