SINGAPORE : COPING WITH AN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC DEPRESSION

Abstract

The two most important objectives that every economies will strive to achieve are economic prosperity and economic security. Singapore, a city-state located in the Asia Pacific region, has in the last two decades or so achieved substantial development and growth via its open and export-oriented programmes. In the recent years, we have seen a growing concern with issues of economic security in the Singapore economy. Basically, this is because it has already achieved a high level of prosperity; more importantly, it has been made highly externally dependent and hence vulnerable as a result of its development strategies. This is evinced in Chapter Two. Given its location, in one of the most volatile regions of the world, Chapter Three probes into possible scenarios of a world depression by taking the past experiences as a reference. Multi-faceted problems of varying severity would be faced by Singapore in a depression if it comes. And how Singapore can cope with it is investigated in Chapter Four. It is thought that Singapore can ride out a depression if appropriate preparations were made and the overall economy is flexible enough to adapt to the changes in the world economy. It is hoped that this study may provide an insight into the nature of the Singapore economy and how it can cope with depression of varying intensity ranging from minor recession to a full-blown world depression.