Climate change is Singapore's biggest challenge: Shanmugaratnam

Climate change is the biggest long-term crisis that Singapore faces and adapting to it will require infrastructural investments, the country’s Indian-origin presidential hopeful Tharman Shanmugaratnam has said.

Tharman, 66, resigned from public and political posts in July to run for the presidency and is likely to face a challenge from three other Chinese-origin Singaporeans who have submitted bids to contest the election.

The Indian-origin former minister shared his knowledge of managing national reserves and explained how this experience will help him in his role as the president if he is elected.

During the global financial crisis in 2008, precipitated by the bursting of the US housing bubble, Tharman said he was a finance minister and had proposed a draw of Singapore dollars 4.9 billion from the past reserves to fund a jobs credit scheme and a plan to encourage banks to lend money to businesses.

For the second time, Tharman was a senior minister advising Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on economic policies during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the government proposed drawing down the reserves to the tune of Singapore dollars (SGD) 69 billion to save jobs and lives.

Asked how his past experience of managing national reserves will help him as the president if he is elected, he said considering a draw on the reserves is “never a black-and-white matter”.