Top economic adviser quits
NEW DELHI: Arvind Subramanian said on Wednesday that he was stepping down as the Union government’s chief economic adviser (CEA) and would return to the United States to take care of pressing family commitments.
Union minister Arun Jaitley first announced Subramanian’s departure on Wednesday in a Facebook post titled “Thank you Arvind” in which he lavished warm praise on the economist. “His reasons were personal but extremely important for him. He left me with no option but to agree with him,” Jaitley wrote.
“My departure from this job for entirely personal reasons. It is no secret that we are expecting our first grandchild in the early September. That’s a very compelling reason that takes us back to old life,” said Subramanian.
Subramanian’s departure makes him the third economist working with the government to go back to the US in the last two years, following in the footsteps of RBI governor Raghuram Rajan in 2016 and Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya in 2017.
Though he refused to divulge the exact date of his departure or the nature of his future commitments, the CEA said that he was “always committed to serving the country” in case another government role was offered to him.
Subramanian, who has been on leave from the Peterson Institute for International Economics in the US, was appointed CEA on October 16, 2014.