Economic Competitiveness In Singapore

1.0 Introduction

Singapore, as the world’s second-most competitive economy behind Switzerland, it become the most economic competitive economy in South East Asia without any doubt. The World Economic Forum ranks economies using these 12 standards, institutions, macroeconomic environment, infrastructure, financial market development, higher education and training, technological readiness, labor market efficiency, health and primary education, goods market efficiency, innovation, business sophistication, and market size (Holodny, 2014). Singapore owns world- class infrastructure, with excellent roads, ports and air transport facilities, and it did a good job in terms of goods and labour market efficiency and financial market development, it is

Singapore is trading with ASEAN, an association which is aim to accelerate the economic growth (Singapore FTAs, 2014), social progress and cultural development in the region and to promote regional peace and stability. Singapore is also the one of the first 6 members countries by the way. This community has several effects on Singapore, for example, expand market (Hawksford, 2014). In the past, Singapore businesses is stifled by the small local market, but when Singapore start trading with ASEAN, it achieve the access to a larger market with huge consumers base of over 600 million. While large companies have accommodated themselves quickly to the bigger market, small and middle enterprise have to plan their business structures for expansion which is exploring the alternatives on hand such as building subsidiaries, get license or mergers and acquisitions for quick expansion. At this moment, competitiveness in the Singapore will increase sharply for the small companies’

New innovation always play an important role in country’s economy. Innovation always bring advantages to companies, like improving product efficiency or improving product quality which will directly affect the competition between the same industry companies. Take iPhone for example, in 2010, iPhone 4 issued, this single product change the whole smart phone market, the touch screen phones are highly demand by people which represent people change their choice of Nokia style phones to iPhone. This time, phone industry did not be monopolised by Nokia any more, Windows phone, Samsung Galaxy series… many companies start rising and gain the profit from trend, competition in the phone market increasing sharply and countries like China benefit from the phone market competition, like Huawei, Xiaomi these companies make competition in China rise. The country’s single phone industry affect the whole country’s competitive increase in the end (Lozano, 2012). Thus, innovation can also be the cause to the increasingly competition, such as the innovation in Singapore food industry can finally contribute to the competitive in Singapore