The central government recently appointed Michael Patra as the new Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
So, here we bring some interesting facts about Michael Patra you may not know:
1) Patra has replaced Viral Acharya, who left the post in July last year. The central bank, led by Governor Shaktikanta Das, can have a maximum of four deputy governors. N S Vishwanathan, B P Kanungo and M K Jain are the other deputy governors working at the Reserve Bank of India. This makes Michael Patra the current Executive Director of RBI’s Monetary Policy Department as the fourth deputy governor of the central bank.
2) Patra, who is well-versed with monetary policy portfolio, will likely take decisions on the rate of interest regime. Earlier, Patra was widely known as the ‘inflation-hawk’ for supporting interest rate cuts in three consecutive RBI policies. However, his recent act of stopping interest rates cuts for growth made him drop the inflation hawkish approach.
3) Patra holds a PhD from IIT Mumbai and has also pursued a doctoral research in financial stability from Harvard University. He started working in RBI in 1985 and since then, has held several positions in the central bank. He has also worked at an advisory role in the Department of Economic Analysis and Policy before taking up a position in the Monetary Policy Department.
4) Patra has also worked closely with former RBI governors Urjit Patel and Raghuram Rajan and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on different economic policies.