Tharman Shanmugaratnam[a] PPA(E) (born 25 February 1957) is a Singaporean politician and economist who has been the current and ninth President of Singapore since 2023.

On 8 June 2023, Tharman announced his intention to run for the 2023 presidential election and his scheduled resignation on 7 July 2023 from all his positions in the government and as a member of the PAP, as the presidency is a non-partisan office.

[12][13] On 2 September 2023, Tharman was announced as the winner after receiving 70.41%[14] of the vote in a landslide victory and was elected as the ninth president of Singapore.

[22] He later joined the Singapore Administrative Service and served in the Ministry of Education as Senior Deputy Secretary for Policy,[23] before returning to the MAS where he eventually became its managing director.

While serving as director of the Economics Department of the MAS in 1992, Tharman was one of five persons charged under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in a case involving the publication of Singapore's 1992 second-quarter flash GDP growth projections in the Business Times newspaper.

[28] The District Court then introduced a lesser charge of negligence, as the prosecution's case had been that the figures were seen on a document that he had with him on a table during his meeting with private sector economists together with one of his colleagues.

Tharman made his political debut in the 2001 general election, contesting Jurong GRC as part of a five-member PAP team and won 79.75% of the vote.

At the 2015 general election, Jurong GRC, which was predominantly anchored by Tharman, won 79.28% of the vote against the five-member Singaporeans First team.

[36] Tharman was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the People's Action Party in December 2002, and was appointed 2nd Assistant Secretary-General in May 2011.

[37] Tharman retained his parliamentary seat in Jurong GRC at the 2020 general election, after winning 74.62% [38] of the vote against the five-member Red Dot United team.

In July 2023, Tharman stepped down from Parliament and all his positions in the government and resigned as a member of the PAP in order to stand as a candidate in the 2023 Singaporean presidential election.

[39] Tharman served as Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for 12 years from 1 May 2011 until 7 July 2023, when he was succeeded by his deputy, Lawrence Wong.

[40][41] In May 2019, Tharman was appointed Deputy Chairman of GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, a position he held until 7 July 2023.

[48] Tharman led the SkillsFuture programme, launched in 2014 with the aim of developing skills of the future, and opportunities for life-long learning and job upskilling among Singaporeans.

In announcing Tharman's selection, the IMF said 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".

On 1 January 2017, Tharman succeeded Jean-Claude Trichet as Chair of the Group of Thirty, an independent global council of leading economic and financial policymakers.

[58] In January 2021, Tharman was appointed by the G20 to co-chair the G20 High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, alongside Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Lawrence Summers.

[60] Tharman co-chairs the Global Commission on the Economics of Water with Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Owonjo-Iweala, and Johan Rockström.

[64][65] He resigned from all his positions in the government and as a member of the People's Action Party (PAP) on 7 July in order to stand in the election, as the presidency is a non-partisan office.

In October 2019, Tharman received the Institute of International Finance's inaugural Distinguished Leadership and Service Award,[78] together with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, for his role as a leading proponent of global reforms to de-risk and grow development finance and to achieve more resilient capital flows.

Tharman was named Finance Minister of the Year 2013 by Euromoney,[79] in recognition of the roles he played in the economic restructuring of Singapore and as statesman of the region on the international stage.

[86][87] Tharman was an active sportsman in his youth, particularly in hockey, athletics, football, and cricket, and has expressed his views on how sports instils lessons for life.