(VOVworld)- The Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was on Wednesday (Nov 30) named chairman of the Group of Thirty (G30) consultative group, succeeding outgoing chairman and former European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam

Mr Tharman, who is also Singapore's Coordinating Minister for Economic and Social Policies, will serve a five-year term as the G30 chairman, beginning on Jan 1, 2017. In a media statement, the chairman of the G30 board of trustees Jacob Frenkel said he believed Mr. Tharman will successfully pursue the Group’s mission of deepening understanding of key international economic and financial issues, thereby contributing to the quality of public policy decision making. The G30 is an international body made up of top public and private sector leaders and academics. It counts among its members former US Federal Reserve chairs Paul Volcker and Ben Bernanke, ECB president Mario Draghi, private sector leaders and economics professors such as Paul Krugman, Lawrence Summers and Kenneth Rogoff.