WASHINGTON (Reuters) – International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Friday announced the creation of an external advisory group to provide input on policy challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic and its massive economic impact.

The diverse group includes former and current government officials, private-sector experts and academics, including Tharman Shanmugaratnam, senior minister of Singapore and chairman of its monetary authority, and Santander Group (MC:) Executive Chair Ana Botin.

The panel will meet with Georgieva and other senior IMF officials several times a year.

The committee is being formed as Georgieva has pushed the Group of 20 finance ministers and leaders to take more forceful actions to deal with a pandemic crisis that she said this week would unleash the deepest recession since the 1930s Great Depression.

Besides Shanmugaratnam and Botin, the panel includes:

· Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia

· Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former finance minister of Nigeria and longtime World Bank official

· Kristin Forbes, professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former White House economic adviser

· Mark Malloch-Brown, former United Nations deputy secretary general

· Feike Sijbesma, former CEO, Royal DSM (AS:)

· Raghuram Rajan, professor, University of Chicago, and former Reserve Bank of India governor, who also served at the IMF

· Carmen Reinhart, professor, Harvard University

· Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser, Allianz (DE:), and a former IMF official

· Scott Minerd, chief investment officer, Guggenheim Investments

· Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, chair of ActionAid International