Unsung heroes of the Central Bank 1: Dr. A.G. Karunasena

= Economist who did not believe in economic policy without quantitative substantiation

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Dr. A.G. Karunasena inaugurating a SEACEN training program as Executive Director in Mongolia in 2011

I am writing this series on my former colleagues of the Central Bank whose contribution to the economy, central banking, and the financial system has been known to those within the bank but relatively unknown to those outside. In my view, they are unsung heroes.

An econometrician is born

Dr. A. G. Karunasena who left us last week was such an unsung hero. Armed with a first-class honours degree in economics with statistics and econometrics as specialty from Vidyalankara University, Karunasena joined the Central Bank as a probationary staff officer in 1976 after a brief stint at the country’s Government statistics bureau, Department of Census and Statistics or DCS, as a statistical officer. With his academic background and experience, he was posted to the statistical division of the Economic Research Department of the Central Bank.

In this capacity, he was a part of the team that compiled the Central Bank’s price index monthly, estimation of the GDP quarterly, and the compilation of the consumer finance and socioeconomic survey of the bank decennially. All these tasks were handled by the Central Bank from its inception until they were fully taken over by DCS in early 2000s.

In his initial years in the bank, Karunasena had the distinctive advantage of being tutored by one of the leading statistics Gurus there, Dr. K. S. C. Jayathilake, who later retired as the Bank’s Deputy Governor.

Proceeding to McMaster University