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In order to try to understand the commercial ecosystem of Singapore, it seems to me that
there are actually three Singapores. The first Singapore is what we all know - it's a country
of about 5.5 million people, 714km2, a modern economic miracle if you like, the way it has
taken a place with no resources and developed into a modern and very wealthy economy. We're
familiar with this.
The second Singapore though is that group of Singaporean companies who have a borderless
approach to the world. So that could be the big industrial corporates like Keppel and
Sembcorp who dominate their fields. It could be the property developers that we see building
and operating hotels all over the world. And of course their sovereign wealth funds, major
sovereign wealth funds on a global scale, making strategic investments and supporting
industries right around the world. We're kind of familiar with that too.
But the third Singapore I think requires a bit of focus as well, and that is the concentration
in Singapore of the regional headquarters of global organisations. Probably something
like 4,000 multinationals run their Asia-Pacific business out of Singapore, making investment
decisions, making decisions about supply chains, about procurement of services, about manpower
and staffing and not only are they making major decisions about Asia but also making
major decisions about Australia there. So this is really part of the economic ecosystem
that we need to understand better.
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