Singapore is a country located on the largest island in an archipelago consisting of 54 islets. Half of the island is occupied by urban areas. Part of their lands are low and swampy. It has a tropical climate domain with high humidity.
According to Localbusinessexplorer.com, the ethnic composition is multiracial, with 76% of Chinese origin; 15% Malaysian, 6% Indian and others.
It has an excellent geographical position, being a point of convergence for regional trade and the center of trade routes between the Pacific Ocean, Africa and Europe.
Its population has an excellent standard of living, with very low birth rates, infant mortality and illiteracy.
The economy is based on the high port movement, specialized in containers, financial concentration, tourism, high technology industry (true Silicon Valley) and oil refining.
Decisive factors for Singapore’s development
The growth in Singapore, in the period 1965-1984, shows the following: the input represented by capital was the element that competed most favorably, and the input relative to labor also had a positive effect, but the total productivity of the factors contributed negligibly.
There has been a substantial improvement in the education of workers, with the mandatory use of English in schools and the expansion of vocational training. Immigration was drastically limited to avoid the concentration of low-wage activities and to favor Singaporean citizens. Illegal immigration has been severely suppressed.
The decisive factors that attracted investments to Singapore, especially to the industry in the first stage, were: favorable environment for business, including cheap labor ; social tranquility, after the repression and dismantling of independent unions in the early 1960s; educated workforce, largely mastering the English language; social and environmental legislation favorable to business; excellent transport and communications infrastructure ; supply of fully equipped industrial land, including the possibility of having factories fully built by the government; advantageous inflation differential; stable fiscal policy and political stability.
Singapore has gradually shifted from traditional services. (regional trade) for industry (in particular, assembly of electronic products), then for advanced services ( financial services outside the country, communications, business services ). It went from a low-skilled assembly industry to advanced industrial products and processes, including R&D and manufacturing of microelectronic blades, and from an economy controlled by maritime trade and oil refining to a broadly diversified industrial structure that includes machinery, electronics, equipment and transport, production-related services and international finance.
The strong state is still an important characteristic of the city-state, promoting an authoritarian policy and the control of information, the state was also the major driver of economic growth by investing in infrastructure and providing a favorable environment for the arrival of foreign capital.
Singapore’s per capita income currently exceeds the European Union average. The city-state functions without major problems in a fully planned metropolitan system. The island is the first country in the world to be connected by optical fiber in its entire length and should also become the first country to get rid of smoking and drugs. The city is clean, as the act of throwing garbage on the streets is punished with heavy fines and community work carried out in green uniforms and exposed in the media. And there is relatively peaceful coexistence with the surrounding Muslim world, although the entire population continues to be organized into an armed militia.
The industry with high added value is part of the government’s strategy to increase sales, such as the naval, petrochemical, electronics and semiconductor sectors used in integrated circuit, in computer chips . The country has also transformed itself into a powerful global financial system, by embracing globalization and attracting heavy international investment.
