- The central government sanctioned the appointment of Poonam Gupta as the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India
- She is the first woman in almost 14 years to have been appointed as deputy governor
- She is an expert in macroeconomics, inflation targeting, and coordination of fiscal policy
The central government has appointed Poonam Gupta as the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday. She will be replacing Michael Patra, who served from January 2020 to 2025. Poonam becomes the first woman Deputy Governor in almost 14 years.
Poonam is the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) fourth female Deputy Governor since the bank's inception in 1935, following in the footsteps of KJ Udeshi, Shyamala Gopinath, and Usha Thorat. Notably, the RBI has yet to have a female Governor in its 90-year history. Gupta is a distinguished economist with experience in economic research, academia, and policy. In 2021, she became the first woman to head the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and is currently a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister.
Prior to joining NCAER, Gupta held important positions at the World Bank Group, where she served as Lead Economist for India, and later, supervised global macroeconomic and market research at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). She has also taught at the University of Maryland, the Delhi School of Economics and ICRIER and from 2011 to 2013, served as RBI Chair Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP).
Poonam is recognized for her dovish monetary policy stance and indicated that a 4.8 percent rate of inflation is not necessarily inconsistent with economic growth, noting that the trade-off between growth and inflation is more pronounced at extremes. She has called for a new Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket, better inflation and growth forecasts, and better monetary policy transmission. She recommended that India reassesses its inflation target and narrows the tolerance band from the current 2-6 percent range to a 4-6 percent range.
In her new research with Professor Barry Eichengreen of UC Berkeley, she investigated the trend of debt at the state level in India and found that half of the larger states had increased their debt to GDP ratio by over 10 percentage points in the last 10 years. She recommended a forensic audit of state finances, better revenue mobilization through tax reforms and digitalization, the creation of independent fiscal councils, and a revisit on RBI’s interventions in state bond markets. With her background in macroeconomics and fiscal policy, Gupta brings unique insights to India’s monetary and economic institutions.
