Blowin' In The Wind

Singapore GDP growth from 1961 to 2008

This chart shows how the Singapore gross domestic product has grown over the years --- from 7,246.57,246.5 million Singapore dollars (SGD) in 1961 to 233,524.5 million Singapore dollars (about $166,221.4 million) in 2008. It is based on records kept by the Singapore Department of Statistics, which calculates the GDP at 2000 market prices. See the original data here.

The Singapore economy has shrunk only five times in all these years:

• By 3.8% in 1964, when it fell from SGD8,521.7 million to SGD8,194.2 million (when Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew was the prime minister)
• By 1.4% in 1985, when it fell from SGD52,004.5 million in 1984 to SGD51,254 million (also under Lee Kuan Yew)
• By 1.4% in 1998, when it fell from SGD137,364.0 million in 1997 to SGD135,472.6 million (when Senior Minister Goh Chok was the prime minister)
• By 2.4% in 2001, when it fell from SGD159,840.4 million in 2000 to SGD156,045.2 million (also under Goh Chok Tong)
• By 2.1% in 2009 (under Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong). The official GDP figures will be announced on January 4.

The GDP crossed

• The SGD50,000 million mark in 1984, when it rose to SGD52,004.5 million
• The SGD100,000 million mark in 1994, when it rose to SGD108,756.3 million
• The SGD200,000 million mark in 2006, when it rose to SGD214,233.5 million.

Happy New Year in Singapore's flagging economy

The Singapore economy has shrunk for the first time in eight years, contracting 2.1 per cent in 2009. The economy grew 0.6 per cent in the third quarter only to end in worse shape than in 2008, when the gross domestic product rose merely 1.1 per cent.

This is only the fifth time the economy has shrunk, according to Statistics Singapore records going back to 1960.

The economy last shrank in 2001, when GDP fell 2.4 per cent, but it bounced back, growing 4.1 per cent the following year, when Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong was still prime minister. The other lean years were 1985, when GDP fell 1.5 per cent; 1998, when there was a 1.4 per cent drop; and 1964, when the economy shrank 3.8 per cent.

Will Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong mastermind another economic rebound? The official forecast is 3 to 5 per cent growth this year.

But the economy seems to be running out of steam, growing only 3.5 per cent in the fourth quarter after double-digit gains in the second and third quarters. The economy grew 21.7 per cent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter and 14.2 per cent in the third quarter compared with the second quarter.

That was how the economy ended up growing 0.6 per cent in the third quarter compared with the previous year. But a weak fourth quarter has pushed the economy back into the downward spiral that has plagued the rest of the year.

East Asia as a whole has been growing much faster than Singapore, according to the Asian Development Bank. The December issue of the Asia Development Monitor says:

The combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the 10 largest economies in emerging East Asia grew 5.0% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2009, well above growth rates in the previous three quarters.

That was well above Singapore's 0.6 per cent third quarter growth. China's phenomenal 8.9 per cent third quarter growth boosted East Asia as a whole.

But Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea also did better than Singapore, as this chart shows. It's taken from the Asia Development Monitor.

The five other nations are Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines. The green bar shows third quarter performance and the orange bar, first quarter. The only exception is Indonesia, where the orange bar indicates second quarter performance because that's when the economy bottomed out, says the report.

Singapore GDP shrinks 2.1% despite 4th quarter jump

The Singapore economy shrank 2.1 per cent in 2009 despite growing 3.5 per cent in the fourth quarter, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his New Year message today. The economy grew just 1.1 per cent in 2008.

Still, it's good news.

The economy is recovering and the government has been spot-on in its forecast that the gross domestic product would shrink by 2 to 2.5 per cent in 2009.

Now the government has to reduce unemployment, which has gone up to 5 per cent for the local population --- Singapore citizens and permanent residents.

The economy grew in the fourth quarter despite manufacturing output dropping by 8.2 per cent in November from the previous year. Manufacturing accounts for about a quarter of the economy.

Clearly, the Prime Minister could not wait to share the good news. The figures were scheduled to be released only on January 4.

This is not taken lightly.

Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam will remember how some Business Times journalists were prosecuted under the Official State Secrets Act for reporting on the government’s preliminary, or “flash”, GDP estimates back in the early 1990s when he was director of the economics department of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

But PM Lee, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and the whole government deserve congratulations for steering Singapore back to economic recovery.

PM Lee's predecessor, and now Senior Minister, Goh Chok Tong masterminded two economic recoveries --- from the Asian currency crisis in the late 1990s and the Sars epidemic in the early 2000s --- and now he has notched up one himself.

PM Lee said:

Our economy is growing again, and has recovered much of the ground since the recession began last year. Our fourth quarter growth is 3.5%, although for the whole year our growth is still negative, at -2.1%. Considering the anxious moments at the depth of the crisis, our subsequent recovery is something to take heart from.

He also had the good sense to acknowledge, even as the government gives more preference to Singaporeans, that Singapore has to remain an open-door economy for its own survival. He said:

Essential Pleasures: Homage to Hips

I have been reading Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, edited by Robert Pinksy. Readers will find plenty of old masterpieces here, such as Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold and Ulysses by Tennyson; but, as Pinsky says in his introduction: "I have also worked hard to come up with good poems that will be new to most readers."

I really liked Margaret Atwood's Variation on the Word Sleep, which I had never read before. Another poem which made a terrific impression on me was Allen Ginsberg's A Supermarket in California.

Originally uploaded by hyperscholar

Now here's a naughty poem that's mercifully brief and unabashedly physical.

Robert Pinsky: Samurai Song

I have been reading Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, edited by Robert Pinksy. Here is one of his own poems from the anthology: Samurai Song. I could not resist posting it here after seeing this video, where he recites the poem.

Here's the text.

Two poems about Singapore

One poem leads to another. Reading Reflecting on the Merlion: An Anthology of Poems edited by Edwin Thumboo and Yeow Kai Chai, and co-edited by Enoch Ng, Isa Kamari, and Seetha Lakshmi at the public library, I wanted to read more poems about Singapore.

And, as luck would have it, I came across another anthology, this one co-edited by Alvin Pang, whose poem, Merlign, I particularly liked among all the poems about the Merlion. This anthology is called Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia, edited by Alvin Pang and John Kinsella. I immediately liked two of the poems: Bumboat Cruise on the Singapore River by Miriam Wei Wei Lo and They Say by Kirpal Singh.

 
I couldn't borrow either of the books, so I photocopied these poems. And since I couldn't find these poems on the internet, here they are, so I can read them again.

Why are poems so hard to find on the Net? There should be a few by every poet so we may want to read more of their works.

Here's more about Kirpal Singh and Miriam Wei Wei Lo (here and here).

A book of poems about the Merlion

At the pubic library, I came across a book of poems entirely about the Merlion, the lion-headed, fish-tailed icon of Singapore. The book is called Reflecting on the Merlion: An Anthology of Poems. It's edited by Edwin Thumboo and Yeow Kai Chai, and co-edited by Enoch Ng, Isa Kamari, and Seetha Lakshmi. It was published by Singapore's National Arts Council this year.

The poem I liked best was Merlign, by Alvin Pang. I have no idea why it's called Merlign nor did I understand all the references. But I loved the first two verses and the last five or six. The whole poem can be read here. I will just take the liberty to quote the opening and the ending.

Singapore workers work longest hours: ILO report

Singapore workers work longest hours, according to this chart from the International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report Update 2009. Only workers in Iceland put in almost as many hours in 2008 and the first quarter of 2009.

Real wages also fell at the same time. Though nominal wages rose 4.2 per cent in 2008 according to the Ministry of Manpower, real wages dropped 1 per cent, according to the ILO report. It can be downloaded here.

Tharman: We want private investment, not tax hike

Singapore Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam acknowledges Singapore has an unemployment problem. That is why Singapore doesn't want to raise income taxes --- "certainly not corporate income taxes" --- because "our key objective should be to see private investment grow, as the basis for long-term growth", he tells the International Monetary Fund's Finance and Development magazine.

He emerges as the odd man out among the Asians interviewed in one respect. He says growth will continue to depend on exports, which is true for Singapore, while others see the need to transform their economies. They are Ajith Cabraal, governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka; Shuli Hu, a leading Chinese journalist; Yung Chul Park from Seoul National University; and Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the University of Chicago and economic adviser to the Prime Minister of India. Read the interview here.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged: About Jane Austen

Janeites will love A Truth Universally Acknowledged, a collection of essays by 33 famous writers and critics acknowledging the genius of Jane Austen.

Her admirers will have the pleasure of discovering their feelings shared by writers like Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, Somerset Maugham, CS Lewis, JB Priestley, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, David Lodge and critics like Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom. Kudos to the editor, Susannah Carson, who brought them together in this book.

Martin Amis

Martin Amis speaks for us all when he tries to pin down the appeal of Pride and Prejudice:

For example, why does the reader yearn with such helpless fervour for the marriage of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy?

Elizabeth, of course, is very attractive. To quote Amis,

Elizabeth Bennet is Jane Austen with added spirit, with subversive passion, and, above all else, with looks.