[4] Between 2020 and 2022, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was the Chief Economic Advisor at the United Nations Development Program Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in New York covering 36 countries.

[5] In March 2023, Wagle, who had for decades been a member of the Nepali Congress, joined the Rastriya Swatantra Party to contest the by-election in Tanahun 1.

[7] In October 2019, Wagle was appointed chair of the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), a South Asian policy think tank established in Kathmandu in 1979.

Outside Nepal, he has worked as an economic policy specialist in international organizations like United Nations Development Program and the World Bank intermittently between 1997 and 2022.

As Chief Economic Advisor of the UNDP Asia-Pacific (2020-2022), he co-edited "The Great Upheaval" published by Cambridge University Press,[9] and led high-profile policy advisory missions to crisis-hit countries like Sri Lanka.