Arjuna Mahendran
| Arjuna Mahendran | |
|---|---|
| Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka | |
|
In office 26 January 2015 – 30 June 2016 |
|
| Preceded by | Ajith Nivard Cabraal |
| Succeeded by | Indrajit Coomaraswamy |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
16 July 1959 Colombo, Ceylon |
| Nationality |
Sri Lankan (Previously) Singaporean (Currently) |
| Alma mater |
Royal College, Colombo Balliol College, Oxford |
| Profession | Banker |
Lakshman Arjuna Mahendran is a Sri Lankan-Singaporean economist and banker. He is a former Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), having been appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015. He was the former Managing Director of HSBC Private Bank, Chief Investment Officer of Emirates NBD as well as Chairman and Director-General of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. In January 2015 he was appointed as Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka announced he would not seek an extension of his term which ended June 30, 2016.
He was educated at Royal College, Colombo in Sri Lanka and at Balliol College, Oxford, he gained a MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Mahendran joined the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, he had served as a senior economist before moving into investment banking in Singapore going on to serve as Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist-Asia at HSBC Private Bank. He was responsible for driving research and providing in-depth analysis of markets in the Asia Pacific. Mahendran also led the analytics team in interpreting market economics and developing investment strategies for HSBC's clients in the region.Later he served as Chief Investment Officer-Wealth Management division at Emirates NBD. From 2001 to 2004 he served as Chairman and Director-General of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI). For Mahendran's instrumental role in establishing the Board of Investments of Sri Lanka and driving its strategy, he was named a runner-up in Euromoney Strategic Direct Investor's "CEO Lifetime Achievement Award" in 2003. He served as Chief Economist & Strategist – Asia Pacific at Credit Suisse Group AG and was its Head of Research for Asia Pacific since October 2006.
In 2015 he was appointed as the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. He was extremely critical of the Sri Lankan tax system and called the revenue which is only 10% of the GDP "pathetic" and compared the low tax collection in the country to the tax collection of a poor Sub-Saharan country and also criticized the complexity of the tax system and proposed to simplify it and introduce online tax payment systems to streamline tax collection. He also slammed inefficient loss making state-owned enterprises as they have created losses in state banks while giving a "free ride" to private banks as they exploit significant lending spreads by the government banks and proposed to make public enterprises more efficient so that the banking system can be more efficient and make the economy grow faster.
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