Abheek Barua

Abheek Barua, former Chief Economist and Senior Executive Vice President of HDFC Bank, was in the financial sector for 32 years. He was visiting Professor of Economics, Ashoka University in the Monsoon semester of 2025. He has been earlier been with CRISIL (Standard and Poor, India) and Merrill Lynch, Asia. His previous assignment was as Chief Economist, ABN-AMRO Bank. He has been on a number of consultative committees of the Planning Commission, NITI Ayog and the RBI He was part of the HDFC bank’s apex Asset Liability Committee.

As part of his policy work, he was member committee that looked into the funding avenues for the 11th 5year plan, member group of select economists advising the RBI governor on monetary policy, founding member of RBI’s Industry Monitoring Group as well as a speaker/ participant in the Finance Ministry’s flagship Kautilya Conclave. He was in the CII’s National Economic Affairs Committee and now member of the Assocham-EGrow Shadow Monetary Policy Committee

Abheek is a commentator on television writes a column for Economic Times. He is also a regular speaker at finance and economics conferences both in India and abroad. He has given public lectures in London, Istanbul, Kuwait Dubai, Bahrain Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Mumbai. Voted by Bloomberg, Reuters and Asset magazine as one of the top currency forecasters and bond analysts in Asia. He was educated at the Presidency College, Kolkata, the Delhi School of Economics and the University of Maryland, USA.