NEW DELHI, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Indian central bank's Deputy Governor Urjit Patel has taken over the reins of the bank, after his predecessor Raghuram Rajan hung his boots Sunday at the end of his three-year tenure that was mirred in controversy.
Patel has assumed charge as 24th Governor of Reserve Bank of India, effective Sept. 4, 2016, after serving as deputy governor since January 2013, the central bank said in a statement Monday.
He was appointed as the Reserve Bank governor by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after Rajan - the former IMF economist who predicted the 2008 financial crisis - announced more than a month back that he would return to academia after the end of his tenure.
Patel, a 54-year-old Kenya-born former Yale University economist, who worked at International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the early 1990s as well as in the Indian Finance Ministry, is known to be very hawkish on inflation, which remains one of the big worries in the Indian economy.
Though Rajan was one of the world's most well-known central bankers, Patel has less of a global reputation, but experts say he has enough credentials that international investors - key to India's economic growth - are unlikely to be worried.
