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Goodbye Raghuram Rajan, welcome Urjit Patel
Urjit Patel became the 24th Governor of the Reserve Bank of India as he took charge after Raghuram Rajan’s term ended on September 4.
Urjit Patel became the 24th Governor of the Reserve Bank of India as he took charge after Raghuram Rajan’s term ended on September 4.
“Dr. Urjit R. Patel assumed charge as the twenty-fourth Governor of the Reserve Bank of India effective September 4, 2016 after serving as Deputy Governor since January 2013,” the RBI said on Monday.
Appointed as the central bank Deputy Governor in January 2013 for three years, Patel was reappointed on January 2016.
However, on August 20 this year, he was appointed as the governor of RBI succeeding Raghuram Rajan whose three-year term ended this Sunday.
Raghuram Rajan chose not to seek an extension (for another two years) and will go back to academia as the Professor at the University of Chicago where he was on a sabbatical.
“I am confident that Dr. Urjit Patel, who has worked closely with me on monetary policy for the last three years, will ably guide the Monetary Policy Committee going forward in achieving our inflation objectives,” Rajan had said in one of his last speeches.
The 52-year old Patel is a soft-spoken who kept a low-profile as against the out-spoken and ‘rockstar’ imaged Rajan.
Formerly with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and Finance Ministry, Patel is expected to continue with Rajan’s policies and will be challenged to finish the ‘unfinished agenda’ of cleaning up bad loans in banks and controlling inflation. Patel, a strong advocate of monetary policy focused on inflation, was the key architect of the Monetary Policy Committee that has set a 2-6% target for inflation.
Born on October 28, 1963, Patel is a PhD (Economics) from Yale University (1990), M Phil from Oxford (1986) and a B. Sc. from the University of London.
