(2) SECURING OUR FUTURE

Globalisation is Working to Singapore’s Advantage

We are looking ahead to the next five to 10 years for Singapore. Our prospects have never been better. The key reason is globalisation. Capital, enterprise and talent are flowing to countries where government can be trusted, where the workforce is well-educated and skilled, and where the quality of life is high. These are Singapore’s advantages. They explain why globalisation is working in Singapore’s favour.

We are also well-placed at the heart of a globalising Asia. China and India are the big stories, but opportunities are also opening up across Asia, from the Middle East to Northeast Asia. Competition from China and India has galvanised ASEAN to accelerate integration and forge a collaborative ASEAN Community by 2015.

Businesses large and small, home grown and foreign, are taking advantage of Singapore’s strengths, and using Singapore to ride the next wave of Asian growth.

The World is Coming to Singapore

We are not just getting more large investments, but more ‘first-of-its-kind’ investments. Take for instance, the chip used in the latest PlayStation3 and Xbox. A French semiconductor company, Soitec, is investing $700 million to set up in Singapore its first offshore facility to make the wafer for this chip. It is high precision, high technology. The wafers involve alternating layers of silicon and insulator, unlike conventional wafers which use silicon throughout. Soitec is coming here because its technology has to be well-protected, and we are the only country in Asia that they trust well enough to set up their first manufacturing campus outside of France.

Soitec is like many other global companies which have come here because they know their investments will be protected, and we have the pool of talent and skills for sophisticated manufacturing. Like Sumitomo, which expanded its $500 million complex in Singapore only last year to make the special kind of plastic used in LCD screens and dentures. These are big votes of confidence by global investors.

But it is not just MNCs that we are drawing here. We are also attracting a whole new category of small and mid-sized global players. Take Bob Chandran, for example, who came from the US. He had listened to PM talk on TV about Singapore being a place with ‘Asian values but Western conveniences’. He explored further, and eventually decided to move his family and his marine fuel company, Chem-oil, from the US to Singapore. In fact he has now taken up Singapore citizenship. Chem-oil is today listed on the SGX. Bob has just announced a major investment in a new fuel terminal on Jurong Island.

Johan M Karlstedt relocated from Finland to the US for several years, before deciding to set up home in Singapore - both for his company and his family. The company that he founded, QXSystems, creates virtual offices for businesses. As he puts it, with the Internet, it does not matter if you are in a small country. QXSystems now owns five companies around the world, and is headquartered in Singapore. Johan, himself, doesn’t work from an office; he is based at home. I asked him what that means, and he said that he actually sits and works daily, for hours, in many places around Singapore. Thanks to widespread WiFi, he can interact with anyone around the world from any spot in Singapore he chooses, for the cost of almost nothing.

Bob Chandran, Johan Karlstedt and the many others like them are here because we are a compelling home for enterprise and for families.

Singaporeans are Going Out to the World

Not only is the world coming to Singapore, Singaporeans are seizing opportunities abroad. Globalisation is working to the advantage of Singapore companies.

Food Empire, based in Geylang, owns MacCoffee, which has become immensely popular in Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Bahrain, Iran and Turkey. Its advertising slogan in Ukraine reads: “Every other Ukrainian drinks MacCoffee.” In fact, even the advertisement won the most prestigious prize in the Ukrainian advertising industry last year.

Rotary Engineering is another example. It was founded by Chia Kim Piow in the 1970s. He was like many others at the time who did not have an education beyond secondary four — no diploma, let alone a degree. Everything was learnt on the job. Rotary began handling electrical installations and sub-contracting for the big oil refineries. It now builds them. Today, Rotary is presently one of Asia’s leading engineering companies in oil and gas infrastructure. It is active in China and India, and is moving into the Middle Eastern market with Saudi Arabian partners.

It is not just the larger Singapore players that are going abroad. We have many individual Singaporeans taking their chances and making their presence felt in global markets. They are in demand all over Asia, as trusted managers and engineers, and increasingly, too, as creative professionals. Like our Singapore chefs. Justin Quek is amongst our best known, having won several awards while he was here, at Les Amis. He is now based in Taipei where he is running his own restaurant, which is already regarded as serving the finest French cuisine in the city.

Jek Tan, who trained at SHATEC, became Executive Chef at the Shangri-la in Dalian a year ago. I had met him there, and he mailed me last week to say that he had invited over three fellow Singaporean chefs to host a Singapore Food Festival over the last two months. The Chinese were wowed by the menu. Among the compliments he received, was one about the beef rendang. Unfortunately, in Chinese, ‘rendang’ translates into “people’s egg”. Some of his customers told him they were glad it tasted better than it sounded.

This is what globalisation is about, and why it is working for Singapore. Companies and enterprising individuals from around the world coming to Singapore, using Singapore to reach out to other parts of the world, and creating jobs for Singaporeans; and Singapore companies and talents going out to the world to compete and seize opportunities. It is why the outlook for Singapore is bright.