India's new central bank governor has big shoes to fill

TWENTY five years ago, I had a colleague at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC. His name was Urjit Patel. I was delighted to see that he has just been appointed governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to succeed the incumbent, Raghuram Rajan. Investors, the business community and the markets should welcome the news.

The 52-year-old Mr Patel, educated at the London School of Economics, Oxford and Yale - where he got his doctorate - is a brilliant economist. He is also versatile, having worked on many issues besides monetary policy - among them, energy, taxation, infrastructure, pension reform, civil aviation and competition policy. At the IMF, he worked on economies as varied as the United States, Myanmar and India. He is non-ideological, a clear, if quiet, communicator and mindful of political economy - especially important in India where monetary policy has huge political ripple effects.

A Gujarati (like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who no doubt made the final decision on his appointment), Mr Patel was originally from Kenya, the scion of a prosperous Indian business family in Nairobi. He had always been interested in India. Over many meetings and lunches, I remember being struck by the depth of his knowledge and curiosity about the country, despite his never having really lived there.