Najy Benhassine is Country Director for Pakistan for the South Asia region at the World Bank Group. Prior to this, he was the Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions (EFI) Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa region, following his time as the Director for the Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation (FCI) Global Practice, where he was responsible for the MENA regional team of the FCI practice as well as its global teams in charge of the Firms, Entrepreneurship & Innovation and the Markets & Technology agendas.

Before his tenure as FCI GP Director, Mr. Benhassine worked as the Practice Manager in the Trade & Competitiveness Global Practice of the World Bank Group. 

Previously, Mr. Benhassine was based in Rabat, Morocco between 2007 and 2011 and was in charge of the private sector development portfolio of the Maghreb for the World Bank. He also worked on economic growth, education, social protection, the informal sector and land reform. An Algerian national, he joined the World Bank Group in Washington D.C. in 2001, after working with McKinsey and Co and teaching at the Swiss Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Mr. Benhassine is the co-author of the 2009 World Bank flagship publication on the private sector in the MENA region, "From privilege to Competition: unlocking private-led growth in the Middle-East and North Africa”. He is a graduate of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the Paris Graduate School of Management, the Paris School of Economics and holds a PhD in Economics from the MIT.