Bombay-born Dr Umer Chapra, prize-winning economist and pioneer in the field of Islamic economics, passed away in Saudi Arabia on 13th June 2026. He served for nearly 35 years as Economic Advisor and then Senior Economic Advisor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), Riyadh, and was later Advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI) of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Jeddah.. His early career was as Senior Economist and Associate Editor of the Pakistan Development Review at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, and as Reader (Associate Professor) at the Central Institute of Islamic Research (Pakistan). He was recipient of the Islamic Development Bank Award for Islamic Economics, 1989; the Institute of Overseas Pakistanis gold medal by the President of Pakistan for services to Islam and Islamic Economics, 1995; the COMCEC 30th Anniversary Academic Award by the President of Turkey for his outstanding academic studies in Islamic Economics and Finance in Istanbul in 2014.
Dr Chapra in an account of his early life, remembered how his father’s timber business suffered in the Depression of the 30s so his early life was in straitened conditions. He was six years old when his father passed away, and relatives suggested he worked in a cloth shop opening bales of textile. His mother insisted on his education, leading to a brilliant academic career topping the list in the University of Karachi (then combined with the University of Hyderabad) in B.Com and M.Com in the early 1950s. The Memon Welfare Association awarded him a scholarship to pursue further studies in the US at the University of Wisconsin. He obtained a PhD in Economics and Sociology in 1961. After a spell in Pakistan he returned to teach in the US, but then took up employment in Saudi Arabia, as it had always been his aim to work in a Muslim country. His initial plan was to work in the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency for a few years, but in an interview he noted that “I was treated so well and with such respect that I worked there for 35 years”. He was conferred a Saudi citizenship “as a gift” for his outstanding contributions in developing SAMA’s fiscal policies during a period of high inflation in the 1960s.
Sources: https://staging.cilecenter.org/about-us/our-team/dr-umer-chapra and video interview with Jahanseb Minhas https://alchetron.com/Umer-Chapra