India names Sanjay Malhotra as next RBI governor

The government on Monday appointed career bureaucrat and revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra as the next governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Malhotra, who has been appointed for a period of three years from Wednesday, 11 December, will replace Shaktikanta Das, whose six-year term comes to an end on Tuesday, 10 December.

The appointment puts to rest speculations over who would take charge of monetary policy in the fastest-growing major economy.

The announcement came after Das met finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman at North Block for about half hour in what he reportedly said was a “courtesy meeting”.

Malhotra is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1990 batch from the Rajasthan cadre and has more than three decades of experience across sectors, including power, finance, taxation, and information technology.

He holds an engineering degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, and a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University in the US.

As revenue secretary in the finance ministry, Malhotra played a key role in shaping tax policies for both direct and indirect taxes.

Previously, he was secretary in the department of financial services, where he contributed to various reforms in the financial sector.

Malhotra takes charge of the RBI at a time when there is growing pressure from political circles to cut interest rates as growth slowed to a seven-quarter low of 5.4% in the July-September quarter.

The central bank had kept interest rates unchanged for nearly two years now, citing inflation risks.

Sitharaman and trade minister Piyush Goyal had both recently called for lower borrowing costs to support the economy.