<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Why local entrepreneurs matter, says economics don
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->IT HAS been suggested that Singapore does not need local entrepreneurs and should rely on foreign multinational companies.
This is a viewpoint that is not shared, though I believe that more and more it is perpetuated as a legitimate argument.
Let me put forward a few reasons why local entrepreneurs matter to our future and it is in our best interest to promote our future entrepreneurs.
First, as an education economist, I recognise that Singapore is in the enviable position of having a world-class education system. Repeatedly in international benchmarking exercises, Singapore youth at secondary school level have ranked superlatively against their international counterparts.
In 1997, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong embarked on an ambitious programme called Thinking Schools, Learning Nation. This was the start point, arguably, where measures were taken to add creativity to curriculum and place less emphasis on rote learning. Some schools have strived under this new emphasis.
As a university educator, I concur that students today may not have the same rigour as in the past, but they have a greater capacity to surprise with non-conventional thinking. Again, this is not the norm; such students represent outliers, but to our credit they exist.
Promoting creativity in our education system, only to deny these future creative graduates access to entrepreneurial resources, will relegate them to the growth story of the past: whether it is to join a multinational company in an executive position or to take a financial or investment track position in a bank. The added schooling resources and the added time taken to achieve creativity in the school system would be confounded, given that such graduates can achieve the same outcome as in previous generations.
The presence of venture capitalists who are able to fund deserving entrepreneurs is a more dynamic, market-driven alternative to the previous economic growth model (which relies mostly on multinationals) which complements rather than supplants an export-oriented approach.
Second, as a deep recession is on the cards for Singapore, it is a fact that multinationals here are retrenching employees and the Government is doing its part to absorb some of these numbers. The civil service, however, is not a revenue generator but a cost centre in the economy.
If there were more local entrepreneurs, small or medium, cyclical unemployment based on international business cycles would be lessened, and some of the retrenched could find alternative employment in local industries which would generate wealth in Singapore. In a global recession, local industries are less likely to leave Singapore than multinationals.
Lastly, I step away from my economist's mindset, and revisit a portion of my past. Of having a wardrobe of Heshe and 2nd Chance shirts and slacks, of drinking Sinalco and Green Spot with friends. Sadly, these memories will not mean anything to current generations because these local brands or companies have wilted under international competition and no longer exist.
Singaporeans now dress and eat like anyone else in this globalised world. No wonder we are accused of not being nationalistic enough, of not caring about civil society. Our values have been globalised, much as our identity has.
Local entrepreneurs with a distinct Singapore brand help give Singaporeans an identity unique to ourselves and help make Singapore a place called home.
Dr Roland Cheo
Department of Economics National University of Singapore
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->IT HAS been suggested that Singapore does not need local entrepreneurs and should rely on foreign multinational companies.
This is a viewpoint that is not shared, though I believe that more and more it is perpetuated as a legitimate argument.
Let me put forward a few reasons why local entrepreneurs matter to our future and it is in our best interest to promote our future entrepreneurs.
First, as an education economist, I recognise that Singapore is in the enviable position of having a world-class education system. Repeatedly in international benchmarking exercises, Singapore youth at secondary school level have ranked superlatively against their international counterparts.
In 1997, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong embarked on an ambitious programme called Thinking Schools, Learning Nation. This was the start point, arguably, where measures were taken to add creativity to curriculum and place less emphasis on rote learning. Some schools have strived under this new emphasis.
As a university educator, I concur that students today may not have the same rigour as in the past, but they have a greater capacity to surprise with non-conventional thinking. Again, this is not the norm; such students represent outliers, but to our credit they exist.
Promoting creativity in our education system, only to deny these future creative graduates access to entrepreneurial resources, will relegate them to the growth story of the past: whether it is to join a multinational company in an executive position or to take a financial or investment track position in a bank. The added schooling resources and the added time taken to achieve creativity in the school system would be confounded, given that such graduates can achieve the same outcome as in previous generations.
The presence of venture capitalists who are able to fund deserving entrepreneurs is a more dynamic, market-driven alternative to the previous economic growth model (which relies mostly on multinationals) which complements rather than supplants an export-oriented approach.
Second, as a deep recession is on the cards for Singapore, it is a fact that multinationals here are retrenching employees and the Government is doing its part to absorb some of these numbers. The civil service, however, is not a revenue generator but a cost centre in the economy.
If there were more local entrepreneurs, small or medium, cyclical unemployment based on international business cycles would be lessened, and some of the retrenched could find alternative employment in local industries which would generate wealth in Singapore. In a global recession, local industries are less likely to leave Singapore than multinationals.
Lastly, I step away from my economist's mindset, and revisit a portion of my past. Of having a wardrobe of Heshe and 2nd Chance shirts and slacks, of drinking Sinalco and Green Spot with friends. Sadly, these memories will not mean anything to current generations because these local brands or companies have wilted under international competition and no longer exist.
Singaporeans now dress and eat like anyone else in this globalised world. No wonder we are accused of not being nationalistic enough, of not caring about civil society. Our values have been globalised, much as our identity has.
Local entrepreneurs with a distinct Singapore brand help give Singaporeans an identity unique to ourselves and help make Singapore a place called home.
Dr Roland Cheo
Department of Economics National University of Singapore
