The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has appointed Sudha Balakrishnan as its first chief financial officer for a term of three years.
To date, the central bank’s balance sheet has been managed internally and there was no dedicated officer to do the job. But RBI advertised for the CFO post in October last year.
Balakrishnan will be in charge of the central bank’s balance sheet to ensure that accounting policies and procedures comply with regulations, the Economic Times reported.
She will also be responsible for communicating about the RBI’s financial performance and oversee its budgetary processes, as well as its investments in India and abroad, the daily said.
The CFO will be in charge of the dividend the central bank pays to the government, which is crucial for final budgetary calculations.
In August 2017, the RBI paid a dividend of 306.59 billion rupees for the fiscal year that ended in June, less than half the 658.76 billion rupees it paid for 2015-16, mainly because of costs linked to the withdrawal of high-value currency notes and printing and distributing the newly-designed currency
A chartered accountant by profession, Balakrishnan was till recently a vice-president with National Securities Depository Ltd.