AN ANALYSIS OF SINGAPORE MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES : A REVEALED COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE STUDY

Abstract

This study seeks to identify Singapore's comparative advantage in the manufacturing industries with the help of "revealed" comparative advantage indices. The objectives for this study are first, to identify Singapore's manufacturing industries comparative advantage among a broad category of industries; second, to identify within the broad category of industries, the individual industries with the highest comparative advantage and third, to analyse Singapore 's comparative advantage over time. Our results show that the Transport and Machinery equipment industry (SITC7) has the highest comparative advantage among the broad category of industries. Within the SITC7 category of industries, we found that electronics, office machines and electrical machineries are the industries with highest comparative advantage. In addition, our study shows that Singapore's comparative advantage in the 1990s is in skill and knowledge-intensive activities. This is in line with Bela Balassa "stages of comparative advantage" model. Finally, we suggest some factors that will enable Singapore to enhance its comparative advantage.