Xolile guma biography channel 6

Cerebral analyst at the central bank has great faith in SA's prudent fiscal approach, writes Chris Barron. Modest, urbane, cerebral, Xolile Guma, who has been appointed senior deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, would grace any central bank in the world. Go on, how about Greece, I ask? Impeccably polite, he confines himself to a restrained chuckle.

If you don't rein yourselves in you can expect a crisis to occur at some point in the future. Those who chose to go into a fixed exchange rate within the euro area effectively gave up one policy instrument.

Insight into MPC meetings, monetary policy, inflation and administered prices.

That's something those punting monetary union in Africa might consider most carefully, he suggests. As big as the temptation "will always be" on governments including our own to spend what they don't have, Guma does not believe something similar would have been allowed to happen in South Africa. Guma says minister of finance Pravin Gordhan's celebrated note to governor Gill Marcus earlier this year about growth and development being part of the central bank's mandate changed nothing.

Does he share the general optimism about the long-term benefits of the World Cup for South Africa?

Guma, 53, who has a doctorate in economics from Manchester University, joined the Reserve Bank in as an economist in the research department.

Beyond agreeing that it has inspired "social cohesion", he is reluctant to commit himself. Guma, 53, who has a doctorate in economics from Manchester University, joined the Reserve Bank in as an economist in the research department. He became deputy governor in and the reluctant subject of speculation that he was being groomed as Tito Mboweni's heir apparent.

Instead he found himself made "special advisor" to the governor when then-president Thabo Mbeki controversially failed to renew his contract as deputy governor. Guma, an academic at heart, is a reserved and private person who, away from his books and papers, is happiest when gardening and playing bowls. He has made it quite clear that succeeding to "what some people would call 'the ultimate job'" has never been his ambition.