Konrad Pesendorfer is the newly appointed president of the General Statistical Authority (GaSat), the national statistical institute of Saudi Arabia.

Chaired by Mohammed Al-Jadaan, minister of finance and acting minister of economy and planning, GaSat’s board of directors appointed Pesendorfer as president after he served as acting president since last January.

Pesendorfer is one of the world’s prominent experts in managing statistical organizations. He will be working alongside GaSat’s team to improve and oversee statistical work and to achieve GaSat’s transformation goals by turning it into a world-class statistical authority.

Pesendorfer attained his master’s degree in economics from the Vienna University of Economics and Business in 1995 and his Ph.D. in economics and business administration from the same university in 2002. 

He worked as director general of Statistics Austria from January 2010 to December 2019 and was responsible for all statistical matters and international affairs.

Pesendorfer represented Austria in the European Statistical System Committee, the top decision-making body of the European statistical system.

He also served as chairman of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy between January 2016 and December 2019.

Together with the chief statistician of India, he was co-chairman of the International Comparison Program governing board of the UN/World Bank from November 2016 to December 2019, set up to calculate worldwide purchasing power parities.

Pesendorfer was also member of the Austrian Fiscal Council between November 2013 and December 2019, assessing and advising the government on fiscal policy issues. Between 2017 and 2019, he served as president of the Austrian Statistical Society.