S’pore ranked world’s 3rd least-corrupt country

S’pore ranked world’s 3rd least-corrupt country

It moves up one spot; watchdog calls it a model of effective political will

By Tracy Quek , US Correspondent

WASHINGTON: Singapore has moved up a notch to be ranked third least-corrupt nation in the world, after New Zealand and Denmark, according to an annual global corruption survey.

The Republic shares third spot with Sweden, which last year tied with New Zealand and Denmark for top position. Switzerland completed the top five in the list released by Berlin-based non-governmental corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) yesterday.

TI attributed the strong performance of the five high-scorers to the ‘political stability, long-established conflict of interest regulations and solid, functioning public institutions’ in these nations.

In contrast, the bottom five - Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan and Iraq - show that ‘countries which are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by longstanding conflicts, which have torn apart their governance infrastructure,’ TI said.

Mr Pascal Fabie, TI’s regional director for Asia-Pacific, told The Straits Times: ‘Singapore remains a model of effective and strong political will that has made sure the public sector is clean.’

But he added that as a major trade and financial centre, ‘Singapore should do more to ensure transparency and due diligence in its banking sector. Its financial institutions should know who they lend to and who they take money from’.

Singapore has been doing more to improve transparency. This month, it was taken off the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) ‘grey list’ of countries considered lax in sharing tax information.

This came after Singapore signed its 12th Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement, which meets the OECD standard requiring governments to disclose financial information when foreign requests are made regarding tax evaders.

The TI’s annual rankings, known as the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), define corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain. They measure the perceived levels of public sector corruption, for example the frequency of bribes, in 180 countries and territories.

Overall, this year’s list is ‘of great concern’, the TI said, pointing out that most of those ranked scored under five points out of a possible 10.

What is more, shedding light on shady practices and tightening oversight have become even more critical when governments are pumping in large sums of public money to keep the world economic recovery going, TI chairman Huguette Labelle noted in a statement.

‘Corruption continues to lurk where opacity rules, where institutions still need strengthening and where governments have not implemented anti-corruption legal frameworks,’ the TI statement said.

The United States, for one, slipped a notch, to 19th place. TI cited ‘widespread concerns’ about American oversight of its financial sector in areas such as executive pay and derivatives trading.

Turning to Asia, the watchdog noted that the global financial crisis and political transformation in many Asian countries last year ‘exposed fundamental weaknesses in both the financial and political systems and demonstrated the failures in policy, regulations, oversight, and enforcement mechanisms’.

These factors contributed to a drop in the scores of 13 countries, and a reduction in the number of nations that scored above 5 in this year’s index.

The decline in Malaysia’s score, from 5.1 to 4.5, may be attributed to the perception that there has been little political will or progress in combating corruption, the TI said.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission appears to focus on ’small fish’ and opposition politicians, the report added.

Indonesia, ranked 111, still has a long way to go, but the recent tough approach by the Corruption Eradication Commission contributed to a rise in its score from 2.6 last year to 2.8, TI said.

China dipped from its 72nd position last year to 79th. But TI noted that it has launched a sustained anti-corruption drive, investigating and prosecuting ministers as well as other low-level officials

Source : Straits Times - 18 November 2009

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MM Lee wants learning of Chinese to be fun

MM Lee wants learning of Chinese to be fun

By Clarissa Oon & Cai Haoxiang

CHINESE language teachers should pull out all the stops to make learning the mother tongue fun for children, a rising number of whom are not speaking it at home, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said last night.

They should also teach listening and conversation skills first, rather than the reading and writing of Chinese characters which could potentially turn off young Chinese Singaporeans from the language, he added.

Reflecting on some 40 years of bilingual education in an off-the-cuff speech at the official opening of a Chinese language centre, he said Singapore’s policy on the learning of Chinese started on the wrong footing because he believed in the past that it was possible to master two languages equally well.

As a result, Chinese lessons in the old days were pitched at too difficult a level and ’successive generations of students paid a heavy price because of my ignorance’, he said.

He was addressing an audience of 250 policymakers, academics and educators at the opening of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL).

‘I wasn’t helped by Ministry of Education (MOE) officials. They were basically two groups of people, one English-speaking, the other Chinese-teaching,’ he quipped.

Chinese teachers in the 1960s and 1970s were Chinese-educated purists who emphasised character-writing and dictation in the teaching of Chinese as a second language, which ‘turned the students off completely’, he recalled.

As Prime Minister, he intervened successively over the years to fine-tune Singapore’s bilingual policy.

Eventually, MOE decided in 2004 to teach Mandarin through a modular system, allowing each child to go at his own pace.

The policy, he acknowledged with a laugh, is still ‘not completely right but I will get it right if I live long enough’.

The SCCL, located at Ghim Moh Road, was set up by the MOE in February to train existing Chinese-language teachers and research how best to teach Chinese in a bilingual environment.

At its official opening last night, it signed agreements with four partner institutions to conduct joint research and offer degree and training programmes for teachers. Its partners are the Media Development Authority, SIM University, the University of Hong Kong and NTUC’s Seed Institute.

Bilingualism has become a major concern of MM Lee’s in recent years, amid fears that the Chinese language is losing currency. Latest MOE data show that 59 per cent of the Primary 1 cohort this year came from families that speak mainly English at home, compared to 49 per cent just five years ago and 10 per cent in 1982.

Earlier this month, in an interview carried in the People’s Action Party magazine Petir, he cited bilingualism as the most difficult policy he had to implement, and the one which should have been done differently from the start.

This was because he did not realise that a child’s intelligence and language ability were two different things, something which his daughter, a neurologist, confirmed late in his life.

Yesterday, he urged parents and educators not just to expose children to the Chinese language from a young age, but also to stimulate the child’s interest in the language, beyond just ‘passing exams’.

‘I want to get this message into the heads of the younger generation of teachers: Use IT, use drama, use every method to capture the interest of children,’ he said.

One example of how the SCCL is making the learning of Chinese fun is through mobile phone technology. This was shown at a conference yesterday afternoon by one of the centre’s lecturers.

Dr Wong Lung Hsiang directed an experiment in which students used camera phones to take photos of anything they wanted to outside of class. They then uploaded their pictures onto the Internet, incorporating a Chinese idiom into the picture caption.

Their Chinese teacher then guided the class in a discussion on the accurate use of those idioms, which Dr Wong said works better than the direct correction of mistakes.

The conference on how to teach Chinese in an interesting and effective way was attended by more than 400 teachers and researchers from here and abroad.

The three-day conference ends tomorrow.

‘I intervened successively over the years and insisted that my experience should guide the policy. I was taking risks. I started wrong and I put it right. It is not completely right but I will get it right if I live long enough.’

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, on the bilingual policy in Singapore

——————————————————————————–

MM LEE ON…

Learning right

‘Any language in the world begins with speaking and listening. We started the wrong way. We insisted on ting xie (writing words as dictated), mo xie (writing entire passages from memory). Madness! Parents spent a lot of time and money, extra tuition on their children, but (children had) no interest, they were burnt out.’

His motivation

‘If I had to learn Chinese all over again, it’ll be a breeze (with digital dictionaries). I spent years sweating blood, not sweat, but I mastered it because I had to master it in order to convey my thoughts to people whose support I needed. That was my motivation.’

Parental role

‘I know a teacher who’s bilingual, his wife speaks to his daughter in English and he speaks to the daughter in Mandarin. So the daughter had an option (which language to use).

English is an easier language. At the age of four, the daughter said to him: ‘Papa, ABC is better.’ He was flabbergasted.

So (I advised him to) tell his wife to speak to the daughter in Mandarin… because if the children hear nothing but Mandarin, they have no choice, they will pick it up. Today, the daughter is in Nanyang Primary School, doing well in both languages. One day, so the father told me, the daughter came up to him, saying: ‘I want a pillow.’

The father said: ‘Say it to me in Mandarin and I will give you the pillow.’

The mother or the grandmother taught the child to say: ‘ Zhen tou, wo yao na ge zhen tou ‘

His children’s mistake

‘My children, they are totally bilingual. Their wives are also bilingual. But they made the mistake of speaking in English at home.

So (as a result) my grandchildren are not fluent (in Mandarin). They can speak it, but they don’t like to speak it. I speak to them in Mandarin and they answer in English.

So my first advice to all parents is, if you can speak Mandarin, speak it to your children at home.’

Thank you e-mail

‘I get e-mail from Singaporeans in China who thank me for having insisted that they learn two languages… if they had no such foundation, they would not have made it good.’

Not kidding yourself

‘Nobody can master two languages at the same level. If you think you can, you are deceiving yourself.’

Source : Straits Times - 18 November 2009

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S’pore offices 3rd most expensive in Asia

S’pore offices 3rd most expensive in Asia

Slowdown in fall in rents in Q3 attributed to confidence in economic recovery

By TEH SHI NING

OFFICE space in Singapore was the third most expensive in the region in the third quarter, as the fall in rents slowed significantly, a Colliers International survey has found.

‘Among all Asia-Pacific cities, Singapore registered the most distinct deceleration in office rental declines,’ said the firm’s director of research and advisory, Tay Huey Ying.

She attributed this to growing confidence in economic recovery, which ‘lifted the gloom that had been pervading the office property market since Q4 2008′.

The Colliers survey, which covers 25 Asia-Pacific cities quarterly, found Singapore’s office rents to be the region’s third most expensive in Q3, after Tokyo and Hong Kong.

The average monthly Grade A rent in the Central Business District (CBD) dipped 6.4 per cent quarter-on-quarter in Q3, after a steep 26.1 per cent slide in Q2. The average gross office rental in the CBD in Q3 was $6.31 per square foot.

Enquiries about new space rose in Q3 as some occupiers began searching for larger and better premises.

One of those that has already upgraded is insurer AIG, which relocated from the CBD fringe to 78 Shenton South Tower. And at Mapletree Anson, more than 100,000 sq ft of space has been leased to companies such as AON, QBE and Sumitomo Corporation, which are relocating from Singapore Land Tower, OCBC Centre and Equity Plaza respectively. Elsewhere, Servcorp has committed to one floor at Marina Bay Financial Centre in the CBD for seven years.

The average occupancy rate of prime office space in the CBD fell 2.1 percentage points from a quarter ago to 92.2 per cent in Q3 as several new buildings, including Mapletree Anson and 71 Robinson, were completed.

But there could be further downward pressure on rents as demand for Grade A office space here is unlikely to grow in the short term, while supply is set to rise with the completion of major projects such as Twenty Anson and the Straits Trading Building.

Ms Tay said that she expects office rents to fall as much as 5 per cent in Q4, taking the full-year contraction to 48 per cent.

Source : Business Times - 18 November 2009

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SM Goh: Evolution from host to home necessary

SM Goh: Evolution from host to home necessary

Siemens’ solutions hub testament to S’pore’s ability to be home for innovation

By JOYCE HOOI

SENIOR Minister Goh Chok Tong reiterated yesterday the importance of the three-pronged ‘host to home’ strategy in adapting to the demands of a post-crisis world.

‘While Singapore will continue to be a good host for businesses, we want companies to see us as their ‘home’ as well, specifically as home for business, home for innovation and home for talent,’ Mr Goh said, in reference to the ‘host to home’ strategy championed by the Economic Development Board to keep the best of talent and businesses here.

Mr Goh also stressed the need for Singapore to evolve on three counts - from an efficient hub to an essential one, from helping firms with their bottom line to helping them grow their top line, and from merely adding value to creating value.

He was speaking as guest of honour at STMicroelectronics’ 40th anniversary celebration gala dinner yesterday.

In his speech, he noted that STMicroelectronics, with its Asia-Pacific headquarters and 5,700 employees based in Singapore, is a prime example of how Singapore can be home to companies in all three areas.

In February, Rolls-Royce lent the ‘Home for Business’ effort some advance momentum when it moved its global marine headquarters from London to Singapore.

‘Rolls-Royce has a long and proud heritage in Singapore, where we are continuing to expand our presence,’ Jonathan Asherson, Rolls-Royce Singapore’s regional director for Southeast Asia, told BT yesterday.

‘The government’s commitment to developing a highly skilled workforce, and an economic strategy that supports high-value manufacturing and services, makes it a very attractive destination for business and has certainly influenced our decision to expand our operations here,’ Mr Asherson said.

Mr Goh also referred to Siemens’ move to open its ‘City of the Future’ solutions centre in Singapore this year as testament to the country’s ability to be a home for innovation.

‘Siemens believes Singapore is a living laboratory that can help it develop new products and services for urban populations,’ he said.

Bolstering Singapore’s drive to become a home for talent will be the establishment of the new Singapore University of Technology and Design and the Singapore Institute of Applied Technology.

‘In addition to nurturing our home-grown talent, ‘home for talent’ is also about being a talent magnet, by creating the right environment for a diverse talent base to flourish,’ Mr Goh said.

Source : Business Times - 18 November 2009

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Burst of hope after six quarters of business gloom

Burst of hope after six quarters of business gloom

Business prospects turn positive with 33-point jump; Q4 growth may hit 5%, BT-UniSIM survey shows

By TEH SHI NING

(SINGAPORE) With optimism finally surfacing among businesses here after six quarters of gloom, the latest BT-UniSIM Business Climate Survey now predicts that Singapore’s economy will grow by up to 5 per cent in the present quarter.

A variety of companies, 172 in all, were polled in October on their sales, profits and orders or new business in the third quarter, as well as their business outlook for the coming six months.

Business prospects improved greatly, leaping 33 percentage points from last quarter to a positive 5 per cent net balance (the difference between the proportion of optimistic firms and those who were not), for the first time in six quarters.

The turnaround was driven mostly by foreign and larger firms. While pessimism did fade across the board, among small firms the gloomy still outnumbered the upbeat, and local firms appeared to be split down the middle.

Over the survey’s 14 years, its business prospects indicator has proven to closely correlate to the change in Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the following quarter.

As such, survey director Chow Kit Boey now predicts an expansion in GDP of between 2.3 and 5 per cent for the fourth quarter.

Ms Chow says that the advance estimate of 0.8 per cent growth in Q3’s GDP would imply a full-year contraction of between 1.7 and 2.4 per cent, slightly more bullish than the official forecast of a 2 to 2.5 per cent contraction.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry will be releasing actual GDP figures for Q3 on Thursday.

Overall, the Q3 edition of this quarterly business survey showed that ‘more and more firms here are rising out of the pit of lower sales, profits and orders,’ Ms Chow says.

All three indicators had begun to pick up in the second quarter, but saw this pick-up gain momentum in the third quarter. Although the number of companies whose sales and profits fell in Q3 still outnumbered those whose sales and profits rose (thus yielding negative net balances), this was significantly smaller in Q3, than in the first two quarters of this year.

The net balance for sales rose 13 percentage points to negative 41 per cent, while that on profits rose 16 percentage points to negative 39 per cent.

For orders and new business, respondents reported an 18 percentage point increase - the net balance stood at minus 44 per cent.

Breaking down the survey responses according to the characteristics of each company, the survey found bigger firms to have performed better than small firms in terms of both sales and profits in Q3. But, small firms saw larger improvements in sales, thus narrowing the performance gap between them and larger players.

Small firms also reported substantial gains in new orders or new business, outperforming larger ones on this indicator.

But, though large firms have turned optimistic, small firms remained pessimistic though to a lesser extent than they had been before.

Local firms outperformed foreign firms in sales and orders or new business, though the latter group fared better on profits.

Performance by sector indicated that the financial and business services sector, much-maligned after last year’s credit crunch, has regained strength, displacing the construction sector as the star performer in the third quarter.

Firms providing financial and business services posted the best overall performance in orders and new business.

Small and foreign firms in this sector also outperformed their peers in other industries on all the indicators too.

For future quarters though, the best business prospects overall reside in the manufacturing sector.

Most optimistic among small firms were those in the manufacturing sector, while for large and local firms, the financial & business services sector was viewed as providing the best business prospects in the next six months. Among foreign firms, those in commerce held the best business prospects.

Source : Business Times - 18 November 2009

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