Dr. Uzma Ashraf Barton is Principal Associate at Nathan where she leads domestic resource mobilization (DRM), public financial management (PFM), and economic research and analysis across an expanding portfolio of field projects. She also provides technical advisory and manages new business development.

Dr. Barton brings 18 years of experience negotiating, designing, implementing, and leading, governance reform projects with national governments and development finance institutions (DFIs) across Asia and Africa. Her expertise focuses on broadening fiscal space, increasing own-source revenues, competitiveness analysis, introduction of new laws (VAT) and regulations, analysis, due diligence, and use of technology. She has worked extensively on legal aspects of financial inclusion and market development (World Bank, Asian Development Bank), and Chinese DFIs’ impact including Renminbi’s rise (Atlantic Council). Informed by her implementing complex tax reform projects of over US $149 million, her field experience exercising all tax functions (enforcement, audit, tax-broadening, legal), and her leading the Prime Minister’s governance reform agenda at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (Islamabad), Dr. Barton understands the weaknesses in the design and delivery of public sector reforms.

Dr. Barton’s book Rethinking Finance (Kluwer 2017) provides focus at regulatory weaknesses. She co-edited Abraham and the Secular (Pelgrave 2021), and has extensively published elsewhere. She has a PhD and an LLM in Finance Law.

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