Rethinking Singapore Inc. and GLCS

Abstract

Introduction Singapore is a small open economy (SOE) with a growth and development policy led by state-owned enterprises (SOEs), later dubbed government-linked companies (GLCs). A rethink of the SOE-SOE strategy is compelled by both domestic and external factors impinging on the city-state's international competitiveness. With globalization, information and communication technology (ICT), and deregulation driving towards a knowledge-based economy (KBE), the developmental state, embodied as Singapore Inc., has to reinvent itself to cope with rapidly escalating competition for price-quality positioning, create new know-how, and establish first-mover advantage for markets. These external forces also have repercussions on the domestic socio political climate including concerns about the widening income gap between knowledge workers, with intellectual capital and creative skills, and old economy production workers ? in the context of an ageing workforce and the need to top up local with foreign talent. The quintessence of the successful developmental state, which engendered economic success in the old economy with political control and social discipline, is thus challenged by deregulation and competition in line with global liberalization. As the new globalized KBE is based on intellectual capital and privately owned enterprises (POE) imbued with creativity and innovation, how the SOE-SOE developmental state will potentially shape up into a SOE-POE entity will be examined in this article. The government acknowledged the necessary private sector drive when it enunciated in 1999 the policy to nurture technology entrepreneurs (technopreneurs). Whether its implicit belief that its GLCs can continue to steer the new KBE (after some restructuring and refocusing) is well grounded is left to be seen. The second section outlines some salient features of Singapore Inc. and GLCs followed by the third which seeks to establish the case for a rethink beginning with the restructuring of both Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and Temasek Holdings Ltd (THL) in 1999. The fourth section further traces the restructuring and reinvention of major GLCs to