Jake's View | You Singapore bureaucrats, wake up and smell the coffee

Perhaps van der Kamp can share his wisdom on the many foolish things that Singapore has committed over the years for him to repeatedly taint its achievements with abandon.

Letters to the editor, July 1
 

Okay, here’s one. In national as well as personal affairs when you invest your money outside of your own home you expect a return on your investment, some dividend, rental or interest income from it.

In national affairs you get the money to make these investments principally from exporting more goods and services than you import. This balance in trade earnings is called your country’s current account on the balance of payments.

The matching capital account then details what sort of foreign investments you make with this money. If the pluses and minuses of the current and capital accounts don’t quite match, the difference is made up by changes in the foreign reserves.

Now let’s look at how these things stand in two countries, Singapore and Taiwan. The first chart shows you the record since the beginning of this century in their current account balances as a percentage of their gross domestic products.