Minister Shanmurgaratnam is the Senior Minister and also Coordinating Minister for Social Policies. Tharman was appointed in May 2019. He chairs the National Jobs Council aimed at rebuilding skills and jobs in the wake of COVID-19, and advises the Prime Minister on economic policies. He had previously served for eight years as Deputy Prime Minister. He was first elected Member of Parliament in Nov 2001 in Jurong GRC, and has been re-elected four times since.
Tharman also concurrently holds the position of Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator. In addition to his responsibilities in the Government, he is Deputy Chairman of GIC and chairs its Investment Strategies Committee. Internationally, Tharman chairs the Group of Thirty, a global council of economic and financial leaders from the public and private sectors and academia. He earlier chaired the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) for four years and was its first Asian chair. He currently also co-chairs the Global Education Forum, and the Advisory Board for the UN’s Human Development Report. He is also the External Advisory Group to the IMF Managing Director, and the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees. Among his other roles, he chairs the Board of Trustees of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA), which seeks to uplift educational performance and social resilience in the Indian Singaporean community.
Tharman studied at the London School of Economics and University of Cambridge. He later obtained a Master’s in Public Administration at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was named a Lucius N Littauer Fellow for outstanding performance.