Tharman Shanmugaratnam is Minister for Finance in Singapore.

Tharman has served in the economic and education ministries since he entered politics in 2001, including five years as Minister for Education between Aug 2003 and March 2008.  He was appointed Minister for Finance in Dec 2007.

Tharman spent much of his earlier professional life at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank and integrated financial regulator, where he was the chief executive before his entry to politics.  He started his career as an economist, and later worked on the restructuring of the financial sector from 1998, involving a shift towards disclosure-based regulation and risk-focused supervisory approaches, as well as the progressive opening up of the sector to foreign competition.  He received the Singapore Public Administration Gold Medal in 1999.

He is currently also Deputy Chairman of the National Research Foundation, and serves on the boards of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and the MAS.

Tharman is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA), which seeks to uplift educational aspirations and strengthen resilience in the local Indian community.  He is in addition Chairman of the Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies, and Chairman of the Council of Advisors of the Singapore Industrial and Services Employees Union (SISEU).

Tharman is a Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC.  He. has been on the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the People’s Action Party (PAP) since 2002, and was most recently re-elected to the CEC in 2008.

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 Lucius N Littauer Fellow award.

Married to Jane Yumiko Ittogi, a lawyer.  They have four children, three boys and a girl, all in their teenage years.

March 2009

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