Singapore: Manufacturing Fortunes in "Sunrise" and "High Noon" Industries

The story of economic restructuring in Hong Kong can be understood as a continuation of labor-intensive production. The Singapore story of economic restructuring is quite different because of two elements. Firstly, the state in Singapore intervenes actively in its attempt to manage the economy. Secondly, to understand firms&s; strategy in Singapore, people have to take into account the contrast between multinational and local firms. Different industries played important roles in terms of employment share at different periods in Singapore&s;s 30-year industrialization effort. The Singapore economy on the eve of industrialization was very much dominated by entrepot trade. Manufacturing was limited to food and raw material processing. The manufacturing sector moved away from the small-firm-basic processing-for-a-local-market model by the end of the 1960s. With the rapid economic growth of the 1970s, Singapore began to enjoy consistent balance-of-payments surpluses.