Ungku Zeti Akhtar binti Ungku Abdul Aziz (born 27 August 1947) is a Malaysian economist who served as the seventh governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia from 2000 to 2016, becoming the first woman to hold the position. Zeti was born in Johor Bahru on 26 August 1947 to Ungku Abdul Aziz and Azah Aziz, studied economics at the University of Malaya (UM) before completing a Master's and PhD in monetary economics and international trade and finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She began her career in 1979 as a research economist at the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre before joining the Central Bank of Malaysia in 1985, where she later rose to become the institution's seventh governor and the first woman to hold the post in 2000. During her 16-year tenure, she oversaw key initiatives in Islamic finance, financial sector reforms, and regional cooperation, including chairing committees at the Bank for International Settlements and contributing to the establishment of the Islamic Financial Services Board, the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation, and the Asia School of Business. She stepped down in April 2016 as the second longest-serving governor in the bank's history. Afterward, she was appointed to the Council of Eminent Persons in 2018 and later became group chairman of Permodalan Nasional Berhad and chairman of Sime Darby Property until her retirement in 2021. In the years following, she was linked to investigations surrounding 1MDB but denied allegations of wrongdoing and continued to provide testimony in related court proceedings through 2023. She has received multiple international honours for her leadership, including lifetime achievement awards and The Royal Award for Islamic Finance.
Early life and education Ungku Zeti Akhtar was born in Johor Bahru on 26 August 1947. Her father, Ungku Abdul Aziz, was an academic and social critic, and her mother, Azah Aziz, was a journalist and cultural historian. Zeti has called her parents a "tremendous inspiration" and "highly controversial for their ideas and opinions" at particular points in life. After completing her early education at Assunta High School in Petaling Jaya in 1958, she continued her sixth form study at St. John's Institution in Kuala Lumpur. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics from UM in 1970. She then continued her education in the United States, where she earned a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in monetary economics and international trade from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Career
Early career Zeti returned to Kuala Lumpur in 1979 and began her career as a research economist at the South East Asian Central Banks Research and Training Centre, where she worked until 1984. During this time, she contributed to studies on interest rates and monetary aggregates and prepared the annual Economic Survey on SEACEN Countries, while also participating in the centre's training courses, seminars, and meetings. In 1985, after completing two volumes on regional interest rate reform and gaining recognition from the Malaysian Central Bank governor Ismail Mohamed Ali, she became deputy manager in the economics section of the central bank.
Assistant governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia
In 1995, Zeti was appointed assistant governor of Central Bank of Malaysia. During the Asian financial crisis in 1998, she formulated and implemented capital control measures to stabilise the Malaysian ringgit. Under her direction, the central bank fixed the ringgit at 3.80 per US dollar, prohibited offshore trading, and restricted capital outflows to curb speculation. These policies were intended to restore monetary stability and protect Malaysia's economy from external shocks. Zeti explained that the controls were necessary to "minimise the impact of a possible economic crisis and a breakdown in the international financial system." Economists such as Paul Krugman supported the use of such controls to stabilise economies during financial turmoil, while Ethan Kaplan and Dani Rodrik later argued that Malaysia's recovery under these measures was stronger than that of countries that adopted the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) conventional policies.
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