Former Reserve Bank of India Governor (RBI) Urjit Patel has been appointed the Vice President of the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). India is a founding member of AIIB with the second highest voting share after China headed by former Chinese Vice Minister for finance Jin Liqun.
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Patel will serve a three-year term as one of the multilateral development bank’s five Vice-Presidents, and will take the place of Former Gujarat Chief Secretary D.J. Pandian who had been the Vice President, leading the AIIB’s investment operations and all sovereign and non-sovereign lending in South and Southeast Asia.
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Patel has previously worked with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Boston Consulting Group and Reliance Industries among other organisations. He had resigned as RBI Governor in 2018 in a surprise decision, citing “personal reasons” after serving for two years.
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The AIIB has recently highlighted green projects and supporting public health initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has funded 28 projects in India amounting to $6.7 billion. D.J. Pandian, the outgoing Vice-President, had said the bank had “a very strong pipeline of projects” with regard to India and had transitioned away from mostly co-financing projects with the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
