Washington: IMF managing director (MD) Kristalina Georgieva on Friday named former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and 11 others to her external advisory group to provide perspectives from around the globe on key developments and policy issues, including responses to the exceptional challenges the world now faces due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Rajan, 57, who was the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor for three years until September 2016, is currently working as a professor at the prestigious University of Chicago.

Georgieva said that even before the spread of COVID-19 and the dramatic health, economic and financial disruptions it has brought, International Monetary Fund (IMF) members confronted a rapidly evolving world and complex policy issues.

To serve our membership well in this context, we need top-notch input and expertise from the widest range of sources, inside and outside the Fund, she said.

Toward this end, I am proud that an exceptional and diverse group of eminent individuals with high-level policy, market and private sector experience has agreed to serve on my External Advisory Group. Today we had a dynamic discussion to gain their insights, and to receive informal reactions to our ideas and approaches, the IMF managing director said.

Other members of the group are Tharman Shanmugaratnam, senior minister of Singapore and chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore; Kristin Forbes, professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia; Lord Mark Malloch Brown, former UN deputy secretary-general among others.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 96,000 people and infected over 1,605,000 in 193 countries and territories since it first emerged in China in December.