Singapore is indeed heavily reliant on huge export and import
volumes to keep the economy growing. There are also high-end
products that we manufacture and export overseas. We do things that
are high in value chain such as semi-conductors, chips and computer
parts. In what way are we lagging behind the Asian Tigers?
Japan is struggling to reinvent itself. Bank loan interest rate
stay at 0% for many years to encourage enterprises to borrow and
expand their businesses. China and India are catching up.
We remain very competitive with Hong Kong and Taiwan. If you are
not aware, technology like the thumbdrive orginated from Singapore.
The proliferation of this technology with so many countries
producing it was a result of the company not patenting the
technology. (see ST Digital Life- July)
I also don't remember quite clearly that there were few, if any,
years that our GDP was in deficit while our neighbouring countries
are struggling to stay above water. I believe our economy is not
"haning in the balance" and at the mercy of other economies. Yes,
Singapore is a small economy in comparision to many other
countries, but it has diversified in so many areas like military,
bio-chemical, pharmaceutical and computer technology.
I agree and I think most people will readily agree that
Singapore has been competitive for the period 1960s -1970s. There
is no need to compare selectively to say that Japan or other
countries too are also facing ecoonomic problems to make our
economy look less bad than admitted. If we want to have reasonable
discussions let us go straight to look at how our economy has
progressed from its early days.
I agree that our first-generation founding leaders have been
humble, objective in the early days trying to serve the people as
their servants.
Sadly after 1970s, they were returned to power by the people
consecutively and from that period they became obsessed with their
own self-importance.
They let arrogance go to their heads. They began to promote
themselves and tried all ways and means to retain power by
tinkering with the electoral boundaries, GRC grouping to prevent
individuals to stand for free and fair election. They benchmarked
their own pays to the highest boss-category of remunerations in 10
professions/industries.
Million dollar hyper-salary rewards like S$600,000 were dismissed
as peanut by claiming ability to create million surpluses or 30-60
year reserves as their achievements with self-ego and arrogance.
The best talents in the corporate world were judged on on real
world performance. Sadly in our case the ability at taxing and
recovering costs and some mundane iron rice bowls were
gerrymandered to look like talents to justify all the
self-rewards.
Greed knows no limits and sadly it has been allowed to trump over
morality and erode our leaders' original fire-brand spirit since
the 1970s. Problems were regularly explained away without any sign
of implementation management excellence as shown in the 20
persistent major policy errors posted to the Feedback Unit as
reproduced below:-
(1) Bureaucracy in civil service.
(2) High costs of essential government services e.g. medical,
utilities, housing, transportation, education, etc, etc
(3) Growth Triangles
(4) Affective divide due to lack of understanding of people's views
and aspirations.
(5) Work site safety problems (Hotel New World Collapse's blue
paper was not effectively implemented)
(6) Deliver a Swiss standard of living
(7) Asset enhancement scheme fiasco
(8 ) Unit trust investment fiasco
(9) Foreign relation fiascos
(10) Non-formulation of a value-adding investment strategy
(11) Double-charging on lands (paid by taxpayers yet charged back
to them at full market prices) and triple charges on
vehicles.
(12) Meritocratic education policy that backfired - brain drains of
thousands
(13) Mother tongue - CL1 admission fiasco
(14) Reaching World Cup soccer league by 2010 - no sign of getting
near.
(15) Investment losses by thousands of citizens from CPF
funds.
(16) Spiraling of government ministers' and civil servants'
salaries.
(17) Failure to implement accountability and transparency in
respect of investments of citizens' monies in overseas
investments.
(18 ) Loss of economic competitiveness due to high costs.
(19) Neglect in promoting entrepreneurship
(20) Neglect in nurturing the domestic sector of economy.
After 1970s all the plans and announced projects were no longer
being achieved. Many MNCs and foreign companies are still in the
process of pulling out their operations to China, Malaysia,
Thailand and Vietnam etc.
The leaders have refused to admit the serious loss of economic
competitiveness. Good people and talents are migrating fearing for
their future.
It is very sad that autocracy has failed to put in place any major
changes to solve the 20 problems. There is no effective solutions
of the high-costs to enable the economy to compete with external
competitions whether from China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan
, Korea or even Vietnam.
More and more Singapore's SMEs and domestic sector companies
continued to go down and suffer losses due to policy errors as
posted and high costs.
Despite all the feedbacks from the people the leaders persisted in
carrying on the same past policies as we are losing out to in
practical broad-based education practised in small countries like
Finland, Switzerland or Denmark. Our per capital ranking dropped
from 8th to 25th while other Asian tigers climbed up the ranking.
The promised Swiss standard of living promised by the government
was nowhere in sight. People saw the wages dropping to the third
world while the costs of living climbed up to the first
world.
The tax-and-recover system of creating government's own surpluses
and reserves continued to be pushed relentlessly causing more
problems to majority of the citizens who were struggling for
survival.
The wage gap between the rich and poor widened with no actions
taken to address underlying serious fracture in the economy or
social sphere. Ministers are paid first-world salaries in millions
but none were seen capable of turning around the moribund economy
except in giving constant excuses about factors beyond their
control or the external economic situations. They lack the
fire-brand spirit to re-structure or upgrade our weakening
economy.
Senior civil servants are paid higher than CEOs of major companies
who had built their own businesses based on proven entrepreneurship
abilities.
For the past many years now, the following major problems simply
cannot be solved or projects as announced have failed to attain
results:-
Therefore it is not untrue or incorrect to say that the local or
domestic economy except for MNCs and GLCs is "hanging in the
balance" and at the mercy of persistent surplus-oriented government
high-cost pro-foreign policies.
The economic planning only consists of some ad hoc and
uncoordinated military or biopolis hubs resulting in losses of
competitiveness with our best scholars taken away by US and
migrating to many countries due to major policy errors.
There is an urgent need to implement consistent and focused
implementation of the technology upgrading as what Dr. Goh Keng
Swee would have done in building the original Jurong. Instead we
only heard of the long gestation period of 35 year for our biopolis
and constant talks of our resourceless economy. No wonder our
econmy is seen to be taking all the "U-Turn" like seen happening to
our once-heralded chip industry where millions were lost due to
dire lack of foresight or implementation abilities.
MNCs are moving out by the hoardes during the past two recessions
and many jobs were lost. Instead of upgrading the economic
competitiveness through broad-based education there was the same
insistence on producing more academic education and pro-foreign
investment incentives that turned away our own talents and
entrepreneurs in large numbers.
We are losing many opportunities in cultivating our own SMEs. I
agree that government might be doing something every now and then
but all that were done were seen to be too little too late with the
same lack of consistent implementation abilities as mentioned in
the foregoing.
I am glad you have at least admitted that Singapore cannot afford
to be aloof and proud as they have been all these past 20 years or
so and has to recognise it and are doing something about it.
It is precisely that the government see the closing gap of
competitiveness that they are encouraging entreprenuership,
risk-taking and taking responsibility for our own financial future;
changing syllabus and pedagogy in schools to encourage
self-directed learning and analytical thinking than mere textbooks
and examinations.
EDB has collaborated with NTU and NUS to set up entrepenuer and
technoprenuer centers. TV programs like "start-up" on Thursday
7.30p.m Channel 5 are also made to expose Singaporeans to
entrepreneuralism.
Even with our CPF, the government is slowly but surely teaching us
that there is no more economic "safety net" we can totally rely on.
The interest rate of 6% per annum was taken over by another
policy.
It is hoped that above-stated measures will be implemented under
the good hands-on control of cabinet ministers of calibre like Dr.
Goh Keng Swee and not with all the constant arrogance and denials
of problems.
Our underlying economic problems are being grossed over or
covered up as the domestic sector of the economy is still in bad
shape. Just look at all the business indicators : dropping COE
prices, property slump and highest business failures and
bankruptcies and retrenchments to understand the real problems.
The reason why I have used Dropping COE prices and property
slump as indicators of our state of economy is precisely because
aof the state of denial the government is currently engaged in. It
keeps using numbers and statistics to portray some look-good bits
of the economy. The empty shops, vacated factories all over the
island showed the whole sad state of Singapore domestic
economy.
The earlier the government is prepared to admit the above-stated
policy errors the better it will be in the eye of the citizens now
still struggling from first world costs while earning third world
wages.
While it is agreed that COE prices might reflect other factors at
work but essentially from the general downward trends over the past
few years the sign of weakening economy is very much in the wall as
written by the dropping COEs.
Property slump was among the 20 problems caused by past errors of
government's asset enhancement bravado. The beneficiary was HDB
which managed to cream off billions in HDB super-inflated
prices.
If the currently high business failures and bankruptcies is
accepted as "not bad" indicator then the government should own up
and take stock of all the problems and not continue to practise
denial or justifications.
Statistics might have shown too that 95% of businesses fail within
the first 5 years we are here not being statistical but trying to
tell why there is an exceptionally high failures and bankruptcies
during all these past years. Most likely the new policies are still
ad hoc and for presentation or window dressing and not
effective.
The remaining 5% which did not fail might go on to succeed in
creating jobs but are there effective measures to nurture our own
vibrancy or resilience? The first urgent change obviously is to
lower or put right all the unnecessary double charging of lands and
hyping up of all the business costs. The second urgent measure is
to balance off the past pro-foreign investment policies and try to
create incentres to encourage our own local technology start-ups
especially promising ones which have not yet become famous. Do not
just pick the winners. It is more proactive and creative to
identify potential and build up broad-based capabilities.
Retrenchment is a sign of seriousness of the economy. Do not just
implement ad hoc policies like getting the Work-Develpment Agency
to mull over some minor job redesigning. Until monies are made to
turn round and broad based education instituitions are fully in
place a few ad hoc policies here and there would not address
serious structural problems.
SPRING has admitted publicly that their past training programs
thier programs have not basically changed the competitiveness of
our work force. Big pictures such as these should be understood and
relevant changes made to address fundamental problems.
Sad to say what has been done to date is a bit of ad hoc measures
here and there such as converting of taxi-drivers to tour guide or
cleaners but such measures are lacking in depths and the 20 major
problems largely unsolved. This is the kind of look-good approach
which is postpoing and delaying solutions.
If the new leaders really want to save the situation, they
should lead by morality and not just on their presumptuous
leadership or talents. They should acknowledge past mistakes and
presumptuousness and admit there is now a serious losss of economic
competitiveness of Singapore and do something big.
On "doing something big," I believe we should recognise that big
things start small. Biopolis is up. But it will take years before
we reap the fruits.
Read the article. It's really insightful.
You asked : how do we define "morality"? My answer is : By the
government leaders so well taken care of, and therefore believing
S$600,000 is peanut to pay to some CEO running our charitable
organization, they already showed their own money faces.
There is no morality left now in our system of government as
leverything is measured in monies. While there is no denying that
the best talents do deserve the right pays but look at how we
reward our leaders and civil servants ? Is it correct or prudent to
push the whole civil service wage to three times that of private
sector wage cost. Is such a wage push done with accountability and
transparency in the first instance ?
Why do we end up with theis kind of wage costs or the 20 major
policy errors as stated in the foregoing? It is arrogance and lack
of accountability and all the presumptuousness which has caused all
these problems. The above-stated review showed should help to pin
point the root cause of our greatest failures since the 1970s which
are failures beyond all imagination.
