Barely a fortnight ahead of the RBI’s next policy review, the Centre on Thursday appointed three academicians as members to the Monetary Policy Committee, which will set interest rates.

The appointees are Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI); Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics (DSE); and Ravindra Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

The appointments will be for four years, or until further orders, said an official order.

A PhD from Claremont Graduate School, California, Ghate is a macro-economist and part of the Economics and Planning Unit at the ISI.

He has earlier been a member of the RBI’s Technical Advisory Committee and was also part of the committee on anchoring monetary policy to consumer price inflation.

Dua, a PhD from the London School of Economics, was previously professor (economics) at DSE and visiting faculty fellow, Yale University. She has served as an expert on RBI advisory groups on leading indicators and liquidity and served as a member of two committees set up by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

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Dholakia, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, has 38 years’ teaching experience. He has served on many government panels, including the Public Expenditure Management (2009-10) and the Sixth Pay Commission.

The other three members of the six-member panel that will set interest rates will be from the RBI. Apart from RBI Governor Urjit Patel, who will chair the committee, the other members are R Gandhi, Deputy Governor, who holds the charge of monetary policy; and Michael Patra, Executive Director.

Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das had told BusinessLine recently that the next monetary policy review, on October 4, is likely to be undertaken by the MPC.

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