India Names Sanjay Malhotra As New RBI Governor

(RTTNews) - The Indian government on Monday named a top bureaucrat Sanjay Malhotra as the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Malhotra, who is currently the revenue secretary in the Ministry of Finance, will take charge from December 11 for a period of three years.

He will succeed Shaktikanta Das who has held the post since 2018. Das saw the bank through the pandemic era, taking the key interest rate to a record low 4 percent to revive the Indian economy, which is now the fastest one among emerging economies.

Das was also able to stabilize the country's financial system through some of the domestic banking crises. His tenure also saw a significant reduction in the bad assets of banks and a wide adoption of digital payments among the public.

Meanwhile, recent data showed the pace of growth sunk to a seven-quarter low of 5.4 percent in the September quarter mainly due to weak manufacturing.

The top government official has experience in various sectors including power, finance and taxation, information technology, and mining, and extensive experience in finance and taxation, according to the revenue department website. As the revenue secretary, he was instrumental in tax policy formulation in respect of direct and indirect taxes.

He also serves as the secretary to the GST Council and was previously the secretary in the Department of Financial Services.

Malhotra is a computer science graduate from one of India's prestigious schools, IIT Kanpur, and holds a master's degree in public policy from the Princeton University.