Lobbying for IMF chief begins

Singapore finance minister's name has been put forth as the first non-European chief of IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not need a new chief - at least for the next two years. However, the race to be the successor for IMF Managing Director Christian Lagarde seems to have quietly begun here.

On Thursday, the Singapore government announced that deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam (pictured) would take over as chairman of the Economic Development Board (EDB)'s International Advisory Council (IAC) from May 1. Tharman, also the finance minister, will replace Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who has served as the council's chairman since 2007.

Tharman's appointment to the post, which will see him more active in the international arena and lift his impressive profile further, is seen as a step towards the race to Washington DC headquarters of IMF. The IAC has chiefs of multinationals such as Philips, Shell and Glaxo. Anand Mahindra, managing director of Mahindra group CEO, Ajay Banga, MasterCard, are members of IAC.

However, the buzz on Tharman's candidature was created a day earlier by economist and UK House of Lords member Lord Meghnad Desai. In an op-ed piece carried by The Straits Times and some regional publications, Desai argued it was time for a non-European to take charge of the IMF. "Mr Tharman is an IMF insider, the chairman of International Monetary and Financial Committee... Mr Tharman is Singapore's deputy prime minister and a previous chief Monetary Authority of Singapore. He is a member of prestigious Group of Thirty. You cannot get a better CV than that," Desai wrote.

Tharman himself was said to have shrugged his shoulders at such suggestions, but Desai argued, "If the possibility came into view, Singapore government would no doubt take it very seriously."

Desai's piece pointed out that the IMF has not been as alive to problems of the majority of its members as it should have been. He also hoped that a non-European like Tharman would be in a position to give the US some "stiff talking".

Desai, who signed off as the chairman of advisory board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), an independent think tank based in London and of which Lord Desai is the head, added in the article, "Someone has to tell the US that its days of hegemony are over in the global financial field as they are in the international political arena."

In the run-up to the 2011 appointment of Lagarde, OMFIF had endorsed the candidature of Zeti Akhtar Aziz, the governor of Malaysian central bank, for the post. However, Aziz herself did not show much interest.

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 chief executive, before entering politics in 2001. He has served in economic and education appointments since then, including five years as education minister. In May 2011, he was also appointed chairman of MAS. Between May 2011 and July 2012, he served additionally as minister for manpower.

Tharman was appointed chairman of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the policy steering committee of the IMF, in March 2011. He was also admitted to the Group of Thirty, also known as The Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs, in June 2008.