Subscribe Feed (RSS)Rethink Singapore Economic Growth Model
October 25th, 2008 by eyal | Filed under Asia, economics. |
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An interesting post at Proprietary Trader about Singapore: Rethink Singapore Economic Growth Model. I agree with the spirit of most of the text highlighted in red. However with some caveats and a pre-requisites which I feel weren’t addressed by Prof Lim.
For one, it’s a pity the article starts with “Singapore should..”, this is like the code for government speak when trying to coax people into a certain mindset/action, for example: “Singaporeans should speak proper English instead of Singlish” or “Singaporeans should make more babies”, it immediately creates a dissonance, well at least for me.
Secondly, in order for “releasing capital and talent to local entrepreneurs” to be effective you need the right kind of infrastructure and environment in place, and I’m not talking about communications hardware or low cost business registration fees and online facilities, it goes much deeper than that.
Third, making big bets on few projects has worked reasonably well for Singapore over the long run. Sure there were some hiccups with over investments in hard disks, wafer fabs etc. and maybe now in the financial sector but it’s not possible to get it right 100%, under any kind of model. I do agree though that there should be a more balanced approach and less reliance on just those big bets.
Fourth, the sentence “a national government, for example, should not use domestic savings to create employment disproportionately for foreigners simply in order to claim success in establishing a particular sector of its choosing that may not be validated by underlying market forces.” sounds a bit populistic to me. I think Sg’s flexibility in attracting foreign workers while still maintaining control over long term immigration is a strength rather than a weakness, but I may be biased :-) Also “claiming success” isn’t, I believe, the top priority of policy makers, rather it’s increasing the size of the pie for everyone.
As for the last part: “‘Don’t think of yourself as an outpost of a declining empire, or a
second Shanghai or a second Boston. Why not be a first Singapore?’” I think there’s already a shift away from that mindset and there are attempts to develop a more unique Sg. Ironically, one of the best ways to do that is through the actions Prof Lim criticises, i.e. government initiatives, making several big bets and seeing what sticks and how they develop.
Swingapore should… we love the word “should” over here. Everyone’s telling everyone to do stuff. Now whether they do that it is another matter…
What is she moaning about? Without foreigners, Swingapore wouldn’t be where it is today. THAT is the reason why the populist view keeps moaning about it and why, even after over 40 years of independence, they keep bitching about it (as per her last statement).
Hong Kong only relinquished the yoke of the ailing Empire over ten years ago. I was there for 5 years and hadn’t heard a peep about how bad colonialism was (it isn’t great, but that’s not the point).