The Centre on Friday appointed V. Anantha Nageswaran as the Chief Economic Advisor, three days before the start of the Budget session of Parliament.
Dr. Nageswaran assumed charge of the position, which had been vacant since early December after his predecessor Krishnamurthy Subramanian returned to academia at the end of a three-year stint. The CEA is usually responsible for drafting the Economic Survey presented on the eve of the Budget.
The new CEA, who was earlier a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a doctoral degree in Finance from the University of Massachusetts for his work on the empirical behaviour of exchange rates.
“Dr. Nageswaran has worked as a writer, author, teacher and consultant and has taught at several business schools... in India and in Singapore,” and has published extensively. He was the Dean of the IFMR Graduate School of Business and a distinguished Visiting Professor of Economics at Krea University,” the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
His forays into consulting and teaching were precluded by an extensive career in banking, at the Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS) and Credit Suisse in Switzerland and in Singapore. He moved to Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. in Singapore as the Head of Research for Asia in 2006 and was later appointed as its Chief Investment Officer.