Finally, GIC has finally admitted the need to be transparent

robertteh SG

People are not wrong when they criticise the government for arrogance and for acting without transparency and accountability.

After taking people for granted by investing people's surpluses in Shin Corp, Micropolis, Telcomsel and many foreign investments causing billions of losses, GIC has finally through Dr. Tony Tan admitted government should have been more transparent and accountable in making such investments.

This latest admission goes to show that the government has not been caring and acting in the interest of the people. Now people are losing their retirements because of such heavy losses and some of the returns to CPF savings of the citizens might well be in jeopardy.

Who will bear responsibility for such heavy losses seen in Shin Corp, UBS, Telcomsel, Global Crossing, Micropolis etc.

onlooker123 SG

Nobody lor.

phil30k SG

This actually brings up an interesting point.

They had lots of experts advising them.

Yet they lost money.

Conclusion?

kramnave SG

Conclusion is there is no sure win but a matter of probability. It is hard to judge their performances based on short term results as investments made by them are long term in nature.

phil30k SG

I think that is a valid conclusion.

ky13 SG

If GIC were to generate hugh profit from its overseas investments, the question all Singaporeans should be asking PAP is that..

What benefits will Singaporeans gain from GIC?

Bigger progress package before election?? Razz Razz

lionnoisy SG

oh can u do some home work before u talk?

every year,govt transfer more than i billion from investment return.

2.no risk .no gain
look at the result of Temasek and GIC lah.

3.Transparent is not telling SG portfolio
They just tell u some changes.
no rich man tell you their portfolio,right?

we are not in a Millionaire paper game.
Financial market is a jungle.
it is damn stupid,if not naive,to show people your
arsenal.Yes,portfolio is your arsenal.

GIC and Temasek is managing money of u ,your forefather
and your off springs.
No caution.Just sorry.

shudyourmouth SG

Robert,

Being such a respectable critic of the government all these years, im sure you would have master PAP-speak by now. When Tony the tiger Tan called for more transparency and accountability in sovereign wealth funds, he was actually directing this at the arabs and chinese. Asking them to learn from singapore. Cos at the same time, Lao Lee is lecturing the gulf states on how to evolve their economy from oil to people.

TCH05 SG

I am 110% sure that GIC is NOT doing this for Singaporeans but rather to take advantage of Singapore SWF solid investment principle and track records.

What GIC is doing is to set the benchmark for SWF investment and this will eventually play into the hands of Singapore because not many SWF are as reputable and transparent as Singapore.

GIC rocks!!!

phil30k SG

I’m not familiar with SWF. What is it?

deathbait SG

It's ironic isn't it.

All over the world, nations are worried as SWFs such as GIC sweep up core infrastructure, giving countries such as Singapore a healthy leverage in the global political stage.

Meanwhile, the people are worried because all they can see is paper loss. Nevermind that the funds have been doing well. Never mind that in the world of finance, there are winners and losers. If everyone thinks they are losing, who's winning?

phil30k SG

Dear Deathbait, I have a different point of view for your consideration. I think whereas in the past big companies would buy up and take over economies of smaller countries without resistance thereby expanding their influence.

We now have small countries buying up shares as part of diversifying their portfolios and creating confusion for these big companies.

The guidelines are to make the intentions of SWF clear so these big companies won't have to worry, can easily read up on SWF's intentions and make plans accordingly.

Edited: yep, I went and checked up what Sovereign Wealth Funds were.

robertteh SG

Dear Studyourmouth,

You mean "double-speak" of politicians as symbolized by the Chinese character "kuan" or "government" containing strokes "two mouths".

From a larger perspective, whatever hypocrisy or propagandas used whether with "straight-speak" or "double-speak" there is no true success.

Read the "Little Red Dot" prose or "20 major policy errors of government" as posted here sometime back.

Despite years of claiming successful leadership honesty and incorruptibility, what kind of leaders have we today by reference to their constant self-glorifications over past successes and their self-rewards of all kinds at the expense of suffering of the masses.

On the other hand, by logic, after years of promoting education, people by right should become more capable and prosperous earning more and enjoying a higher standard like the Swiss. Are the majority of our citizens benefiting from such policies like "meritocracy" or "justice and equity for all" or "no one will be left behind". What happened when the last GST was increased. Did the ordinary people get their increases when the ministers enjoyed yet another quantum leap of 20% salary jumps.

In point of fact, whatever statistics the government is still trying to use to coax us into believing its supremacy of talents and leadership the simple logic should be after many years of promoting meritocracy and equal opportunity or education people should have become more educated, more refined or more successful socially and intellectually. Are we ? Or are we becoming more and more divided over many issues and problems.

Now in the present situation we are in or we found ourselves in as citizens, it is not a winsome situation at all for the government.

It is a case of people being forced into slaving for their whole life now as there is no other choice as under the Westminster System of democracy, once the PM resorted to short-changing the basic rights of citizens with legalistic passing of laws to get to his wishes by suitable majority command of parliament he can practically enslave the whole cabinet and parliament and decide whatever he wants to the total disregard of democratic institutions like judiciary, legislature and civil service. A wrong move westminster becomes a dictatorship.

Today it is possible for any ambitious politicians to control the whole population through superficial democratic election but in effect is using the democratic framework to invest himself in perpetual power to control all with taking control of all legalistic manipulations in a winners -take-all dictates provided by the Westminster Model.

dragon_stone SG

After spending spending billions then only realise that there is a need to have transparency. Why don't there realise that in the beginning.

Sometimes, it does not meant you have money that you can buy everything. Look at the china airlines, qantas issues, they don't approve your purchase.

Then, however, if the deal is too good to be true, when will the returns be realised, if any...

phil30k SG

Dear Robert,

This is not meant to be a flame. Your writing shows a lot of promise and your style is very readable. I don't mean to discourage you by giving you this feedback. I don't think you're getting your intended message across as well as you could be

You seem to be saying if government speaks well of itself they cause us to suffer.

You also seem to be saying educated people in the government who earn a lot of money are secretly cheating others.

Also that all problems are the government's fault.

And that (Westminister?) demorcracy is to blame.

Going by your choice of arguments, you appear to be arguing for a situation where any semblence of government should not be a (Westminister?) democracy and should comprise less educated people then the citizens. These official's salaries should also be accordingly low and they should not defend themselves or speak well of themselves so we when we scold them, we will suffer less.

Such an emotive point of view gives me the impression that your daydream is to scold your parents back when they try to lecture you on what you should be doing.

I don't believe this was the intended message or impression you meant to convey.

robertteh SG

Dear Phil30K,

I hope you could see the perspectives of my posts and not necessarily regard my posts as only of scolding of parents by a naive and demanding child who does not know or appreciate parental love or concern.

I could agree that as children we ought to accord parents certain degree of respect and not be grateful for what parents have done in the past.

Having said that should we as children be undiscerning and accept everything parents want as correct or good in our own striving for better progress and advancement for our own lives,

There seems to be certain assumptions in the questions you asked that parents are questionable and children should be grateful and not take the parents to tasks for any wrongs.

I do not think that parents should expect children to be that submissive and totally agreeable to most of their doings without thinking at all.

I should like to think that as parents they should encourage their children to stand up for values like morality and rights etc or care and concern for the total development of children without which I doubt there will be any meaningful relationship in the first place.

Let the parents understand that children's needs and know how to provide for a more meaningful parenthood.

My view of our parents in this instance as can be read from perspective of my total posts is that our parents have provided some basic needs in the beginning but by and large in the later years they have been withholding provisions and hoarding all the benefits from the children to be of any further good both to the children and to themselves as parents.

Our parents have changed in later years and have driven hard bargains of the children.

Under such hazardous conditions one day surely the maltreated children may simply have to stand up and tell such unparental parents off.

I hope such actions will not be misunderstood as unfilial for such corrections of wrong doings by parents should be taken in the positive sense of bringing harmony to the household.

Should a parent demand unconditional respect or should they being parent earn their respect.

Should such parents deserve our respect.

dumbdumb! SG

well, its always like that isn't it.

when things screw up, then they say they should have been transparent, they should have this, they should have that.

but its too late isn't it?

Camb76 SG

robertteh,

Now I'm new to this forum, and I would very much agree that there are things worth criticising about the Singapore government. But just as people always complain that the government newspapers are biased in their reporting, it serves nobody any use to be biased in their own reporting.

First of all, Shin Corp, Micropolis and Telcomsel were all Temasek investments. GIC had no hand in any of them. GIC and Temasek are separate entities, with no overlapping board members.

Second, Temasek is very transparent. Just go to www.temasek.com.sg, and you can read all their accounts. Balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement are all there for everyone to see.

Third, concerning investments, whether it is done by Temasek or GIC or Warren Buffett or George Soros, you must look at the TOTAL portfolio return to be fair. Every investor, however good, even Buffett (for example, he lost US$900mln betting against the US dollar in 2005), are bound to sustain losses on some portion of his/her portfolio. The test is whether the investor makes a good return on his/her TOTAL portfolio over time. So you rightly pointed out that Temasek sustained losses in several high profile investments, but to be fair you should also note that their total portfolio recorded an annual return of 27% as of March 2007 (you can see this from their website). The annual return was 26% per year on average over 2 years, as of March 2007. So according to these figures, the Shin Corp and Telcomsel problems did not significantly impair Temasek's total returns.

How is this possible, you may ask? Temasek made some very astute investments in recent years, which critics tend to overlook. For example, Temasek bought a large stake in Bank of China before its IPO, and that stock price has rocketed in recent years.

Now this does not detract from the failures regarding Shin Corp and other examples, and I believe certain top people in Temasek should have been fired.

But the point remains. Whatever their failures, one should be fair in his assessment of the performance of Temasek and GIC, and more broadly the government. That means taking both successes and failures into account, and providing a fair assessment and perspective.

Thank you.

robertteh SG

Dear Camb76,

I am aware that in talking about investment funds return, generally we should be looking at whole portfolio performance and not individual stocks.

However whenever people are complaining about any problems or criticizing the government policies or performance, there is a need to be fair and give credit where credit is due.

The problem is have we got a government who is responsive to criticism or who is fair and willing to admit mistakes or take actions to solve problems?

Very often the key or main issues behind the complaints as you can see is not so much about the detailed or technical aspects but rather the principles. If principles are wrong detailed discussions of technicalities of issues will be pointless.

In the governance of this country, has any of our leaders realized such fundamental principles that people are not happy because of government lack of responsiveness and unwillingness to admit mistakes not the right or wrong over a particular issues or problems.

The monies which Temasek or GIC are investing in are people's monies accumulated as surpluses due to over-taxing and profiteering of the people through all sorts of schemes and devices with all sorts of excuses as posted by many people here.

Government has often claimed credits for such surpluses without admitting that these surpluses were the results of wrongful exploitations of their fruits of labor.

So it is not wrong for people to question repeatedly government's investments in many overseas projects like Shin Corp or Bangalore or Russian Township.

Principles are being questioned and not particulars of investments. Has the government so far been willing to be more transparent and accountable in the way it invested their monies - some US$100 billions - in various overseas projects from Shin Corp to Global Crossing, Telcomsel etc.

Because of its past failures to respond to citizens' concern over such reasonable expectations, people are not easily appeased by superficial measures or quick fixes. They will not rest this issue until more is being done to prevent losses of the kind seen in Shin Corp. It is not because the government has not made some profits in some other investments as you mentioned. They know the government has made some profits in some other investments. It is the principle of care and prudence which has to be exercised by anyone taking charge of public funds which has not been followed obviously by those who made these shoddy decisions.

There is obviously much more to be done to ensure that decisions in investments are made only scrupulously and professionally not by gut feel like in the case of Micropolis or Shin Corp.

If Dr. Tony Tan now realized this error of Temasek and began to set up clear guidelines or codes of practice it is a good move. Problem is our leaders have been too stubborn on records over many such negligence and errors and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

NKF should have been taken to tasks way back in early 1990s for similar failures to disclose information to make the organization more transparent and accountable. Due to the similar obstinacy (called variously auto-piloting by Ngiam Tong Dow and Disaffective divide by Dr, Catherine Lim) many major policy errors took years to be admitted and changed.

As leaders, they ought to be willing to accept mistakes but often it took them ages to do so resulting in serious migration, dropping child birth, rising costs of living etc. It is only when his own grand children studying overseas currently also decided not to return to Singapore that MM Lee finally has admitted that we have a serious brain drain problem.

First of all, Shin Corp, Micropolis and Telcomsel were all Temasek investments. GIC had no hand in any of them. GIC and Temasek are separate entities, with no overlapping board members.

Second, Temasek is very transparent. Just go to www.temasek.com.sg, and you can read all their accounts. Balance sheet, income statement and cash flow statement are all there for everyone to see.

Now this does not detract from the failures regarding Shin Corp and other examples, and I believe certain top people in Temasek should have been fired.

Thank you.