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REACHING OUT
First, reaching out to new markets.
7-HOUR HINTERLAND
The ASEAN region is important to us, especially Malaysia and
Indonesia. But we should now widen our hinterland, to build
up Singapore as a hub for the greater Asian region.
Within a 7-hour flight radius of Singapore live 2.8 billion
people, with hundreds of millions in the middle income group.
We have only ourselves to blame if we do not fully exploit
these opportunities. We should regard all the countries and
cities which are within 7 hours of flying time from Singapore
as our hinterland.
China is within this greater hinterland. So is India, which
also offers us good growth opportunities. India is opening
up, though not as spectacularly as China. Its IT industry
especially has developed remarkably in the last few years.
Indians living abroad are beginning to return to India, to
start up companies there.
FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS
Our Free Trade Agreement or FTA strategy is part of our efforts
to expand our economic space. Last year, we concluded an FTA
with New Zealand. We are now negotiating FTAs with the US,
Japan and Australia, among others.
FTAs open up foreign markets to companies in Singapore. This
will benefit our companies, which must export to grow. FTAs
will also attract more investments to Singapore, because factories
in Singapore will be assured of enhanced access to important
markets like the US and Japan. This means more and better
jobs for Singaporeans.
In the last few months, the Malaysian media has portrayed
our FTAs as "Trojan Horses" that provide "backdoor"
entry for goods from our FTA partners to enter the ASEAN market,
through the ASEAN Free Trade Area or AFTA.
Our FTAs cannot be a "backdoor". Indeed, if it
were possible for other countries to use Singapore's FTAs
as a "backdoor" to enter the ASEAN market, then
Malaysia could use the same "backdoor" to enter
the markets of our FTA partners such as the US and Japan!
But the rules of origin of AFTA and our FTAs will not allow
this.
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