How to benefit from IR?

robertteh SG

I am sure our leaders are not that stupid and should know too well that IR was not what they are after. What they are after is to use IR to leverage the whole economy and create whole new generation of economic spin-offs.

To leverage on the IR, we need first-class Finance or Economic Minister and a First-Class Cabinet who understand how to use IR to create such spin-offs.

IR can have direct spin-off on tourism but that is not enough. It is necessary to understand how tourists especially the cash-rich tycoons can be made to park their fund here by opening up account here and be given benefits of certain kind. Better still they can start businesses here and be given more benefits. This requres whole new approaches to traditional investment incentives.

So it is essential to set up a think tank to come up with such type of incentives since business people will also come here not just the normal travellers.

Businesses that will benefit from such IR arrivals will have to be identified. Processes have to be set up to integrate IR visitations to certain industries like banking, Swiss-Banking, Financial Hubbing, HQ status for leisure and tourism and Venture-capital hubs and many more.

We will need a holistic economic master plan to integrate IR visitations to economic spin-offs. We can implement them consistently, so that we do not do the IR or IR sake but for something bigger and at the end will make ours an economic IR.

It will be sinful to do the IR for IR sake or to only create marginal benefits of immediate tourism industries and not the rest of the economy. If we are short-sighted and do not know how to use IR to create economic spin-offs, we will end up not benefiting from IR but only creating a decadent immoral society.

oxford mushroom SG

What do you suggest?

The Chinese have 4 main vices: chi he du piao...gluttony, drunkeness, gambling, prostitution. The IR only addresses the gambling part, so perhaps someone will start a chain of brothels around Marina? Mr. Green

robertteh SG

Chinese has these four main vices among the merchant society where the only skill is trading and nothing else. With a government recognizing that these are the main vices of the population, it will be wrong to add to the vices and make them more sinful than ever.

The challenge is to upgrade the economic structure to one surviving on mass participation in knowledge application, creativity and entrepreneurship so that the energy of the people will be absorbed in more worthwhile pursuits in more competitive endeavours. Without developing into a more competitive society, citizens will not be able to upgrade their works and engage in more meaningful lives. The will have to outwit, out-manoevre and out-smart and focus on short-cuts and fast-buck livelihood like gambling and basic low-skill trading to eek out a living. There is an urgent need to lift their lives with real economic efforts creativity and entrepreneurship.

Who can help them ? When we have gambling, in nice leisure-like setting like the Marina IR, the vices will go deeper into the Chinese Society. Government should adopt a new set of new nation building ethos like "Yi Tau Ci Kou" - Govern by morality.

Are we becoming a more moral and accountable society where the government is committed to govern the country with morality through religions, education, economic restructuring, social and cultural revival. Is the government able to rise above the fray and not allow the society to sink further into social degradation. Is the government committed to building a socially upright and vibrant society so that even with Marina IR, people will hold their head high and not be swayed by these vices ?

king108 SG

Laughing You never go to Marina?..Everything there already except du only..Please come back fast.. A lot from third world waiting to serve

ShutterBug SG

You know Robby, this "U-Turn" could have been made 47,000 Kilometers ago. Instead of now....

Including the many other "U-turns" along the way.

robertteh SG

A system that is based on assembling of a few scholars to come up with ideas, schemes, policies will not work.

Ideas, concepts, policies and decisions usually cannot be carried out by such conceptualisation alone. They have to be commitments at all levesl with ideas and concepts translated into schemes with detailing and finalized steps in the form of work processes implemented throughout by the whole organization to attain results. Report cards need to be submitted quarterly or at some periodic intervals with concerned stakeholders deliberating on shortcomings or steering new diections and solutions.

There are many past policies and projects announced but after sometime nothing is heard about them as posted in the "20 major policy errors of the government" to the Feedback Unit. There are many past problems which remain unsolved the high costs of living and lack of consistent economic restructuring being the most serious of all the problems.

So IR is being implemented presumably to provide 30,000 jobs. Which economic or finance ministers or some heavy-weight senior civil lords are now made responsible for hands-on steering of the whole economic restructuring plan and strategy to obtain such results. How about creating economic spin-offs to benefit the whole economy and not just the tourism sector.

Every now and then, ministers will be talking about some hubs but which hubs producing international products and new international brands due to such fundamental restructuring changes of the economy ?