The Honourable Bishnodat Persaud CHB, Ph.D., FRSA (1933 – 24 July 2016) was a Guyanese economist who served as Alcan Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of the West Indies, and Director of Economic Affairs, Commonwealth Secretariat.
Persaud spent eighteen years in the service of the Commonwealth Secretariat (1974–1992); for the last eleven, he was Director and Head of the Economic Affairs Division.
In 1993 he was appointed a member of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Review Group on the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States.
[13] In 1994, the Inter-American Development Bank appointed him joint leader with Mike Faber of the University of Sussex, of a team to prepare a comprehensive report on socio-economic problems of Guyana.
[14] In 2005 he co-authored a study for the World Bank and the Commonwealth Secretariat on Towards an Outward Oriented Strategy for Small States.
[15] Persaud has served on many Boards as Director or Trustee on the Commonwealth Equity Fund, the Barbados Central Bank, the Ramphal Institute, World Aware, Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management, The Iwokrama International Rain Forest Programme, the UK Universities FSSU, The Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust and The Environmental Foundation of Jamaica.
He co-edited and co-authored three books, Developing with Foreign Investment with Vince Cable[20] in 1987; Building Consensus for Social and Economic Reconstruction in Guyana, IDB 1994 with Mike Faber et al.; and Economic Policy and the Environment: the Caribbean Experience UWI, 1995 with Mark Griffith.