Can Singapore afford to dabble only in property or share market
or retailing or services and get by in this globalized world
market?
If it does not upgrade its basic and fundamental economic structure
from a low-based labour intensive and retailing and merchandizing
type of economy to value-adding strategic capital-intensive based
on advanced sunrise technology applications and innovations, will
it have a hope to catch up with truly first-world economy like the
Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Korea or Japan?
PM Lee Hsien Loong, while he was the ex-Trade and Industry Minister
under Goh Chok Tong's cabinet was supposed to be in charge of
economic restructuring and has announced many economic
restructuring plans.
What has happened to these various economic restructuring
plans?
Is our economy on the path to achieve value-adding restructuring as
announced in the past many plans? Is there any consistent and
focused implementation of these plans up to date?
Nowadays, we only keep hearing about our growth in GDP or
attracting foreign talents or foreign investments. Other countries
are also experiencing the same growth in GDP or property, so what
is our real growth ? Are our ministers being too complacent?
Are we forgetting the various economic restructuring plans with
fundamentals to promote our own local content of value-adding
manufacturing, servicing, researches etc which are industries
offering the greatest potential for value-adding through technology
applications.
Or do our ministers only know how to invest in property, share
markets and all the IR related services?
Are our ministers running out of ideas and efficient implementation
of our past economic restructuring plans once implemented well and
successfully by Dr. Goh Keng Swee or Lim Kim San?
Can't we find real talents instead of talk-only type of scholars
who have yet to show good works in such macro-level excellence.