Tharman Shanmugaratnam is Minister for Finance in the Singapore Cabinet.

Tharman has spent most of his career in the fields of economic policy and education, first as a professional and subsequently as political office-holder.  He spent much of his professional life at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator, where he was Managing Director of the MAS before he entered politics in 2001.  He worked on the liberalisation of Singapore’s financial sector that began in the late 1990s.  In between his MAS career, he spent a few years in the mid-1990s at the Ministry of Education.

Following his entry into politics, he has been engaged as an office-holder in the economic and education ministries, including five years as Minister for Education.

From Nov 2001 to July 2003, he was Senior Minister of State in the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Education.  He was a member of the Economic Review Committee (ERC) led by then-DPM Lee Hsien Loong, and chaired the ERC Subcommittee on Taxes, Wages, the Central Provident Fund and Land in 2002.  In education, he chaired the Review Committee on Junior College and Upper Secondary Education in Oct 2002.

Tharman was appointed Acting Minister for Education in Aug 2003, and subsequently confirmed as Minister for Education in Aug 2004.  He was later appointed Minister for Education and Second Minister for Finance in May 2006.  He was Minister for Finance and Minister for Education between Dec 2007 and Mar 2008, before relinquishing his appointment in Education from 1 Apr 2008.

Tharman has chaired the Singapore-Liaoning Economic and Trade Council (SLETC) together with the Governor of Liaoning Province, since the Council was established in 2003 to promote Singapore’s engagements in Northeast China.  He is Deputy Chairman of the National Research Foundation, and serves on the boards of the MAS and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC).  He is also Chairman of the Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies, and serves as a Life Trustee of the Singapore Indian Development Association.

Tharman has been Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC since Oct 2001 when he contested in the General Elections as a candidate of the People’s Action Party (PAP).  He was appointed to the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the People’s Action Party (PAP) in 2002.  He was subsequently elected to the CEC in 2004 and 2006, and has been Assistant Treasurer in the Party since 2004.

Tharman obtained undergraduate and masters degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics and Cambridge University.  He later obtained a masters degree in Public Administration at Harvard University, where he received the Littauer Fellow award.

He is married to Jane Yumiko Ittogi, a lawyer.  They have four children, three boys and a girl, all of school-going age.

April 2008

COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright @ The Government of Singapore. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical including photocopying and recording, without the permission of the Ministry concerned. All enquiries seeking any such permission should be addressed to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry.