By George Tan, Guest Columnist
I am worried about the long term future of Singapore.
Our country is an
oddball in this part of the world. Countries around
us are frequently accused of being corrupted and badly managed.
Due to this, our PAP government stood out well. Its clean and
nonsense way of dealing with other countries made us unique and
good to deal with. We prosper as the US and European countries
prefer to deal through us rather than with our neighbors.
Through these years, our country has undergone many changes in
its strategy to move our economy forward. We were first a trading
then manufacturing economy. For a while, we thrived till our
leaders discovered there will always be cheaper labor elsewhere and
so we tried to change.
We began to move to manufacture highly specialized goods such as
computer products and hard disks. We attracted many companies. Then
when one of our home companies ST Eng tried to eat up Micropolis,
this caused a major backlash such that the company had to be
written off.
Next our country attempted to move to be a IT Hub.
Unfortunately, India beat us to it flat. They produce far more
programmers than many times our population. So as a IT hub, we
failed.
Then we attempted enter Bio tech with the construction of
Biopolis. From rumours I heard, that place is very quiet. I don’t
think our country will produce the cure for cancer or AIDS. I have
not heard of any major breakthrough in research after all the money
thrown in.
So we then try to be a service economy, our ports grew to be
world standard. Despite Malaysia offering cheaper price, ships
still prefer to come over our place. Yet with global trade down,
two third of our cranes are idling and services are not
required.
We attempted to be a financial hub for Asia to compete with Hong
Kong. Apart from the polluted air, Hong Kong is in a far better
position as a financial hub as compared to us as they are closer to
China. And the economic giant in this century will be China.
China will be more interested to keep Hong Kong prosperous
rather than Singapore due to political reasons. And in this crisis,
financial centres are worst hit. This explains why we are the first
to be in recession.
The last card we seem to have is the casinos. It was a viable
and important change as our government may have realised that
Singapore has little drivers for the economy ahead. Yet Donald
Trump Casino just declared being bankrupted. This spells woes to us
as well.
Casinos are supposed to be recession proof. But I am sure if you
go down Las Vegas, you will find that casinos are desperate for
customers. And guess what? Sands is in financial trouble. But they
have stopped all projects all around the world except Singapore. I
wonder why Sands would do that. Singapore is an untested market for
Sands, whereas Macau is a well known gambling den. I would put my
bets on Macau rather than Singapore. (No pun intented) I guess some
agreements or new aids must have been settled unannounced.
After saying all these, I would like to point out that I wish
Singapore all the best, but I can’t see any drivers for the island.
Apart from being an education hub, I can’t see any other drivers in
the main economy that will propel future prosperity for
Singapore.
Strangely
enough, I think the only way Singapore will have a future is to
rejoin Malaysia. But that is another story for
another time.
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