Urjit Patel to be RBI's new deputy governor

Economist Urjit Patel has been announced as the new deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after the central government cleared his name today.

Economist Urjit Patel has been announced as the new deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after the central government on Wednesday cleared his name.

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“Urjit Patel’s name has been finalised,” said DK Mittal, secretary, department of financial services.

Patel, at present, is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a US-based think-tank and is also a consultant to the Boston Consulting Group. He will take place of Subir Gokarn, who was in-charge of the monetary policy department. Gokarn’s three-year term had ended in November 2012, but the government had given him one-month extension that expired on December 31.

According to an RBI statement on Tuesday, the monetary policy department will now be directly under governor D Subbarao himself. There are four deputy governors in RBI, of which two are from the central bank itself, one is from the banking sector and the fourth is an economist.