Pedro Conceição was appointed as Director of the Human Development Report Office,
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in January 2019.
Earlier, he was the Director of Strategic Policy at the Bureau for Policy and Programme
Support of UNDP, where he co-led the UN’s participation in the G20 Finance and
Central Bank Governors Meetings. He managed the UNDP’s engagement in Financing
for Development (FfD) processes, and contributed to the articulation of UNDP’s support
to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs). Before that, we was Chief-Economist and Head of the Strategic Advisory Unit
at the Regional Bureau for Africa.
He has published articles on inequality, the economics of innovation and technological
change, and development, amongst others.
Conceição has earned degrees from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at
the University of Texas at Austin, including a Ph.D, where he studied with a Fulbright
scholarship. He also has degrees in Physics from Instituto Superior Técnico and in
Economics from the Technical University of Lisbon.
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Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) was formed on 1 January, 1992, by a decree issued by the late
Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum to merge Dubai Electricity Company and Dubai Water Department, which
had been operating independently before then. Both organisations were established by the late Sheikh Rashid
bin Saeed Al Maktoum in 1959. Dubai Government fully supported the Electricity Company and the Water
Department to provide Dubai’s citizens and residents with a continuous and reliable supply of electricity
and water. Since then, DEWA has made considerable achievements, to be ranked as one of the best utilities in
the world. DEWA provides services today to more than 900,000 customers with a happiness rate that reached
95% in 2018.
The UAE, represented by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has maintained its first global
ranking, for the third consecutive year, with scores of 100% in all Getting Electricity indicators in the
World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report. The report measures the ease of doing business in 190 economies
around the world. DEWA achieved competitive results in global benchmarking, surpassing the private sector
and major European and American utilities in efficiency and reliability. DEWA raised the efficiency of its
energy production by using the latest technologies and adopting technological innovations, surpassing
European and American utilities, by reducing losses from electricity transmission and distribution networks
to 3.3% compared to 6–7% in the US and Europe. DEWA also achieved the lowest customer minutes lost per year
(CML) in the world of 2.39 CML compared to 15 minutes in Europe and was also able to reduce water network
losses to 6.5% in 2018 compared to 15% in North America, which is one of the best results in the world.
