Our Singapore managing director has seen a lot happen in
the tiny city-state; here he shares his thoughts on the direction
of the country in a world without its founding father, Lee Kuan
Yew.
Half a century ago,
Singapore was still a colony of the British Crown. It had a
busy port and a naval base for the Royal Navy, but otherwise it was
an island without any natural resources, not very different from
similar or larger cities in the region. The population was rather
poor, nearly as poor as in neighbouring, recently-independent
countries.
Today, 50 busy years onwards, the central business district of
Singapore is crowded with skyscrapers that rival neighbouring Hong
Kong and Shanghai. Singapore is a highly developed, trade-oriented
market economy that has been ranked as the most open in the world,
among the least corrupt, most pro-business, with low tax rates, and
the third highest per-capita GDP in the world in terms of
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).
