Chief Economic Adviser to the Finance Ministry Arvind Subramanian has been given a one-year extension and will continue in office till October 2018. His three-year term was set to get over on October 16, 2017. “The file for extension has been cleared. A formal announcement will be made soon,” said Finance Ministry sources.

The move comes at a time when the government is working out measures to boost the economic and spur demand, as GDP growth for the first quarter fell to a three year low of 5.7 per cent.

Sources said that Subramanian had been keen to leave for the US at the end of his term next month to return to his family but was requested to stay back. The extension will mean that his term will be almost co-terminus with that of the NDA government.

Soon after being elected, the NDA government had appointed Subramanian as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry in October 2014. The post had been lying vacant since September 2013 when Raghuram Rajan was appointed as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Subramanian is currently on leave for “public service” from his position as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington.

He has been closely associated with some of the NDA government’s ambitious policy reforms including the Jan Dhan, Mobileand Aadhaar (JAM) trinity, goods and services tax and focus on public spending as a means to spur the economy. He has also put up various ideas for discussion at the policy and popular level such as his recent proposal for Universal Basic Income.