Economic development of Singapore Lusine Vardanyan . , , . . : , , : - : In this article we are going to examine shortly the economy of Singapore.

hortly the economy of Singapore. Giving conception to Singapore Model, unemployment rate, tourism development. Lee Kuan Yews contribution to the economy of the country.

Key Words- economic development, industry, business, culture.

Singapore is unitary parliamentary constitutional republic. Its total GDP is $327.557 billion, per capita $61,046. The currency is Singapore dollar. This country is one of the most open, and thus competitive, markets in the world. The 2011 World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index ranks Singapore as the best country in the world to do business ahead of Hong Kong and New Zealand. Singapore is also ranked third in the World Economic Forums Global Competitiveness Report behind Switzerland and Sweden. The economy of Singapore is best described as a mixed economy. Although the country strongly advocates free-market policies and practices, government intervention is also evident in macroeconomic management and major factors of production such as land, labor and capital resources. This innovative and highly successful economic system where both the market and the state have equally strong roles in the government is dubbed as the Singapore Model. Singapores unemployment rate is one of the lowest in the world. The majority of the labor force is highly skilled and well educated with compulsory primary education for all its

citizens. Singapore has one of the lowest annual population growth rates in the world at 0.817 percent. As a result, the Singapore government began to actively pursue foreign immigrants and expatriates to live and work in the country. Today, foreign workers comprise of 35.8 percent of the labor force. The vast majority of foreign workers are cheap labor from developing Asian countries who occupy jobs that regular Singaporeans shun. A significant, but smaller, percentage of foreign workers are high value talent who are brought in to provide strong labor competition for Singaporeans.
20 15 10 5 0 1990 -5 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Total population Permanent Residents Non-residents

Tourism in Singapore is a major industry and contributor to the Singaporean economy, attracting 11,638,663 tourists in 2010, over twice Singapore's total population. Its cultural attraction can be attributed to its cultural diversity that reflects its colonial history and Chinese, Malay, Indian and Arab ethnicities. Along with this, it also has one of the world's lowest crime rates. One of the most attractive places for tourists is The Raffles Hotel. It was established by two Armenian brothers from PersiaMartin and Tigran Sarkiesin 1887. In later years they were joined by younger brothers Aviet and Arshak and kinsman Martyrose Arathoon. With their innovative cuisine and extensive modernizations, the firm built the hotel into Singapore's best known icon. It was named after Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern

Singapore, whose statue had been unveiled in 1887.

Singapore attracted a record 11,638,663 visitors according to the Singapore Tourism Board's statistics, but which excludes Malaysian visitors who visited Singapore via the Causeway or the Second Link. This was a 20.2% increase over 2009, reversing two years of negative growth due to the global financial crisis of 20082009.

Tourism Arrivals
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Lee Kuan Yew's Legacy

The architect behind Singapores remarkable transformation from third-world country to first. Lee Kuan Yew was born in 1923 and became the first Prime Minister in 1959. Few countries have grown so rapidly, and Singapores economic success increase has been widely hailed by international observers. The city-state Lee inherited in 1959 was very different from the Singapore of today. Nowadays Lee is holding in advisory position and he is holding many executive decisions. As Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew managed to make the economy of Singapore increase unbelievably: GDP from $704 million in 1960 to $38 billion in 1990. Nowadays this rate is about $ 222 billion.
12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1965-1980 1980-1990 1990-2000 2000-2008 GDP growth Contribution of capital Contribution of labor TFP growth

Lee always placed great importance on developing the economy, and his attention to detail on this aspect went even to the extent of connecting it with other facets of Singapore, including the country's extensive and meticulous tending of its international image of being a "Garden City", something that has been sustained to this day. Government policies Like many countries, Singapore had problems with political corruption. Lee introduced legislation giving the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) greater power to conduct arrests, search, call up witnesses, and investigate bank accounts and income-tax returns of suspected persons and their families. Lee believed that ministers should be well paid in order to maintain a clean and honest government. In 1994, he proposed to link the salaries of ministers, judges, and top civil servants to the salaries of top professionals in the private sector, arguing that this would help recruit and retain talent to serve in the public sector. In the late 1960s, fearing that Singapore's growing population might overburden the developing economy; Lee started a vigorous Stop at Two family planning campaign. Couples were urged to undergo sterilization after their second child. Third or fourth children were given lower priorities in education and such families received fewer economic rebates.[30] In 1983, Lee sparked the 'Great Marriage Debate' when he encouraged Singapore men to choose highly-educated women as wives. He was concerned that a large number of graduate women were unmarried. Some sections of the population, including graduate women, were upset by his views. Nevertheless, a match-making agency Social Development Unit (SDU) was set up to promote socializing among men and women graduates. In the Graduate Mothers Scheme, Lee also introduced incentives such as tax rebates, schooling, and housing priorities for graduate mothers who had three or four children, in a reversal of the over-successful 'Stop-at-Two' family planning campaign in the 1960s and 1970s. By the late 1990s, the birth rate had fallen so low that Lee's successor Goh Chok Tong extended these incentives to all married women, and gave even more incentives, such as the 'baby bonus' scheme.

Links http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/singapore/?page=full http://www.globalconversation.org/2011/05/15/lee-kuan-yews-legacy www.wikipedia.org http://furrybrowndog.wordpress.com