Director - Technology & Logistics UNCTAD

Ms. Shamika N. Sirimanne is the Director of the Division on Technology and Logistics of UNCTAD. She leads UNCTAD's trade logistics programme, including the work on trade facilitation, sustainable and resilient freight transport, port management, and e-commerce and the digital economy. She also supervises UNCTAD’s largest technical cooperation programme, ASYCUDA—the Automated System for Customs Data.

She serves as the Head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development which is the focal point of the UN on STI policy dialogue.

Ms. Sirimanne has extensive experience in development policy, research and technical cooperation gained from international organizations, national governments, think tanks and universities. She served as Director of the ICT and Disaster Risk Reduction Division of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), where she spearheaded major regional cooperation programmes. Among them are the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway initiative for seamless broadband connectivity, Regional Drought Mechanism for monitoring and early warning of drought through space applications, and the United Nations Network of Experts for Paperless Trade, UNNExT.

During her tenure with ESCAP, Ms. Sirimanne also headed the trade facilitation programme, and led the macroeconomic policy work and ESCAP’s flagship publication, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific. Prior to that, Ms. Sirimanne was with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), where she led the economic policy team and the Economic Report on Africa, the flagship publication of ECA. She has also worked for the Canadian Department of Finance and the World Bank. Ms. Sirimanne holds a PhD in Economics.