Dr. Sinan Al-Shabibi (Arabic: الدكتور سنان الشبيبي) is the current governor of the Central Bank of Iraq. He has held this position since 2003.
Born in Baghdad on the 1st of July 1941 and son of the prominent Iraqi figure Mohammed Ridha Al-Shabibi, Dr. Al-Shabibi holds a B.Sc. in Economics from Baghdad University (1966), a Diploma in Advanced Studies in Economic Development, an M.A. in Economics from the University of Manchester (1970, 1971), and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bristol (1975).
From April 1977 to December 1980, Sinan Al-Shabibi was the Chief of plan Preparation and Co-ordination Division at the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, and from May 1975 to March 1977 he worked as the Head of Imports and Marketing Section at the Iraqi ministry of oil.
Immediately after the start of the Iran–Iraq War, he moved to Geneva in Switzerland where he spent from December 1980 to October 2001 working as a Senior Economist in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
On August 1, 2002 Al-Shabibi testified among other witnesses at the Hearing Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about possible military action in Iraq. The topics that he addressed were the state of the Iraqi economy and its stabilization post a possible military campaign.
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Since taking over as central bank governor, Al-Shabibi, has introduced the bank's employees to modern finance. He has made the bank switch from typewriters and calculators to computers, introduced it to financial instruments like currency auctions and replaced Iraq's pre-2003 banknotes with the New Iraqi Dinar between October 2003 and January 2004.
In the effort to further modernize the Central Bank of Iraq, Al-Shabibi appointed Baghdad-born architect Zaha Hadid in August 2010 to design the new headquarters for the Central Bank in Baghdad.
Until today and despite a highly uncertain domestic and external environment, Al-Shabibi has held the Iraqi currency, the Iraqi Dinar firm at about 1,170 to the U.S. dollar, reduced inflation to single digits, and remained a strong advocate of central bank independence. The implementation of these policies combined with the rise in oil revenues have helped to increase foreign exchange reserves to nearly US$58 billion (as of September 2011) supporting further Iraq's Macroeconomic stability.