Can Singapore afford to dabble only in property or share market or retailing or services and get by in this globalized world market?
If it does not upgrade its basic and fundamental economic structure from a low-based labour intensive and retailing and merchandizing type of economy to value-adding strategic capital-intensive based on advanced sunrise technology applications and innovations, will it have a hope to catch up with truly first-world economy like the Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Korea or Japan?
PM Lee Hsien Loong, while he was the ex-Trade and Industry Minister under Goh Chok Tong's cabinet was supposed to be in charge of economic restructuring and has announced many economic restructuring plans.
What has happened to these various economic restructuring plans?
Is our economy on the path to achieve value-adding restructuring as announced in the past many plans? Is there any consistent and focused implementation of these plans up to date?
Nowadays, we only keep hearing about our growth in GDP or attracting foreign talents or foreign investments. Other countries are also experiencing the same growth in GDP or property, so what is our real growth ? Are our ministers being too complacent?
Are we forgetting the various economic restructuring plans with fundamentals to promote our own local content of value-adding manufacturing, servicing, researches etc which are industries offering the greatest potential for value-adding through technology applications.
Or do our ministers only know how to invest in property, share markets and all the IR related services?
Are our ministers running out of ideas and efficient implementation of our past economic restructuring plans once implemented well and successfully by Dr. Goh Keng Swee or Lim Kim San?
Can't we find real talents instead of talk-only type of scholars who have yet to show good works in such macro-level excellence.