Ahead of Budget, V Anantha Nageswaran joins as Chief Economic Advisor

The Government has appointed V Anantha Nageswaran as the Chief Economic Advisor, three days before the onset of the Budget session of Parliament.

On Friday, Mr. Nageswaran assumed charge of the position, which had been vacant since early December 2021 after the previous CEA Krishnamurthy Subramanian returned to academia at the end of his three year-stint. The CEA is usually responsible for drafting the Economic Survey presented a day before the Budget.

A part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister between 2019 and 2021, the new CEA 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.

“Prior to this appointment, Dr. Nageswaran has worked as a writer, author, teacher and consultant. He has taught at several business schools and institutes of management 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.