Shubhashis Gangopadhyay is new Advisor to Finance Minister

Renowned economist Shubhashis Gangopadhyay on Tuesday took over as the new Advisor to Finance Minister P Chidambaram, replacing Parthasarathi Shome who resigned last month.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay has joined as the Advisor, Chidambaram said at a lunch to celebrate the harvest festival Pongal with reporters at his residence.

Gangopadhyay is a renowned economist, running his own think tank - India Development Foundation, and is a visiting fellow to a number of foreign universities, he said.

Appreciating the contribution of former Advisor Shome in bringing about major tax reforms like VAT, Chidambaram said he would be joining as the Chief Economist at the Tax Department of UK. He said Shome was heading a Working Group on Goods and Services Tax (GST), whose report has been submitted to the Empowered Committee of state Finance Ministers on VAT.

The committee will now submit its report to Finance Minister later this month.

A Ph.D in Economics from Cornell University, USA, Gangopadhyay was a faculty member at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He took over as founder-director of IDF, an independent research organization, in 2002.

He has written extensively in international journals on economics and finance and has authored a number of books on economics and finance.

Source : Times of India - India, dated 15/01/2008