The Miracle of Singapore – Will the Country Respond to Future Challenges?
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Located at the south part of the Malay Peninsula and at the southern end of the Straits of Malacca, Singapore has managed to take advantage of its strategic geo location, acting in recent years like the Suez’s Canal of Asia. The waters of the strait had offered for centuries an important economic and strategic advantage for the surrounding areas, as connected Western Asia with East and Southeastern Asia. Most of ships in order to avoid lengthy and difficult routes across the small islands of Indonesia and Philippines, pass through the strait increasing the significance of the area to the world’s trade volume.
Singapore was colonized by the British in 1819 as an island whose main characteristic was the unbearable climatic conditions. The whole area of Singapore was under populated because of this, and the lack of natural resources would act as a deterrent factor for the countrys normal development. Even after its independence in 1965 the country was considered one of the poorest of the region and with huge infrastructure problems and nearly no manufacture or production volume. Attracting foreign capitals seemed extremely challenging for this small country with such an underdeveloped industry.
By the time of its independence, Singapore in less than 40 years has managed to become one of the wealthiest countries of the World, noting an exceptional growth rate for its economy. The transition from a developing to a developed country, was held in a record time period, and by 2014 its per capita GDP exceeded 55.000$ surpassing that of its neighbor countries (Malaysia, Vietnam, Burma etc.), offering its residents a higher standard of living. But all this transforming did not happen at random obviously. Of course Singapores location was ideal, but still was the ability of its governments and mindset of its people that helped the country to take advantage of the general growth of maritime trade and the improvement of the telecommunications of the late 20th century.
At a great rate Singapore owes its outstanding economic growth and significance to the world trade, to the optimization of its main port. The most important milestone for this was the birth of containerization. We can say that then was when this huge growth started taking place. Singapores port was established as a distribution center for the region of Asia and the emerging of containerization helped a lot to get goods in and out effectively and quickly, as it reduced vastly the time and the labor involved when loading and unloading ships. Nowadays the countys port is one of the most efficient globally where in 2015 an average of 364 vessels per day were served, that meaning about 15 ships per hour. Another astonishing breakthrough is that in 2014 the Singapore ports handled about 33 million of containers. To realize how big this number is we should take into account that puting them into a straight line this number is sufficient to encircle the entire globe about four times.
The main succes factor for the country of Singapore was the ability of governments and people to leverage on the technology and the fact that current infrastructure was based on innovation. This promoted as well sustainabillity for the country which built a hyper-competitive market with a