Duvvuri Subbarao on Monday joined as secretary, department of economic affairs, Ministry of Finance. He belongs to the 1972 batch of the Indian Administrative Service (Andhra Pradesh cadre).

Prior to this, he was working as secretary to the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. He will replace Finance Secretary Ashok Jha, who also held charge of economic affairs.

The government, however, did not announce who the new finance secretary would be. According to sources, the appointment will await other changes in the finance ministry.

Revenue Secretary KM Chandrasekhar, the seniormost secretary in the finance ministry, is widely tipped to be the next Cabinet Secretary. Petroleum Secretary MS Srinivasan is tipped to move to North Block, possibly as Chandrasekhar's successor.

Subbarao has wide experience in public finance and has held many important posts in the past 18 years. He was joint secretary in the department of economic affairs from 1988 to 1993 when economic reforms were initiated.

He served as finance secretary to the Andhra government from 1993 to 1998 and was actively involved in initiating fiscal reforms in the state.

He was lead economist at the World Bank from 1999 to 2004 during which he worked on issues of public finance in countries of Africa and East Asia.

In the World Bank, he managed a flagship study on decentralisation across major countries of East Asia (China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia).

Subbarao studied at IIT-Kanpur and was one of the first IIT passouts to join the civil services. Later, he did his MS in Economics from Ohio State University (1978) and was a Humphrey Fellow at MIT during 1982-83. He has a PhD in Economics from Andhra University.