Singapore’s national competitiveness in the long run will be determined again by its future creation, application, transfer, and management of knowledge.


The application of knowledge produces fundamental changes in the economy and society in three ways: improvement, exploitation, and innovation. In the classical economic growth model, land, labor, and capital are the three important inputs of productions. Now it is widely recognized that technological innovation must be the additional, even the most critical input for continuing development.


We had to skill up step by step. In the first 20 years, we concentrated on raising literacy and numeracy. English was taught to children of all ethnic groups.

Fluency in English enabled us to access science and technology. Our young people were able to upgrade their work from light manufacturing assembly plants to skill-intensive precision and process engineering, such as creating watch movements and refining oil, and now knowledge-based petrochemical and pharmaceutical industries.

English also provided our young with facility in banking and finance. Singapore today is growing to be the wealth management center of SEA.

Knowledge-based competition is a marathon, a race without end. We have to keep adding to our knowledge base.


In mechanical engineering, our ship repair yards evolved to build state of the art oil rigs. Today, our universities research in the life sciences, nanotechnology, and media animation.


Why did the dynamic toward a knowledge-based economy work in Singapore? Largely because we adopted a pragmatic approach, not a doctrinaire one. Guided by sheer practicality, Singapore preserved the legacy of the British colonial power as the foundation for an independent Singapore, namely “the rule of law, religious tolerance, and meritocracy” — in one word, good governance.


In development economics, all countries go through three stages and four phases of growth. The three stages of growth are (a) primary-agriculture, (b) secondary-manufacturing, and (c) tertiary-services. I now add a post-tertiary stage, (d) knowledge, which underpins all three stage.


There are basically three types of states, namely (a) the theocratic state, such as present-day Iran or the Vatican; (b) the ideological state, such as China, North Korea, and Cuba, and (c) the democratic state, exemplified by the US.


The Singapore Civil Service has generated the most competitive knowledge in the world in one particular area — public administration.

While the sine qua non of good government is incorruptibility and integrity, good administration is what delivers the public goods and services.


Ngiam again emphasizes the importance of an open society. Historically, he says, how Europe caught up with and overtook China and India, the two leading nations up to the 16th century, lies in the fact that “Europe, and later the US, were relatively more open and inclusive societies,” which encouraged greater freedom of thought.


African countries are blessed with abundant natural resources, including oil. Will this be enough to sustain your economies? I am afraid not. Knowledge and technology are required, not just for raw exploitation of resources, but to go upstream into the value chain.


Managing economic success is tough. Managing political success is even tougher.


In addition to political succession, the nurturing and deployment of Singapore elites has great import. Ngiam divides Singapore elites into 3 categories: political and administrative; professional and business; and social and community. Singapore needs more professional and business elites as they are creators of wealth, but the current system in Singapore deploys most of its elite in the public sector:

Is it any wonder, then, that we have a lopsided state with a strong, some would say dominant and even domineering public sector that is efficient at regulating but hopeless when it comes to creating wealth?

Deployment of talent is crucial for the survival of the state. My personal view is that the UK, once a great industrial state, no longer holds the pole position because most of its Oxbridge elite went into the City of London, where they manage but do not create wealth.


In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of hungry, able-bodied young men from China and India arrived on the shores of Nanyang, namely Malaya, Singapore, Java, and Sumatra. Hardly with a shirt on the back and little education, they toiled in the heat of the tropical sun. A few made good and became the legends of their time. My question is: Can these young men succeed today on sheer grit and native cunning?

The 21st century is a knowledge-based globalized world of competition. The question to ask is: What sort of education should today’s cohort of young men and women have to succeed in life? Should it be in the hard sciences or the liberal arts? Or music and dance? And so on.

My personal answer is to do a double E degree, that is, engineering and economics.


The greatest gift that teachers and mentors can give their students is the gift of freedom to think. Do not constrain their minds nor constrict their hearts. Remember that we are students and teachers at the same time. Asking question is harder than giving answers. When we think within the box, we demonstrate competence. When we think outside the box, we explore the unknown. It requires courage to do so.

I prefer Singapore to be an Athens rather than a Sparta. Freedom to speak, freedom to act, freedom of association — all are subsets of the freedom to think, the most precious freedom of all.


Knowledge, however, must embrace more than just science and technology. Knowledge is also about connections, connectivity, culture, and the arts. Manipulated or integrated creatively, knowledge provides the building blocks of sustainable growth.

The key is equal opportunity in education.


All this complacency evaporated in 1985 when Singapore suffered its first recession. What caused the rude shock? From the wisdom of hindsight, it is easy to see that we brought the recession upon ourselves. Wage increases far exceeded productivity gains.


Singapore’s GDP increases of the last 20 years were due largely to expansion rather than growth. Import of large numbers of foreign work permit holders enabled the economy to expand at GDP rates of 6-8%. Productivity stagnated at 1%. In some years, it was negative.

This is the Achilles’ heel of the Singapore success story. We expanded but did not grow. We scaled up but failed to skill up. Without skilling up, it is not possible to raise TFP.


Euphoria punctuated by shouts of Merdeka! (Freedom!) soon gave way to the daily grind of earning a living. On gaining self-government, the PAP’s first order of business was finding jobs for the unemployed in a crumbling city of slum housing and primitive sanitation.


How did we achieve full employment in the first decade of industrialization?

Largely because we adopted a pragmatic approach, not a doctrinate one. In the initial years, the EDB scoured the world for companies that would employ our young and old. There was no minimum wage legislation. Nor did we sniff at low-tech jobs. In fact, any job was welcome — high-tech, low-tech, or no-tech.


The MNCs have no sentiments. They will relocate from Singapore when we are no longer competitive. This is a fact of life that a global economy like Singapore has to accept and continue to adjust to. To not face reality is to allow structural unemployment to creep up on us. Should we slack and become complacent, we may yet retrogress to high unemployment rates — a disaster for a city-state like Singapore.


Economic development is a long-term process. Continental agrarian countries, like China and India, have taken millennia to evolve into the modern economies they are today. Peace and prosperity is the dream of every nation and race. Dynasties and empires carved out by force of arms do not endure. Neither do countries driven by doctrine and dogma. Not being a philosopher, my humble opinion is that common humanity and knowledge are the underpinnings of strong societies and economies.


We have to bear in mind that, as an international trading hub in oil and other commodities, we require vast holdings of foreign exchange reserves as backing to keep the Singapore dollar liquid and our currency rates stable. A stable currency serves as a strong force of value for international traders, including forex traders. So what is it that we have that others do not to sustain our position as a regional financial and trading hub?

In one word: Knowledge.


Starting off as a low-wage, labor-intensive, light-manufacturing production base (garments and wigs), it transitioned to become a precision and process engineering center (watch movements, optics, wafer fabs, refrigerator compressors, miniature ball-bearings, petroleum refining, petrochemicals, and pharmaceuticals). In mechanical engineering, our ship repair yards evolved to build state of the art oil rigs. Today, our universities research in the life sciences, nanotechnology, and media animation. In banking and finance, Singapore is rapidly becoming the region’s wealth management hub, serving not only the rich and famous, but also the rising middle class in neighboring countries.


The classical factors of production — land, labor, and capital — are no longer enough. Knowledge is the new frontier of competition. Knowledge goes beyond science and technology. Knowledge can be timely information. It can be mined from operating data. Market research is not merely a random walk in the park. It probes what a customer really wants in a product or service.

In our field of competition, Surbana Corporation integrates our knowledge and experience in urban planning, architectural design, engineering network, and, most critically, accurate reading of income levels of prospective buyers, so that commercially, we can cost and price to sell. We do not speculate.


When people think about American power in the world, they usually list the country’s forbidding arsenal of bombers, aircraft carriers, and troops. Yet America’s greatest asset these days might not be its guns, but its universities.


Social equity is not the same as equality of income. By equity we mean equality of opportunities. To me, the most important social equity is equal access to education.


Equal opportunities for education are the well-spring of Singapore’s social and economic success. No child in Singapore is denied an education because of family circumstances. Bursaries, scholarships, and even pocket money at schools, polytechnics, and universities, will be given for every child to assist them to reach their full potential.

Equal access to education is, to me, the bedrock of the social compact between a government and its people. As Singapore’s only resource is our people, the only way to compete is the acquisition of knowledge.


In 1959, the entrepot-trade dependent economy was stagnating. Singapore’s merchant class were essentially traders, adept and agile in trading rubber, sugar, and rice. They lacked knowledge about and the technology involved in manufacturing, transportation, or even managing five star hotels. In critical areas, the state had no choice but to co-invest with private entrepreneurs, providing risk capital and access to technology.


The Singapore government did not start off wanting to own business enterprises. But when the risk was or is too big for the pure private sector to bear, the government steps in, prepared to share the risk, partnering with private businessmen. In certain situations, we had no choice but to start industries and businesses on our own, such as the Singapore Technologies group of defense companies. Whether an enterprise is partly or fully owned by the Ministry of Finance, it leaves the management work to professional management and independent boards.


Starting off as building contractors, every young Chinese entrepreneur in the 1950s, dreamed of becoming a property developer — reaching the apex of business success when he garnered enough capital to qualify for a banking license.


In a famous speech in the 1960s, LKY described English school students as goldfish swimming in a ornamental bowl, and Chinese school students as piranhas in the wild.


We still recoil at the memory of having to share communal kitchens, bathrooms, and toilets. When we moved from unsewered kampongs to HDB flats with running water, flush toilets, and electric bulbs, it was like moving to paradise.


It is all these and more. To me, being First World is a state of mind. We have to be a society ruled by reason, driven by passion.


Global competition is now knowledge-based. Capacity can be increased simply by injecting capital to build mega power stations, giant dams, and state of the art industrial parks.

Raising capacity is another ball game. The capability of a population can be raised only through education and training. And education has long gestation periods.


In the early years of the imperial examination system, scholar candidates were asked practical questions.

In later years, candidates were tested on their ability to compose poetry, and were required to quote precedents from the Analects of Confucius to justify their answers. Subject to learning by rote, once-bright, -robust minds were emasculated into absolute obedience to the emperor.


We knew that the only way to bring about political stability was rapid economic development. Young EDB officers like myself were tasked to identify and promote industries and businesses that could create jobs for our young school graduates.


These early labor-intensive industries, though no longer competitive in Singapore today, played a key strategic role. Rising employment rapidly reduced the political temperature. A conducive political climate attracted capital-intensive industries with long gestation periods.


Singapore built on its strategic geographical position to become a leading logistics, air, sea, and oil refining hub, and will soon be a media and infocom hub. All these would not have been possible without a political stability and good governance. Good governance does not come about by chance. Political stability and good governance attracted the world’s leading commercial banks to our shores.


Public administration decisions are typically not of epic scale. In practice, most decisions are quite ordinary, even pedestrian. Cost-benefit analysis may be the only tool one needs.


Thus by freeing up the economy, we were able to import raw materials, components, and semi-finished products from the cheapest sources in the world. Our SMEs felt betrayed. The EDB had only recently urged them, with pioneer tax incentives, to set up light manufacturing industries on the promise of a Malaysian common market.


In contrast, farming in countries such as the US, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, and now the Punjab, the richest state in India, is commercialized. Such large-scale farms have access to private capital. With economies of scale in production, these commercial farms sell directly to world markets. They pose a formidable to challenge to traditional farmers in China, India, and Thailand. What should be the response of Asian countries?


For obvious political reasons, no government in developing countries is willing to open their agricultural markets to cheaper imports. That would be committing political suicide.


In my view, the greatest impediment is cultural. Through the millennia, peasant farmers have struggled to own their little patch of land. The land is not only their livelihood, it is also their way of life. Fiercely independent, they are happy eking out a living from the farm they own.

Without economies of scale, peasant farmers and their families survive at subsistence levels. To progress, one-hectare farms have to be consolidated into thousand-hectare farms.

How do we go about consolidating tiny, individually owned farms into large-scale enterprises? The challenge is to persuade the individual farmer to give up direct ownership of his precious plot of land.

The worst possible way is to expropriate the land to form communes. The sense of ownership, of belonging, must remain. One way of retaining the sense of ownership is through corporatization.


Only when the primary farming sector produces an economic surplus will there be demand for manufactured goods. In turn, surpluses from the secondary manufacturing sector will generate demand for the tertiary services of the teacher, physician, and entertainer.


I asked the president what type of company Boeing was. I expected him to say that Boeing was an aircraft manufacturing company. Instead he described Boeing as an aviation marketing company.

He explained that Boeing constantly monitors and evaluates the growth of air traffic on domestic, regional, and intercontinental routes. Analysis of the data collected enables Boeing to forecast the range and optimal capacity of new aircraft that will be in demand in the various market sectors. The Boeing 707 aircraft series is a classic example of how diligent data collection and rigorous evaluation enabled the company to design a winner.


Knowledge derived from actual experience is often the most useful and valuable.


The German project manager thanked me profusely. I asked him, “Are you thanking me for the handsome fee?” He shook his head vigorously and said, “No!” He thanked me instead for the operating data they had collected. The rates of fuel injection for burning wet rubbish in a humid climate would enable them to design more efficient incinerator plants for other tropical cities. The operating data from the new Singapore plant gave them a leg up over their competitors.


Japan has to import almost all her energy needs. Yet, she is able to produce some of the finest steel in the world, making the oil tankers and gas vessels that bring crude oil and natural gas to feed the furnaces that make the steel.


The underpinning of the social, economic, and political progress made by all three societies is their reverence and respect for education. The poorest of families will scrimp and stint to send their children to school. Education is the foundation of knowledge.


Each ASEAN country, then, protected its own markets tightly. The irony was that these same countries expected to enter the markets of the other countries freely.


The first point to note about knowledge is that expertise and experience resides in the individual. Technology is embedded in machinery and plants. More important is the man who drives the machine, not the machine that drives the man. Start-ups driven by the owner-entrepreneur are more likely to succeed than start-ups managed by professional managers.

The CEO and owner of a leading Japanese machine tool company once told me, angrily, that post-war Japan was rebuilt by entrepreneurs like himself, Honda, Matshushita, and Morita, and definitely not by the Todai elite.


Professor Shih Choon Fong, President of NUS, has a more engaging icon, that of the Atlantic salmon that returns year after year to its home waters to spawn, and nurture its young before heading out for the deep blue waters of the ocean to grow and mature, and return each year without fail to its home waters to start a new cycle for a new generation.


He told me that, on paper, the planning regulations were identical, as both were derived from the original British legislation, as both has been British colonies.

In practice, there’s a world of difference. In HK, when you submit a development proposal that does not fit in exactly with the regulations, the planner will engage with the entrepreneur to see how the proposal can be accommodated. According to Mr. Kuok, the mindset of the HK bureaucrat is to say “yes.” In Singapore, when the circle does not fall exactly within the square, it is rejected out of hand. The mindset is to say “no.”


In the mid-1980s, conservation zeal was at its height. Heritage was the buzzword of the day.


The ugly duckling has since been transformed into the six-star Fullerton Hotel.


Without gold, oil, or other natural resources, budget surpluses and CPF savings were the only sources for accumulating reserves. The fundamental role of reserves is to back up our currency. A stable and convertible Singapore dollar is our lifeline to international trade, upon which our very survival depends.


Henceforth, the MOF’s mission as guardian of the national budget will be more challenging. For instance, before we can decide on how to allocate the research budget, we need to know the knowledge domains Singapore has a more than even chance to compete in. Is it in biotech, nano-engineering, solar energy, or any of the new frontiers in science and technology that emerge from fertile minds every day?

Spending on R&D in my view is too narrow a focus as a growth strategy. In any case, we simply do not have the breadth and depth of talent we need to compete successfully with the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Russians, and, in the near future, the Chinese and the Indians.

***Our team of technicians and engineers work arduously to keep our aircraft flying. SIA aircraft are in the air more hours than our competitors, spreading the cost of depreciation over more revenue miles, helping to buttress profits.


As an earlier-era permanent secretary, I could afford to make mistakes — but only on the back of used envelopes. Today, it seems to me that consultants are called in at the drop of a hat.


The CPF could have cruised along on autopilot if the laws of classical economics had not changed.


Without a large population base and depth of talent, the advised us to first raise our technological competence before we embarked on cutting edge research on the frontiers of science. He told us to expand our science and engineering faculties in the universities. NTU was established as a result.


He described the process of selecting the top 300 cadres who govern China. A cadre begins his career at the grassroots village level. His work performance is rated by his immediate superior. His character is assessed by his fellow villagers, polled for their opinion by someone sent incognito from the central personnel department.

Character flaws are identified early. Even then, some corrupt high-ranking cadres slip through. By and large, I think, the top ranks of the Chinese leadership are not only competent but relatively selfless.


Petty corruption abounded. Taxi licenses could be bought from middleman for $10K apiece. Secret societies thrived, extorting protection money from almost everyone. Policeman could not be depended upon to enforce the law.


Lest my younger colleagues in the civil service become too elitist, I will point out that smooth and fair execution of the very policies that one has helped draft is often more critical than the policies themselves. Policies by themselves are abstract. Manifesting the policies out in the real world requires blood, sweat, and tears.


One has to possess a tough mindset to practice development economics in emergent countries. Accept reality as it is — not what you wish it to be. When you do not like what you see, change the reality.


Some Singaporeans have climbed to the top ranks of international companies. Yet I detect some angst among our elite. It worries me that, each year, some 1,000 of our best and brightest leave our shores — to be replaced by Chinese and Indian talents who depart from their own countries, perhaps for the same reasons our young leave Singapore.


While it was easy to pass at Harvard, it was exceedingly tough to excel. To excel, “we have to beat the best of the best.”


The first is to be found in Plato’s Republic. In the Republic, young male children at the age of 12 are taken away from their parents, schooled, nurtured, and trained by the state. By itself, such as system is nothing unique. What is extraordinary is that each cohort chooses its own candidate leaders to progress to the next rung in the hierarchy. Finally, the philosopher king is chosen by his peers to lead the state. He is the primus inter pares, the first among equals.


No amount of post-doctoral training can make up for the lack of passion. And no amount of sheer competence can trigger the spark of brilliance.

The Singapore elites of the 21st century have to sweat it out themselves. It is futile to acquire gourmet tastes when you cannot fry an omelet. You, the elites of today, are not starting off from ground zero. 50 years of rational science-based education have prepared you well for global competition. But you need to drive the process yourself. Singapore has no choice but to choose the hard option, not the soft.


Bureaucrats today are more about maintaining the economy than taking risks to develop the next big thing to foster growth.

In his candid manner, Mr. Ngiam suggests that today’s civil servants are “in the maintenance mode.”


Asked to define what exactly is that “certain cut” of top officials of his generation. Mr. Ngiam says: “We had a sense of urgency. That’s the difference. I think now times are more stable, so they can take their time to plan this and plan that. But we had no time. Unemployment was 10 percent plus. Housing was crummy. We simply had to create a new reality.”

He believes that this sense of urgency should be re-inculcated in the modern civil servant. Singapore, he says, cannot afford to stop moving — and moving fast.


You may consider yourself a Norman Mailer, but you can never, ever, throw a tantrum. If you lose your cool, there will be another eager beaver rushing in to take your place on the news desk.


At the risk of offending some of my best friends in journalism, opinion pieces, in my opinion, are not quite journalism. I prefer straight reporting.

Straight reporting allows the facts to stand on their own. Straight reporting allows the story to tell its tale. There is no attempt by the sub-editor to juxtapose words and pictures to create misleading impressions. The straight reporter does not crusade. He has no personal agenda.


MM once told me that to govern, you must have your hands on 3 levers of power, namely the treasury, the army, and the voice. When you manage the economy well, the treasury would be full and abundant. When you train the army well, you need not fear your foes. When you want to win the hearts and minds of the people, you need to have a free press.


As reporters, our craft is writing. We are wordsmiths. To keep in top form, a writer has to exercise his vocabulary and command of language in the same way a single handicapper in golf hits 200 balls on the practice range every day. Dr. Goh taught me how to exercise my vocabulary. He told me to pick a word, any word, and write out its five synonyms. Turn it over, and write out its five antonyms. Start with hot and cold.


The role, the value added, of the journalist is to make a complex subject or a profound topic simple to grasp. If the average reader with an O level cannot fully understand what you want to say to him, it is your failure, not his ignorance.


If you do not think straight, you cannot write straight. If you yourself cannot understand a topic well, how can you have the temerity to write an opinion piece on it?


Professional colleagues in the medical, legal, accounting, and architectural services of Singapore have to be registered to practice their professions. Registration gives the public some assurance that they have a threshold level of competency to practice their disciplines, dealing as they do, with “life and death” responsibilities. Their exclusive right carries with it personal liability. They can be sued personally for negligence and deregistered for serious breaches.


The central economic challenge for Singapore is raising productivity. At its core, productivity is a mix of efficiency and effectiveness. The key ministry in the present phase of our economic growth is the Ministry of Education, not the EDB or the Ministry of Finance.


An indifference curve plots your choice of having, from two baskets, either more oranges and fewer apples, or more apples and fewer oranges, until you reach the point that you are indifferent to both.


Finally, a rail-based transit system provides a strong physical backbone for integration of all transport modes, whether private cars, taxis, buses, vans, or lorries.


For instance, can we apply cost-benefit analysis in the great marriage debate of the 1980s to produce the desired outcome of more intellectually compatible marriages and birth of intelligent babies? It was a piece of social engineering that did not succeed. My guess is that it failed because there was too much cost-benefit analysis. The government targeted the purse more than the heart. Winning hearts is not for cost-benefit analysis.


In the early days, a $1M project proposal would be put through the meat grinder by the MOF, using paper and pencil. In fact, Dr. Goh told us, the young finance “aristocrats,” that we should simply reject out of hand any and every spending proposal received on the first time. Then, if the supplicant ministry persisted, and only on the third try, were we to give them half of what they wanted.

These days, any project proposal less than $100M is not considered respectable. Worse, we need to have supercomputers to crunch the numbers. But I just wonder, are decisions made in the bowels of supercomputers any sounder than those made the old fashioned way, with pen and pencil on the back of used envelopes? If our basic thinking is unsound, no supercomputer can help us.


To me, population is the most pressing social, economic, and political policy issue.


In fact, Dr. Goh does not consider Keynes’ work as a “General Theory.” He thinks that, at best, it is a specific policy to overcome a general lack of consumer confidence.


My only regret is that honest savers will, as in all of history, carry the main burden of ineptitude by banks and other institutions.


Traditionally, educated middle-class parents want their children to study medicine, law, engineering, or accounting, simply because these disciplines allow those qualified to practice their professions, which provide a comfortable living in most societies. But can you become spectacularly rich? To be truly rich, you will have to compete in the world of business in free enterprise economies, such as Singapores’s.


Deductive reasoning is thinking from the general to the particular, from the outside in.

Inductive reasoning is thinking from the particular to the general, from the inside out.


I am told that when a Jewish boy returns from home each day, his mother asks, “Son, how many questions did you ask your teacher today?” In contrast, a Chinese mother asks, “Son, what did you learn from your teacher today?”


A learning society is one where all are both teachers and students. We learn from one another. It is a mutually reinforcing, two-way process. It is more than interactive.


I went home depressed. Over the years I have thought about this gulf between competence and creativity. We are managerial but not entrepreneurial. I have come to the conclusion that we have taught our young to think. But only within the box. Singaporeans excel in deductive thinking.


When I leave command of the fleet, I will not look back over my shoulders nor will I spit on the deck.


In my opinion, a control freak is the worst type of CEO an organization can saddle itself with. Because he is insecure, he works himself into a frenzy delving in minutiae, missing the wood for the trees. What is even more insidious is that he makes sure no subordinate can surpass him. Because his glass ceiling is low, the organization can never grow. He abuses the weaknesses of his management to divide and rule rather than leverage on their strengths.


Asking questions is harder than giving answers. When we think within the box, we demonstrate competence. When we think outside the box, we explore the unknown. It requires courage to do so.


To me, the story of Adam and Eve is about the freedom to think. Though God warned Adam and Eve against eating the fruits of the tree of knowledge, he did not forbid them.

When they did, they found themselves naked, and hid from God. They were ashamed. They endured a lifetime of suffering. They were accountable for their own actions. Accountability is the other side of the coin of freedom.


I will now dissect this Chinese episode from the viewpoint of a Singapore administrator. At the outset, I would state that, in principle, the larger interest of the community must take precedence over the rights of the individual. As lawyers, you may be aghast at such a stand. Though it is said that a man’s home is his castle, his right to privacy, though sacrosanct, is not sacred.


When everyman pursues his own interest, profits are maximized, and the wealth of the nation grows. The French call this approach laissez faire.

Yet when we think more deeply about it, the first part of his statement that “everyman pursues his own best interest” is a statement of belief, not fact. Foley is right in this sense that economics plays a theological role. Milton Friedman said that in economic theory, the freedom to choose is an absolute right. When pressed, Friedman affirmed that this absolute right to choose includes the right to consume drugs. Without free choice, markets will not function effectively as individuals are unable to pursue their own best interest. Purist economists are therefore against any form of state intervention in the functioning of the economy.

As a former practicing administrator, I think the second part of the equation is just as important. The question to ask is: Does freedom for the individual to pursue his own best interest lead to a socially beneficial outcome? If not, the invisible hand, the article of faith of classical and neoclassical economists, will have led us down the wrong path.


Majorities and minorities have to respect one another’s religious beliefs. As race, language, and religion are matters of the heart and emotion, I’m glad that our state had laid down the ground rules for daily conduct. Political stability is the sine qua non of development and growth. Without peace and harmony, societies disintegrate.


We should not look at the problem in an abstract way. Thinking is important, but so is acting. Last time, we had to do everything ourselves so we learned very fast. Now, the civil servants can write very good intellectual reports, but they have to get consultants to do the work.


In the past, the relationship between ministers and permanent secretaries were like that between the chairman and the CEO in a corporation. The minister set the direction of the policies and the permanent secretary executed them. However, nowadays, ministers are becoming more like CEOs.


Since it was long-term employment then, the CPF system adopted the model of the employer and the employee each paying a certain percentage, but the employment market has changed, so the CPF system also presents a structural problem. “The MOM should study the changes to the employment model. Nowadays, everyone is his or her own boss, everyone is either a consultant or a contract worker.”


So, when we talk about immigration in Singapore, we should not go for the number game. We have to go for quality. When we allow people into Singapore, we must make sure that the average level of education is higher than our average. It must add to the quality of our population, not just its numbers. That means a selective immigration policy.


As a former president of Matsushita or Japan said to me, “it’s better to have a high plateau of people with a high average level of education than a few high peaks.” In Japan, the aim was to increase the average level of education to senior high, which is equivalent to our A levels.


Today, migration is driven by economics. The best and brightest move around the world, seeking higher paying jobs. As they are highly mobile, we risk having them use us as a stepping-stone.


He said the secret of success in business in his part of the world is perception, perception, and perception. He brought home to me in a vivid way the importance of being bi-cultural, even tri-cultural, in engaging with the world. The DBS, the OCBC, and the UOB will need to bear this in mind when they compete in the arena of wealth management banking.


I was there in my capacity as chairman of the DBS, and probably 120 other guests, such as investment bankers, accountants, lawyers, brokers, advertising agents, and other consultants — all highly qualified professionals, all hoping to be of service to this one entrepreneurial startup company.

I went home thoroughly depressed that night, wondering why there was such a paucity of wealth creators and a surfeit of wealth managers.


Unlike Singapore, our competitors Taiwan and South Korea followed a different track. Their governments supported their own companies all the way, protecting their indigenous companies from foreign competition. More critically, they supported them in the acquisition of technology.


However talented and able our foreign CEOs, they can never be totally committed to Singapore, their hearts are with the country of their birth. As such, we can hire them only for their technical skills, to be our CFOs, CTOs, and so on. They should never in the driver’s seat. For better or for worse, Singaporeans have to run their own businesses. Those who cannot should not be in the business.


Being bankers, we looked up the figures and found that even if all 5 banks merged to become one, this one Singapore bank would not rank in the first 100 of world banking.


Land reform is a potent slogan often used by insurgents to outs incumbent governments. Landless peasants and slum dwellers readily rally around populist calls to dispossess the ruling landowners of their vast landholdings for redistribution. Yet time and again, land reform has left peasants worse off.