T Rabi Sankar named RBI deputy governor

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Executive Director T Rabi Sankar has been named as the fourth deputy governor of the central bank, sources said.

Rabi Sankar is in charge of the payments system, fintech, information technology and risk management at the RBI. He succeeds B P Kanungo as the deputy governor, who retired on April 2 after gettingone-year of extension in his position.

The other three deputy governor of the central bank are Mahesh Kumar Jain, Michael Patra, and Rajeshwar Rao. Rabi Sankar has an M Phil in Economics and has handled all critical departments at the RBI, including debt management, which was the domain of Kanungo.

He is known among economists community for his original thoughts and has been a member of various committees, including those for forming marginal cost of fundsbased lending system, hedging of commodity price risk, integration of commodity spot and derivatives markets, which also include two key working group of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) on capital markets and dollar funding markets.

During 2005-11, he was the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appointed consultant to the government and central bank of Bangladesh on developing the bond market and debt management process. He also worked with the Ministry of Finance during 2008-2014 on deputation.

Apart from serving in RBI, he was made the chairman of RBI subsidiary Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services in June 2020.