Jake's View | Singapore is falling behind Hong Kong, just do the math
‘People in Hong Kong on average have US$29,000 each a year to spend on themselves while Singaporeans have only US$19,000, and the margin is growing rapidly in Hong Kong’s favour’
Yet, despite benefiting from the world’s biggest market in terms of population size as its hinterland, the gap between Hong Kong’s GDP per capita and that of Singapore has widened, and is predicted to be about US$30,000 this year. -- Letters to the editor, June 22
Why stop at US$30,000? I can easily make Singapore richer than Hong Kong by US$44,000 a year in gross domestic product per capita.
It’s simple. You divide the Singapore GDP figure by 3.4 million official Singapore citizens, ignoring the other 2.4 million inhabitants who are not thus deified, leave alone the uncounted labourers who come across the causeway from Johor every day and are not even counted as inhabitants.
You can also make Hong Kong richer by selective counting, but only fractionally.
These figures tell you that Singapore relies heavily on foreign labour. But there is more to the picture. What people don’t jump to tell you down there is that Singapore is also heavily owned by foreigners.
For every dollar of direct investment that Singaporeans have amassed abroad, foreigners have two dollars of direct investment in Singapore.
The figures for Hong Kong, although not exactly comparable and massively clouded by money laundering, roughly indicate the same ratio, but in Hong Kong’s favour.
