Financial Times, 31 Mar 2009, David Pilling
Last week Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy, casually mentioned in conversation that Singapore’s economy might shrink by up to 10 per cent this year. This startling aside, almost an afterthought, came after a long discourse on how Asians’ faith in their economic and political systems had been fundamentally unshaken by the economic earthquake rattling the world.
Singapore, he said, had deep cash reserves. The government was already heavily subsidising businesses that kept workers in employment. Some workers’ hours were being pruned but few were losing their jobs. Besides, Singaporeans had savings they could draw on, family they could rely on and subsidised housing they could live in. There was no sense of panic. The city state would ride this out and emerge stronger.
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