New Delhi: Three days before the start of Parliament's Budget session, the government appointed V Anantha Nageswaran as Chief Economic Advisor.

Mr. Nageswaran took over as CEA on Friday, filling a vacancy that had existed since early December 2021, when the previous CEA, Krishnamurthy Subramanian, returned to academia at the completion of his three-year term. Normally, the CEA is in charge of authoring the Economic Survey, which is presented a day before the Budget.

Between 2019 and 2021, the new CEA was a part-time member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. He has a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a doctorate in Finance from the University of Massachusetts for his work on the empirical behavior of exchange rates.

An extensive career in banking, at the Union Bank of Switzerland (now UBS) and Credit Suisse in Switzerland and Singapore, precludes his forays into consulting and lecturing. In 2006, he became the Head of Research for Asia at Bank Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. in Singapore, and was later promoted to Chief Investment Officer.

India is expected to increase infrastructure spending in its budget.

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