Arvind Subramanian appointed Chief Economic Adviser to Modi government

NEW DELHI: Former IMF economist Arvind Subramanian was today appointed Chief Economic Advisor in the Finance Ministry.

"For any economy like India, the two big things are macro economic stability and of course creating conditions for rapid investment and growth. While creating opportunity for all segments of Indian society, no one should be left out of this process," he told reporters after taking charge as CEA.

An alumnus of IIM-Ahmedabad, Subramanian joins the Finance Ministry at a time when the government has started work for the 2015-16 budget which will be the first proper budget of the Modi government.

The post of CEA has been lying vacant since Raghuram Rajan left the Finance Ministry to join the Reserve Bank as Governor in September last year.

The Finance Ministry has prepared an interim budget and full fledged budget for 2014-15 without a formal CEA in office.

A graduate from St Stephens College, Subramanian has been advising the Indian government in different capacities and has been a member of the Finance Minister's Expert Group on the G-20.

He was Assistant Director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund and was associated with the GATT (1988-92) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations.

Subramanian was the Dennis Weatherstone senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Subramanian also said it was "an absolute honour and privilege to come at this time, a time of great hope and dynamism for the economy, to serve in the government that has mandate for a reform and change".

Later the Finance Ministry in a statement said that the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Subramanian for 3 years on a contract basis.

He has written on India, China and Africa; and the topics include growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, climate change, oil, intellectual property and the WTO.

"He is currently ranked amongst the top 1 per cent of the world's academic economists in terms of citation of research, according to the widely used REPEC rankings," the statement added.

Subramanian has published widely in academic and other journals, including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Oxford Review of Economic Policy and International Monetary Fund Staff Papers.

He is the author/editor of five books. His next book, From Wariness to Partnership: Closer India-US Economic Cooperation (with C. Fred Bergsten) will be published later this year.