Dr Zia is a member of Bangladesh Civil Service and belongs to the 20th batch administrative cadre. He has been serving the government for over two decades in different ministries including the Ministry of Finance. He holds BSS (Hons.) and MSS in Economics from the University of Chittagong. Later, he earned another master’s degree in ‘International Development Studies (IDS) from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, Japan and a PhD in ‘Development Economics’ from the same academic institution. He has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed international journals/conferences and attended several professional trainings at IMF and other reputed training institutes.