Urjit Patel Appointed Vice President of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

Highlights:

• AIIB’s Board of Directors has appointed Dr Urjit Patel to the position of Vice President for Investment Operations Region 1 -South Asia, the Pacific Islands and South East Asia.
• Patel, 58, was the 24th governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), succeeding Raghuram Rajan on September 5, 2016. 
• Patel had abruptly resigned in December 2018 citing “personal reasons”.
• AIIB is a multilateral development bank that aims to improve economic and social outcomes in Asia. The bank currently has 104 members, including 17 prospective members from around the world.
• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is on the board of governors of the bank. 
• Below the President are five vice presidents - one being the position that Pandian held and is now being given to Patel.

• Patel also served as former Chair of the Governing Body of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, a leading think tank on fiscal policy and tax matters. 
• He was also Executive Director and member of the Management Committee of the Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd.
• A PhD in economics from Yale University, Patel has extensive experience in infrastructure and energy sectors.
• He is the recipient of the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University in 2019 and has authored many scholarly publications and papers in the areas of public finance, infrastructure, regulatory economics, monetary policy, global financial safety net, the economics of climate change and the theory of international trade.
• Under the ADB's Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility (APVAX) project, India asked for loans from the AIIB and the ADB in October to purchase 667 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, with the ADB likely to lend $1.5 billion and the AIIB roughly $500 million.