The Central Bank has announced the demise of Dr. Uthum Herat, the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka yesterday at a private hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Dr. P W R B A U Herat (52) had been in the Central Bank for 27 years.  Before being appointed as the Deputy Governor, he has served in the Statistics Department, Economic Research Department and as an Assistant Governor in charge of Bank Supervision, Supervision of Non-Bank Financial Institution Department, Financial Stability Departments and several operational departments. He has worked mostly in areas of financial systems and  price stability of the Central Bank. Dr Herat was on release to IMF to serve as the Alternate Executive Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka in IMF from 2004 to 2007.   He held a degree in Science from the University of Sri Jayawardenapura with a first class honors. He obtained his MSc and PhD degrees from University of Purdue, USA, where he specialised in Finance and International Finance. He was also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK and had authored many articles in reputed international and local journals in the areas of monetary policy, foreign exchange market, financial sector reforms, money laundering, Central Bank independence, economic growth, exchange rate, financial market deployment, unemployment and savings and investments. He was a visiting lecturer and resource person at Colombo and Moratuwa Universities, SEACEN Research and Training Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka.   Dr. Herat served as member of Monetary Policy Committee, Financial System Stability and Foreign Exchange Management Committee of the Central Bank. He was the Central Bank nominee to serve as the co-chair of the Financial Services Sub Committee for negotiations with India on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.