Government Appoints Ashima Goyal, Shashanka Bhide, Jayanth Varma As Members Of Monetary Policy Committee Of RBI

The Union government has appointed Ashima Goyal, Shashanka Bhide and Jayanth Varma to Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). The trio have been appointed for a four-year term, CNBC-TV18 reported.

Instituted by the Government of India under the RBI Act, MPC is tasked with framing monetary policy using tools like the repo rate, reverse repo rate, bank rate, cash reserve ratio (CRR). The committee has six members out of which three are government will nominate three. The other three members are from the RBI with the governor being the ex-officio chairperson. Deputy governor of RBI in charge of the monetary policy and executive director of the central bank are the other member.

Members of the MPC are appointed for a period of four years and shall not be eligible for reappointment.

Profile Of New MPC Members

Prof. Ashima Goyal

A highly regarded economist and a member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (PMEAC) , Prof. Ashima Goyal currently serves as the Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. Her fields of research and interest include, open economy macroeconomics, international finance, financial markets and regulation, institutions and development.

She is also an independent director at Edelweiss Financial Services, IDBI bank and SBI General Insurance.

Prof. Jayanth R. Varma

Jayanth R. Varma is a professor in the Finance and Accounting Area at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad where he teaches courses in capital markets, fixed income, alternative investments, risk management and corporate finance. He has been the Dean of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad for three years.

Prof. Varma was a full time Member of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for a year. Before that, he was a part time member of SEBI for three years. He has been the Chairman of the Secondary Markets Advisory Committee and several other committees of SEBI. He has also been Chairman of several committees set up by the Forward Markets Commission and the Ministry of Finance and Company Affairs. The reports of these Committees are available here. Prof. Varma was a member of the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms and of the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission.

Prof. Varma has served on the Board of several companies: Axis Bank Limited, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Limited, Infosys BPM Limited and Punjab National Bank. He has also worked for a year with a large financial services company as an Executive Director in charge of Investments and Research for their mutual fund. Before joining the faculty of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, he worked for three years as Senior Consultant at a leading firm of management consultants and chartered accountants.

Prof. Varma has carried out extensive research in the field of Indian financial markets and finance theory and published extensively in Indian and international journals. He has authored extremely popular books on portfolio management and on the Indian securities scam. His book on the securities scam was a national best seller. Prof. Varma has more than a hundred papers and cases to his credit; in addition, he has published more than a hundred articles in newspapers and other periodicals.

Dr. Shashanka Bhide

Dr. Shashanka Bhide is currently serves as a Senior Research Counselor and Senior Fellow at NCAER, New Delhi. He has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Iowa State University, Ames, M.Sc from Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi and B. Sc in agriculture from University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.

Last week, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced that it will defer its three-day interest-rate meeting scheduled on September 29, 30 and October 1. The MPC usually meets six times a year.

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