San­dra Chouthi

Jwala Ram­bar­ran, suc­ces­sor to Ewart Williams as Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T, holds a mas­ters of sci­ence (ho­n­ours) de­gree in fi­nan­cial eco­nom­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. Be­fore that, he ob­tained an ho­n­ours de­gree in eco­nom­ics and math­e­mat­ics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

A for­mer chief econ­o­mist at CL Fi­nan­cial sub­sidiary, Caribbean Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers Ltd (CMMB), Ram­bar­ran in 2007 formed his own com­pa­ny Cap-M Re­search, a re­search con­sul­tan­cy. Ram­bar­ran, whose ini­tial am­bi­tion was to be­come a doc­tor, was a se­nior econ­o­mist at the Cen­tral Bank from 1990-2001, and again from 2003-2004. He left the Cen­tral Bank to join CMMB, where he al­so head­ed its re­search unit.

Most re­cent­ly, Ram­bar­ran, was spe­cial ad­vis­er in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries. He was al­so the chair­man of Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (Ni­herst), and head of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es Pro­gramme (GATE) re­view com­mit­tee. He was al­so a di­rec­tor of the T&T Cred­it Union Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and FN­CU Ven­ture Cap­i­tal.

Ram­bar­ran lec­tured in eco­nom­ics and strat­e­gy at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness. He has more than 20 years' ex­pe­ri­ence ap­ply­ing macro­eco­nom­ic re­search and analy­sis to busi­ness plan­ning, in­vest­ment strat­e­gy and pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion gained in the pri­vate sec­tor, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

He has led pre­sen­ta­tions to the IMF ex­ec­u­tive board on pro­gramme de­sign for its flag­ship low-in­come coun­try Pover­ty Re­duc­tion and Growth Fa­cil­i­ty (PRGF) and on im­ple­men­ta­tion of the en­hanced Heav­i­ly In­debt­ed Poor Coun­tries (HIPC) Ini­tia­tive. In an ear­li­er in­ter­view, Ram­bar­ran said while at the Cen­tral Bank, he worked on many high-pro­file is­sues, name­ly as the re­struc­tur­ing of the Guyana debt to T&T and the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion of the for­eign ex­change mar­ket.

Apart from Cap-M Re­search, Ram­bar­ran was al­so an eco­nom­ic ad­vis­er to Glob­al Free­dom Flight Fund, a glob­al so­cial net­work, whose mis­sion state­ment was, "To cre­ate a glob­al en­vi­ron­ment of so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty via world­wide part­ner­ships and strate­gic al­liances; com­bin­ing fi­nan­cial strength, in­no­va­tion, pas­sion and com­mit­ment! Ram­bar­ran was al­so the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of In­fin­i­ty Fi­nan­cial En­gi­neer­ing, an ad­vi­so­ry firm that "blend­ed two dis­ci­plines: eco­nom­ic (sic) and fi­nance."