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Chief of Agency for International Development to Step Down

WASHINGTON — Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development and the highest ranking Indian-American in the Obama administration, announced on Wednesday that he would step down as head of the agency early next year.

Mr. Shah took office in early 2010, just after a devastating earthquake in Haiti. He was widely credited with revitalizing an agency that had long been criticized for being overly bureaucratic and dependent on large outside contractors to do much of its work.

On Tuesday, Mr. Shah, 41, sought to downplay his role and credited President Obama for giving the agency a prominent role in foreign policy and national security decisions. “It’s something that I have been honored to be a part of,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Shah, who often accompanied Mr. Obama on his trips abroad, took over an agency that had been absorbed into the State Department during the Bush administration. He was the rare administration official who drew support from Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

As administrator, Mr. Shah sought to change the way America provided foreign aid. Rather than pouring billions of public dollars into programs to fight poverty, the agency used loan guarantees to get local banks and businesses to finance big projects, gave money directly to foreign development groups instead of to American contractors and helped push for changes in the way the United States ran its program for international food aid.

“Administrator Shah is a smart coalition builder who has brought a long overdue, transparent and businesslike approach” to running the agency, said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, in a tribute to Mr. Shah last week.

Mr. Shah is not without his detractors, however. The Professional Services Council, a trade group for government contractors, said the decision to shift funding from larger aid groups to local nonprofits opened the agency’s programs to potential waste and fraud. The agency faces persistent problems with waste and abuse with its programs in Afghanistan, it said, where it spends nearly $1 billion a year.

Before becoming administrator of the agency, Mr. Shah held jobs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and served as an undersecretary at the Agriculture Department. Many colleagues think that he will someday run for Congress, although Mr. Shah said he had not decided what he wanted to do next.

“Right now I’m very focused on having an effective transition that will happen sometime early next year,” he said.


Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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