50 Years of Asia: Agus Martowardojo, Mandiri
9 May, 201950 Years of Asia: Jahja Setiaatmadja, Bank Central Asia
9 May, 2019Euromoney, May 9 2019
Read the full article here: https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1f9jhkmmntdt7/raghuram-rajan-working-on-thin-files
There was a time, not so long ago, when Raghuram Rajan was branded a Luddite by Lawrence Summers. He laughs about it now.
“As an academic or a thinker, if you’re not criticized, then you’re not really doing your job,” he says. “You’re providing anodyne commentary, which everyone can go along with and which upsets no one.”
Rajan was chief economist for the IMF at the time and had said that there were serious problems within the banking industry; by 2008 he was proved right. He had been employed by the IMF in the lingering aftermath of the Asian financial crisis amid a sense that the multilateral had played the whole thing wrong.
“My appointment was in many ways because various committees had suggested to the IMF it needed to boost its understanding of the financial sector.”
Later he would use this expertise in an advisory role in India’s ministry of finance during the Singh government and then in a busy spell as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, where he was noted for his intelligence and drive. Among the initiatives that got underway was the Aadhaar identity scheme.
He has mixed opinions of what has followed his tenure, which ended in 2016. Demonetization came months after his departure; he had been consulted about the concept but not its implementation.
“I did not think it was a good idea,” he says. And now? “The economic cost of demonetization, we are learning, was quite high and some of the benefits we have yet to see,” he says.
It is commonly argued that demonetization formalized savings and enhanced alternative payments systems, including technology.
“But the real question has to be: were there alternatives to enhancing payments other than this costly, self-inflicted wound? History will judge how much of a blunder it was.”
Full article: https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1f9jhkmmntdt7/raghuram-rajan-working-on-thin-files?copyrightInfo=true
