Washington: India-born Gita Gopinath became the first woman and second Indian to feature on the ‘wall of former chief economists’ of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The first Indian to achieve the honour was Raghuram Rajan who was chief economist and director of research of IMF between 2003 and 2006. Gita was appointed as IMF chief economist in October 2018 and was later promoted as IMF’s first deputy managing director in December last year.
Gita had served as the first female chief economist of the Washington-based global lender for the last three years. IMF’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said in a statement last year that under Gita’s leadership, IMF’s research department made contributions, including in multilateral surveillance through the World Economic Outlook, developing a new analytical approach to help nations respond to international capital flows and her recent work on a plan to end the Covid crisis by setting targets to vaccinate the world at a feasible cost.
