Noted economist Arvind Subramanian is likely to be appointed India’s next chief economic adviser (CEA). Subramanian’s name has been cleared by finance minister Arun Jaitley and has been sent to the appointments committee of the Cabinet (ACC) which comprises Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Rajnath Singh, said officials.
While there is no clarity when the ACC will give its nod, the officials said the final decision should be within a month. If appointed, Subramanian’s term as CEA, and also the head of the Indian Economic Service, will likely be for three years.
Subramanian is a Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, both in Washington DC. Before his current assignment, he was assistant director in the research department of the International Monetary Fund.
He has written on a number of issues including the emerging economic giants India and China, global trade and development, multilateral institutions, oil markets, Africa, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The post of CEA had been lying vacant since September 2013 after Raghuram Rajan was appointed as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
The new CEA will be assuming office at a time the econony is still struggling to come out of a slowdown. The GDP growth was a dismal 4.7% last fiscal and the finance ministry is now projecting the growth this fiscal to be between 5.8-5.9%, which is seen by many analysts as optimistic given the continued sluggishness in consumption and absence of clear and umambigious signs of a smart recovery in industrial investents.