RBI portfolio rejig: Poonam Gupta becomes new Deputy Governor, to oversee MPC; T Rabi Sankar gets 12 depts

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday rejigged portfolios of its deputy governors, with newly-appointed Poonam Gupta being given the charge of key monetary policy department. The RBI has four deputy governors.

The central bank shuffled the portfolios consequent on the appointment and assumption of charge by Gupta as deputy governor.

Besides monetary policy, she has been assigned with the responsibility of seven other departments, including corporate strategy and budget, communication, and financial stability.

M Rajeshwar Rao will look after six departments, including of co-ordination, regulation, enforcement, and risk monitoring.

He was looking after the monetary policy department following retirement of Michael Debabrata Patra in January.

Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar will look after 12 departments. These include central security cell, information technology, payment and settlement systems, foreign exchange department, and fintech, among others.

Swaminathan Janakiraman has been assigned responsibility of consumer education, supervision, inspection, and four other departments.

The distribution of portfolios comes into effect from Friday.

Gupta took over as the deputy governor earlier in the day.

Immediately prior to this appointment, she was the Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER). She also served as member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and as Convener of the Advisory Council to the 16th Finance Commission.

Before joining NCAER, Gupta had worked at senior positions for nearly two decades at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Gupta also taught at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Maryland (USA) and as a visiting faculty at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.

She holds a Master’s degree and PhD in Economics from University of Maryland, USA, and a Master’s degree in Economics from Delhi School of Economics.

Meanwhile, an RBI-appointed panel has recommended retaining the current trading hours for the foreign exchange markets and extending the call money market timings to 7 pm.

The currency markets are essentially hedging markets which are open for trading from 9 am till 3:30 pm with after-market hours trading permitted, effectively making them 24x5 (Monday-Friday) markets.

Market trading timing for call/notice/term money is 9 am to 5 pm, while for repo in government securities it is 9 am to 2.30 pm.

"Retain the current market hours for the foreign exchange markets (OTC and exchange-traded)," said the report of the Working Group to undertake a comprehensive review of trading and settlement timings of markets regulated by the Reserve Bank.

It has also suggested to maintain the settlement mechanism of a single guaranteed settlement of OTC foreign exchange transactions by CCIL each day.