Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has been given an appointment on an international panel tasked with formulating an economic response to global pandemics.

The G20, an international forum of 19 countries and the European Union, has established a High Level Independent Panel on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response.

Co-chair

Tharman is one of the panel's co-chairs, with the panel proposed by the current Italian presidency of the G20.

He is joined by Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, and former Nigerian Foreign and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Other members of the panel include former European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, Center for Global Development president Masood Ahmed and Michael Kremer, University of Chicago professor who won a Nobel Prize for his work studying poverty.

The panel will will build on the World Health Organization’s assessment of gaps in pandemic preparedness and on ongoing international initiatives aimed at enhancing global preparedness and response.

The panel will also interact with global health organisations, including the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) established by the WHO.

It will also assess the current financing systems and propose viable solutions for the longer term, as well as being tasked with:

• Identifying the gaps in the financing system for the global commons for pandemic prevention, surveillance, preparedness and response.
• Proposing actionable solutions to meet these gaps on a systematic and sustainable basis
• Optimally leveraging resources from the public, private and philanthropic sectors and the International Financial Institutions.

Top image from Tharman Shanmugaratnam's Facebook page.