Tharman Shanmugaratnam

Tharman Shanmugaratnam
Constituency	Jurong GRC (Taman Jurong)
Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore
Incumbent
Assumed office 18 May 2011
Preceded by	Wong Kan Seng
Minister for Finance
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 December 2007
Preceded by	Lee Hsien Loong
Minister for Education
In office 1 August 2003 – 1 April 2008
Preceded by	Teo Chee Hean
Succeeded by	Ng Eng Hen
Second Minister for Finance
In office 2005 – December 2007
Personal details
Born	Singapore
Political party	People's Action Party
Spouse	Jane Yumiko Ittogi

Tharman Shanmugaratnam (Tamil: தர்மன் சண்முகரத்தினம், Chinese: 尚达曼; pinyin: Shàng Dámàn) is a politician from Singapore. A member of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), he has been the country's Finance Minister since 2007. He served as the Education Minister from 2003 to 2008.

Early life

Tharman was born in 1957. He is of Sri Lankan Tamil ancestry. He studied at the Anglo-Chinese School, and subsequently obtained a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. He went on to gain a Master's degree in Economics from Cambridge University, and a Master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University, where he received a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow award for outstanding performance.

Career

Much of Tharman's earlier professional career was spent at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore's central bank and financial regulator, where he was the Director of Economics and eventually the Managing Director. He was awarded the Singapore Public Administration Gold Medal in 1999.

Political career

Upon entering politics in 2001, Tharman was appointed a Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Education. He then served as Minister for Education between 2003 and 2008. In May 2006, he was also appointed to the post of Second Minister for Finance.

In December 2007, Tharman was appointed Minister for Finance. He continued to concurrently hold the post of Minister for Education until March 2008.

In 2002, Tharman was appointed to the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the PAP, and is currently its Assistant Treasurer. He has been elected to the CEC at each of the biennial Party conferences since then.

Tharman is a Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC. In the Singapore 2011 General Elections, Tharman was the anchor minister for Jurong GRC.

Other roles

At the official opening of Yuan Ching Secondary School's new building on 16 July 2010

Tharman was admitted to the Group of Thirty in June 2008. Also known as "The Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs", the group has thirty members, with Paul Volcker as Chairman of its Board of Trustees.

In March 2011, Tharman was selected Chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), the policy steering committee of the IMF[4]. He was the first Asian to head the IMFC, coming after Dr. Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Egypt’s former Minister of Finance, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, who had been Italy's Economy and Finance Minister, and Gordon Brown, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, who chaired the committee for 8 years until he became PM. In announcing his selection, the IMF said in a statement that his “broad experience, deep knowledge of economic and financial issues, and active engagement with global policy makers will be highly valuable to the IMFC.

Tharman is also Chairman of the Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA). He served for five years as Chairman of the Singapore-Liaoning Economic and Trade Council (SLETC), which was established to advance stronger links between Singapore and Liaoning Province, Ch

Legal charge and conviction

While serving as economics director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 1993, Tharman was charged under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in a case involving the release of Singapore's 1992 second-quarter flash projections to a research director, Mr Raymond Foo, and economist Manu Bhaskaran, of Crosby Securities, and to journalists Kenneth James and Patrick Daniel of the Business Times.

The OSA case, which stretched over more than a year, was reported extensively in the Singapore press. Tharman contested and was eventually acquitted of the charge of communicating the GDP growth flash projections. Senior District Judge Richard Magnus then introduced a lesser charge of negligence, because the prosecution's case was that the figures were seen on a document that he had with him at a meeting with the private economists which he had attended with one of his colleagues. Tharman contested this lesser charge too, and took to the witness stand for a few days.

The court nevertheless convicted him together with all the others in the case, including the editor of Business Times newspaper which published the figures. Tharman was fined S$1,500, and the others S$2,000. As there was no finding that he knowingly communicated any classified information, the case did not pose any hurdle to his subsequent appointment as the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Private life

Tharman is married to Jane Yumiko Ittogi, a lawyer of Japanese-Chinese parentage. They have four children, three sons and one daughter. All of his children are of school-going age in their teens.

External links

• Taman Jurong Website
• Singaporean Cabinet Biography

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