Singapore Diary - Part III

 

Preparing for the Friday event

Since the time I have landed here, there has not been a single day when this small country has failed to amaze me. I mean even Delhi is more than twice the area of the size of this country. Here people pay almost ten times more than what I pay in India for owning a car. Imagine paying 50 lakhs for a Swift or 90 lakhs for Toyota Corolla!!! The weather is not at all pleasant, cost of living is high, single party system, caning is still prevalent as mode of punishment and what not, but still it is a favorite destination amongst businesses as well as tourists. Unfortunately, even though Indians contribute a lot to the Singaporean economy, corporates or policy makers are hardly betting on India which can be interpreted from the discussions we had or presentations that were shown.


Trying Chinese Lunch

 Just the other day, there was a discussion on Chinese culture and surprised to hear that it is not difficult to distinguish a Singaporean Chinese from China Chinese. It was an eye-opener to know that Indian and Chinese culture have similar elements. We had tryst with Chinese food and our effort to use chopsticks were marked with irony. I am not joking, and it is quite an effort to eat with chopsticks and it in a way proves that these folks are really hard working. It is another story that most of us went to food court to satiate their tummies. In the afternoon, we had quite a productive discussion at Research Management Institute at NUS where we got to learn about the mechanism being followed by different rating agencies around the world. The common aspect between rating agencies is that everyone uses around the same data source but come up with different rankings based on their evaluation mechanism.
 


Understanding Art and Culture

The sessions at NUS are slowly getting serious with talks by Industry experts, business houses and government agencies in Singapore. We got deep understanding on how Singapore is controlling its exchange rate against basket of currencies despite being a surplus economy. An industry talk session by CEO of CWT Limited was quite fruitful. We always thought that China is the place for cheap labor, but was quite interesting to note that Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia are much cheaper. Despite pay higher rise expected in these, they would still be cheaper than China. Also learnt about the efficient cargo clearing capability of Singapore where 80% of cargo is cleared in 8 minutes while 100% is done in 15 minutes!!!
 

Jurong port

The talk by Zafar Momin who is on board of MapleTree Trust was quite interactive with many counterviews with regard to strategy and implementation coming up. The discussion was mostly centered on real-life and he stressed on understanding rather than memorizing. He mentioned lot of interesting quotes one of which is, "If the going is too easy, may be you are scratching the surface". Explained in simple words that life is challenging and nothing comes easy. We also visited Jurong Port which is a privately managed port in Singapore primarily handling cement cargos. I was pretty excited for this as I have never been to any shipping facility before. We also had a visit to Ikea Factory and got insights into its marketing and sales strategy. The layout is designed in a very convenient way so as to make it easy for any customer and at the same time optimizes its operations cost. No wonder they sell the stuff cheap and most of us contributed to Ikea cash flow that day :).

Singapore Diary - Part II

Astonished

Our discussions next day were focused on the Singapore, how it progressed despite having minimal resources and its development as a major hub for transport. We were surprised with the story of turning itself into a major financial center since its Independence. Probably the single party system played a big role in this. There was a fascinating comparison between roving vs. stationary bandit wherein even if there is a bandit who does not change places, it will be to his benefit that locality grows as he will have more at his disposal for his adventures. Another interesting fact was that there is no multiplier effect in Singapore economy because if leakages in system - hard to believe this for this fast paced economy. One has to appreciate the development advancement and infrastructure in this small city of 710 sq. km where more than 20% land is reclaimed from sea. Not sure how much ecological impact will have on the environment and marine life. 
 
We had a small talk on the movement of global economy around China and it has taken a shift from the time when it was centered on Japan and US. One astonishing observation was the role China is playing in the development of East Asian countries and how it is benefitting from it. India it seems is being left out because of its foreign policy which is not focused on East Asia. For example, we are not utilizing our historical ties with Myanmar for increasing trade with mineral rich Myanmar while China is making significant inroads because of our lax policy.
 


Should we invest here?

Post lunch, we had a lecture on the Aviation industry by Prof Anthony Chin, Academic Director for EPGP immersion. He described how aviation industry is fueling economic growth and what are the new models developing. Like what has been implemented in Tiger Airlines where there are charges for every single feature which were earlier considered basics in airline industry. There was an interesting talk on the port development and it’s financing.
 
I think Singapore has done a commendable job in coming this far. In the words of first PM of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, "there was no secret; we had no choice but to take a chance and sail into rough waters.” There are many lessons to be learnt from Singapore development by other countries like political stability, quality of governance, high salaries to ministers, openness, high cost of rebellion, single party system. We might not agree with all, but this model is effectively working for them.


Lets find some rodents

To surrender or not?

Of course we had our fun moments during the day. Some of us roamed around appreciating the beauty of campus while some were busy shooting rodents. So far, every day is bringing something new about this small country along with interesting cuisine. One thing I got to know is that this country is all about food and people love eating all the time. I have not find so many food joints and restaurants in every nook and corner even in India.

Singapore Diary - Part 1

Start of Journey

Waiting for boarding pass

As soon as we got breather from Term II exams on 16th August, the focus shifted to the 2 weeks international immersion program in Singapore, one of the top ten financial centers of the world. The enthusiasm of the batch was there to see and it reminded me of my school/college trips. Even though I have had numerous trips to Americas and Europe, a trip to East Asian was a first to me like to many of us and probably first trip outside the country for few of us. We boarded the 12:45 AM flight to Singapore to begin our 2 weeks journey at NUS. Once at the Singapore airport, most of us bought some stuff at duty free shops to take care of essentials for next 2 weeks.

 

Singapore, we are here

As we stepped out of airport, I was reminded of the sticky weather of Chennai or the hot summers of Delhi. It was totally different from the pleasant weather of Bangalore I have been enjoying for last 5 months. Once we were at our hotel, most of us dozed off to catch the lost sleep of previous night, while the higher mortals went to take a dip at the swimming pool. In the evening, it was time to browse the happenings all around. We went to Bugis mall which was quite close to our hotel. The first day itself, I realized that it is going to be challenging here to satisfy my vegetarian appetite, though my friends with taste of meat loved the variety of delicacies on offer.

 

 

First Day at NUS

 

Next morning, we started our first day at sprawling green and splendid NUS campus. It is lush beautiful and very well maintained. At the university, we were welcomed by Professor Tilak from Department of Economics, NUS. With that we kick started our journey to understand ASEAN economies. The first lecture by Professor Shandre provided invaluable insights to the ASEAN countries, their distribution and economic progress. We also learnt about how ASEAN countries have progressed from 2000 to 2011 after the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and also the impact of recent financial crisis of 2008 on the progress in these countries.

 

While in India, we keep on hearing about China and its fast paced growth, and it was no exception here. We also learnt that though China can play strong role in US, European economies etc. but they do have big challenge of managing social unrest. This blip aside, China is in fact a major player in ASEAN economy and the impact of growth in China is clearly visible here. An interesting aspect to know was that growth in Australia is directly influenced by growth in China as it exports most of the minerals to China. After that we had discussion on how India fits into the scheme of things at ASEAN and the trade pact, AIFTA, which India has with ASEAN. The drivers for growth in both regions were elaborated as India is a supply driven economy while ASEAN is demand driven economy. As mentioned by Prof Shandre, India has to improve on its policy making, Infrastructure and Innovation in its vision for 2020 and to have big impact on this region.

 

Later we had superb business insights by Mr. Sameer Arora, founder and Fund Manager, Helios Capital Fund. The discussion was very candid and he had a story for every situation. One interesting question was on the depreciation of rupee if exchange rate changes from 50 to 60 for a dollar. Most of us were caught at wrong foot as all along we have been calculating dollar appreciation and not rupee depreciation. Another takeaway was that there are cyclical changes in the equity markets and we should not be afraid of it. The best time to invest is when the market is slow as then you can get larger returns in long run.

 

Post Lunch we had meeting with Prof Sekhar for the project on Smart Cities. This is part of our international group project being driven by ITU for United Nations. We discussed the plan and deliverables for the project. With that we ended our first day at NUS.