What's next?

I've been having a lot of thoughts lately when I was in Thailand.

Looking at the development in Thailand and how the economy works, it makes me think a lot about my own country, Singapore.

I'll try to pen my thoughts about the development of my country, although its not as fresh as what it was in my head then.

Singapore's economic success is due to its ability to take case studies of other developed countries, list out the direction taken, problems faced, solution taken and the outcome of the solutions.

By identifying the direction to take, the leaders see whether this strategy is suitable for Singapore. Surely, no one will push for Singapore to move into agriculture, unless it is high-tech. Even so, no one will make it the general direction of Singapore.

Having said that Singapore's success is largely due to evaluating case studies, nothing will be possible without the power to implement it. The government in Singapore has been in power since the start of Singapore's independence. This political stability is assuring to investors to know that the strength of the current government is strong. This assurance should not be underestimated as the current government is pro-economic growth, which is vital towards businesses. Yet, it should not be over-estimated and bragged about, because many other countries such as Hong Kong also provide every good business environment.

Singapore's economic direction, in my opinion, seems to follow a 10 year life-span. Since independence, the pattern seem a little like this, I know it seems like secondary 4 social studies.

1965 - 1975 : labour intensive industries
1975 - 1985 : blend of labour and capital intensive industries
1985 -1995 : capital intensive industries
1995 - 2005 : knowledge intensive industries
2005 - ???? : knowledge intensive and service industries

Having seeing this timeline, its also important to note that just because one type of industries exist in one time does not mean that it does not exist in another. We still see cobblers and tailor shops these days, but their numbers are dwindling. This time line just represents the focus placed by the government on certain industries. Some industries just fade away like the sunset.

The movement towards service oriented industries is most evidently seen in the decision to have 2 Intergrated Resorts(IR) in Singapore. These 2 integrated resorts are expect to be completed by the 2nd quarter of 2010. This also implies 2010 will be an exciting year for the Singapore economy, especially the property sector. Much speculation has been place on companies such as Genting, which is reponsible for one of the IRs in Singapore.

But the question which bugs me most is "what's next?". We have been learning and doing case studies of other countries, and how great nations come to be and problems faced. Issues such as declining population and immigration has been based on research and academic studies. Even fears of gambling addictions due to the coming IRs has lead to groups to research and curb gambling in Singapore when the IRs are complete.

Singapore may not be in the fore front of engineering development such like Japan and Germany, but she has grown into a developed nation. As we look ahead into the future, a very interesting question is, "what's next?".
Are there still any case studies for us to learn from? Or are we going to be our own case study?