Singapore's Regionalization Strategy

This paper evaluates the Singapore government's ‘regionalization strategy’ (1990–2004) as a national development policy. Unlike the Singapore government's earlier national development policy, which focused on encouraging industrial transnational corporations to locate production within Singapore, the new strategy encouraged them to locate production in Singapore-developed industrial parks in selected cities across the Asia Pacific region. As a development policy, this research finds that the regionalization strategy has had mixed results. It has succeeded in encouraging industrial transnational corporations to locate in these Singapore-developed industrial parks, but failed to generate enough profits to supplement Singapore's domestic economy. Based on this study, there are two conclusions that can be drawn: first economic globalization and global production networks are not only driven by the motivations of industrial transnational corporations (market driven) but also by national economic policies (state driven), such as by the Singapore government's regionalization strategy. Second, as a national development policy, a ‘regional’ strategy is highly risky as the state is not in full control of external factors, as opposed to implementing development policies locally.