Singapore has adapted globalisation very positively, as Singapore has a pretty high economic development compared to its neighbouring countries; it has been ranked 26 out of all the countries in the world. The GDP per capita has been 20, 767 in $US, and it is the third Asian country in the Human development index, Japan and China leading. Singapore has continued to increase its human development since the early 1970’s, and continued to keep in progress even during 1985, the time of recession. This further provides us with the fact that globalisation has assisted Singapore’s continuously growing economy. Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) this year is likely to fall short of the official growth forecast of between 3% and 4%, Senior Minister of State for Trade Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Thursday, he blamed the weakness in the U.S., European and Japanese economies.
The Economic Committee released a report on the progress of the Singapore economy and this lists the new guidelines for the future growth, and it sets a very clear objective for Singapore: “By the 1990’s, we must aim to become a developed nation. We
must aspire to be as good as any developed country in terms of education and skills level, range and sophistication of our economic activities, capital invested per worker and productivity per worker. But Singapore must be developed economy with margin of advantage. WE must offer the opportunity for a higher rate of return, and a more conductive environment for business, than the OECD countries.”
The reliance on U.S has lead to some problems as Singaporean officials often stated that “A 1 percent drop in the United States economy had a 1.4 percent effect on Singapore's ”, and the fact that the economy heavily depends on exports. Singapore’s dependence on the foreign markets, has led to of the governments strategy having a flexible trading market.
With the independence of Singapore, she had to face the problem of surviving as an economy. Singapore's small population and dependence on external markets and suppliers has pushed Singapore toward economic openness, free trade, and free markets.
Therefore, one of Singapore’s earliest strategies was to be embraced by the world global market, and they did this by:
- Promoting foreign investment, this was designed to increase employment, technology, markets and managing expertise.
- Encouraging free trade, this would enable exports and imports, and efficient use of resources, as a result making Singapore internationally competitive.
These main strategies of Singapore have definitely worked, as in Global Ranking; they have been one of the best international trade levels. The statistic show that this was due to strategies that they implied the trade levels were only 5% in 1980, but in recent year, like 2000, they have tumbled up to 14%, an all time high. Moreover, due to Singapore strong strategies to create a conductive business environment, they have extremely world competitive prices and low corporate taxes. This encourages foreign investment, and these results in Singapore’s workforce being well-trained and educated. Mr Lee Kuan Yew (prime minister) had earlier noted that Singapore had "leap-frogged" in economic growth by bringing in multi-national corporations that sold their goods to markets in the developed world.
In 1991, the Strategic Economic Plan (SEP) was showed as an economic blueprint to guide Singapore's progress in the next 20 or 30 years. Under the plan, Singapore would be geared towards becoming a centre of high-tech manufacturing industries and an international business center. Envisioning their key goal, “to achieve the economic status of an advanced developed economy”.
The government hopes to establish a new growth path that will be less vulnerable to the external business cycle than the current export-led model but is unlikely to abandon efforts to establish Singapore as Southeast Asia's financial and high-tech center. They are among the eight strategic thrusts in the Strategic Economic Plan (SEP). Maintenance of Singapore's international competitiveness; enhancement of its human resources; expansion of teamwork among labour, business and the Government; building up of an international outlook in its firms and people; nurturing an innovation culture; and reducing economic vulnerability, which led to a recession just back in 1985. Overall,
globalistaion has had a quite positive effect on Singapore, a country that had poor resources and much untrained workforce, globalisation and the successful strategies have turned this over to a country with high level of trade and investment, with a literacy of 92%.
