Senior Policy Adviser - REMIT Programme

Terms of Reference – Senior Policy Adviser, Trade, Investment and Economic Transformation

About the Programme

The Revenue Mobilisation, Investment and Trade (REMIT) programme funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The programme provides technical assistance (TA) to Pakistan to implement reforms for strengthening macroeconomic stability and improving conditions for high and sustained growth, mutual prosperity, job creation and poverty reduction. ASI is one of the implementing partners on REMIT and is responsible for delivering technical assistance to support the Government of Pakistan, its relevant ministries, institutions, and departments to strengthen revenue mobilisation reforms/initiatives; address investment environment challenges; facilitate trade and drive competitiveness by reducing the barriers to trade; and improve the macroeconomic policy and its management.

Background and Purpose

REMIT supports Pakistan’s economic reform agenda through targeted technical assistance and delivery enablement. A central priority is effective support to the Government’s economic Roadmaps. This Terms of Reference sets out a senior cross cutting Adviser role that reports to the Team Leader and strengthens REMIT’s contribution to the Roadmaps by mobilising technical expertise, providing quality assurance, and supporting coherence and implementation across strands.

The purpose of the role is to increase the effectiveness and implementability of the economic Roadmaps by strengthening REMIT’s technical contribution, ensuring the right expertise is deployed to priority strands, technical inputs are high quality and usable, and coherence and political economy constraints are actively considered in shaping support. 

Key Responsibilities and Tasks

The key responsibilities for the role include:

A.    Roadmap support, technical assistance mobilisation and coordination (primary focus)

• Act as REMIT’s senior focal point for shaping and coordinating REMIT’s technical support to priority Roadmap strands, aligned with counterpart priorities and delivery needs. Work closely with the Roadmap team to provide tanigle inputs into finalizing the Roadmaps and provide strategic input into TA design of REMIT to support relevant prioorty actions.

• Work with Professor Stefan Dercon and key counterparts to identify priority strands and the technical interventions and areas most likely to unlock progress, with coherence and implementation in mind.

• Scope, mobilise, and coordinate technical assistance across Roadmap strands (eg trade, tax, investment, and other priority areas as required), ensuring the right expertise is deployed at the right time.

• Quality assure technical products (specifically for outputs to be produced to support the roadmap areas) for relevance, clarity, implementability, and alignment with fiscal and institutional realities, and ensure consistent assumptions and narratives across inputs.

• Ensure REMIT’s technical inputs are integrated and communicated effectively to counterparts and FCDO, maintaining delivery focused feedback loops.

B.    Coherence, implementability and political economy (implementation minded support)

• Provide cross strand visibility to identify coherence issues, prioritisation choices, sequencing dependencies, and practical implementation considerations, across priorirty reform workstreams, translating these into short, decision-focused notes with clear recommendations for adjustment or sequencing.

• Work closely with REMIT’s Quality Assurance Lead (Hassan) to ensure political-economy analysis is analytically robust, consistent across outputs, and clearly linked to implementation decisions.

• Provide targeted technical actions that improve implementability, including translating agreed reform directions into executable regulatory, institutional, or procedural steps aligned with approval pathways, budget cycles, and institutional capacity.

• Maintain constructive relationships with key reform minded actors, supporting their ability to progress implementation while avoiding duplication or parallel structures.

C.    Pakistan Single Window and ACS support (secondary, delivery focused)

• Lead day to day relationship management with Pakistan Single Window on behalf of REMIT, focusing on delivery discipline, issue resolution, and milestone tracking.

• Oversee delivery of REMIT supported work on the ACS, ensuring consultant performance and progress against milestones, and ensuring the Trade Output Lead is kept updated on material developments and sensitivities.

D.    Private sector insight to improve trade and investment interventions (supporting role)

• Bring structured private sector perspectives into trade and investment related Roadmap inputs and REMIT interventions, ensuring technical recommendations reflect commercial realities.

• Provide inputs to the Trade Output Lead’s pipeline and portfolio thinking, without duplicating leadership of trade strategy.

Key Deliverables

A.    Roadmap support deliverables (REMIT contribution)

·       REMIT Roadmap Support Plan and Interface Note (first month)
A concise plan setting out REMIT’s technical contributions to priority Roadmap strands, including priority themes, planned technical inputs, key counterparts, and ways of working (engagement rhythms, information flows, and escalation routes).

·       REMIT Technical Input Tracker for Roadmap Strands (updated at least fortnightly)
A living tracker of REMIT technical assistance inputs across Roadmap strands, showing counterpart requests and priorities, products commissioned or in progress, owners, timelines, dependencies, and issues requiring decisions.

·       Monthly REMIT Roadmap Support Update (to Team Leader, shared with relevant output leads)
A short monthly update focused on REMIT’s contribution: what technical inputs were delivered, what is underway, emerging gaps in expertise, requests for further support, and any bottlenecks observed that imply adjustments to REMIT’s technical approach, resourcing, or sequencing.

·       Quarterly Roadmap Coherence and Implementability Brief (REMIT perspective, for discussion with counterparts and FCDO as appropriate)
A quarterly brief highlighting prioritisation choices, sequencing, and interdependencies across strands, and recommending targeted technical actions to improve implementability and coherence.

·       Roadmap Political Economy and Bottlenecks Note (quarterly, and ad hoc where needed)
A short, practical note identifying implementation constraints across priority strands, including likely blockers, institutional incentives, and feasible mitigation options. Produced in coordination with REMIT’s Quality Assurance Lead (Hassan), and used to refine the targeting and sequencing of REMIT technical support.

B.    PSW and ACS

·       PSW and ACS delivery update (monthly), including live risks and issues log and mitigation actions.

C.    Private sector insight

·       Quarterly private sector insight brief, summarising constraints, opportunities, and implications for technical inputs and intervention design, shared with the Trade Output Lead and Team Leader.

D.    Decision making authority

·       The Adviser will manage REMIT’s technical assistance inputs to the Roadmaps, chair coordination meetings related to REMIT support, manage consultant performance against agreed outputs, and recommend adjustments to REMIT workplans.

·       Trade strategy, external engagement positioning, and portfolio reporting for trade remain the accountability of the Trade Output Lead, with the Adviser coordinating closely where Roadmap work intersects with trade policy positioning

Reporting, Ways of Working and Level of Effort

·       Reports to: REMIT Team Leader.

·       Works closely with: Professor Stefan Dercon, Roadmap counterparts across government, FCDO, and REMIT output leads.

·       Role boundaries with Trade Output Lead:

o   The Trade Output Lead retains accountability for trade strategy and portfolio direction, reporting and external engagement positioning, and Ministry of Commerce engagement.

o   The Senior Adviser retains accountability for programme management of REMIT’s technical contributions to the Roadmaps, including mobilisation and coordination of technical assistance across all key roadmap strands (including trade and investment strands), and for delivery enabling support where REMIT is asked to assist.

o   Where Roadmap work intersects with trade policy positioning, the Adviser coordinates closely with the Trade Output Lead, with a no surprises approach.

·       The required level of effort is 17 days per month

 Required experience and profile:

• Senior experience supporting complex economic reform and delivery agendas in politically constrained environments.

• Strong programme management skills across multiple technical workstreams.

• Track record of mobilising and quality assuring high quality technical assistance.

• Excellent stakeholder management with central delivery actors and donor teams, with strong judgement and discretion.

• Sufficient technical breadth across economic policy areas to commission and steer expert inputs (eg trade, tax, investment, and other priority areas as required).

• Clear and concise communication, able to produce crisp briefs, trackers, and decision notes.

Application deadline:

Applications for this role will be reviewed on a rolling basis with the final deadline set for January 19, 2026. We encourage interested candidates to submit their applications at their earliest convenience to be considered for this opportunity.