If our economy ever falters, that is the end of Singapore

Dear readers,

A colleague of mine showed me this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwGF8MV4nSo about parliamentary debates on ministerial salaries some years back.

LKY’s point then was that Singapore’s trade is three and a half times its GDP, higher than that of Hong Kong’s and much higher than those of Denmark’s, Switzerland’s and Finland’s. If we refer to data from the University of Pennsylvania’s (Upenn) Centre for International Comparison, Singapore’s trade as a share of GDP was already 369.5% in 1960. The PAP government took over in 1959 but obviously, the PAP couldn’t have boosted trade to 369.5% of GDP in just one year. What does this show? Trade has always been a big part of our economy right from the colonial times. We have been founded as an entrepot trade centre. It was Sir Stamford Raffles who gifted us with this perfect location for trade. We didn’t need million dollar ministers to steer trade to Singapore then, why would we need million dollar ministers to steer trade to Singapore now?

According to the Upenn data for 2009, the trade share of GDP for Denmark, Switzerland and Finland are 90.9%, 71.7% and 92.4%, hardly small either.

LKY’s next point was that Denmark, Switzerland and Finland are part of Europe. If they fail, they are still caught in a European situation. If our economy ever falters, that is the end of Singapore and its First World status and we will go back to Southeast Asian situation. The greatest catastrophe that ever befell Singapore was the Japanese Occupation. Everything came to a standstill. There was acute shortage of food and supplies. People resorted to eating rats. What worse faltering can happen to Singapore? Yet we bounced back. So don’t be taken in by LKY. If we ever falter, we will bounce back because fundamentally, ours is not a Southeast Asian situation. Ours is an East Asian situation. Without exception, East Asia has prospered.

We should also note that Europe didn’t go out of its way to bail out Greece and Ireland which were subjected to severe austerity measures. We should note too that during the Asian Financial crisis, the IMF also bailed out South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and other Asian nations.