DPM Lawrence Wong at the American Chamber of Commerce Singapore 50th Anniversary Celebration

Mr Simon Kahn and Dr Hsien-Hsien Lei, Ambassador Kaplan,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you Scott (Beaumont, President, Google Asia Pacific) for the kind words and warm introduction and thank you everyone for having me here tonight. I am sure no one anticipated when you started preparing for this event that it would coincide with Polling Day in Singapore. If there are Singaporeans in this room, I hope you have done your civic duty and voted. If you have not, you still have time – the polling stations close at 8pm. But because it is elections night, I will not be able to stay for the whole night. I will have to leave soon, after a while, but I thought it would be good to still have this time to join all of you for this momentous event. So let me start by congratulating everyone on your Golden Jubilee. 

Singapore and America enjoy a unique relationship that goes back many decades, and it is grounded on shared perspectives, mutual interests, and common goals.

The establishment of AmCham Singapore in 1973 was one of the early milestones in our relationship. When Singapore started out, the journey was very daunting. We had no natural resources and many challenges to overcome. We needed to grow the economy and create jobs. 

But we also realised that we could not do this alone.  We needed the help of partners to jumpstart our industrialisation drive.

The conventional wisdom then in the early ‘60s and ‘70s was really to push for your own domestic industries. Because remember in those days, multinational companies were seen as part of the neo-colonialism push. And so developing countries, newly independent countries, all wanted their own industries.

But Singapore decided to take a different tack. We decided that we needed to bring the best companies to come to Singapore.

So where did we find these companies? Naturally in the United States of America!

And one of the first American companies to recognise our potential was Hewlett-Packard (HP), one of your founding members.

HP set up operations in 1970 in a flatted factory in Redhill, stringing core memories for computers.

And soon, many more US companies followed suit, and your presence had contributed to the development of many other industries in Singapore.

Fast forward to today, we have built a robust economy and we have become a trusted hub for international trade and commerce.

Throughout this period, over these decades, our partnership with the US has grown from strength to strength.  

Today, Singapore is the US’ largest trading partner in Southeast Asia. America continues to be our largest foreign investor here. And we host more than 5,700 American companies, with many of you playing a leading role in your respective industries.

Opportunities Amid Uncertainty

We welcome your presence here, especially as we look ahead to greater turbulence and uncertainties in the external environment.

I am sure everyone is familiar with the trends that we see around us – from an ongoing war in Europe, to deepening big power rivalry – these are challenges we face. The global consensus that we saw in the last 30 years around free trade, is over. It is not quite clear what will take its place, but we are already seeing the outlines of a new paradigm where business will be driven not just by economic logic, but also by geopolitical alignment, and security.

And these will be powerful forces that will continue to shape the world around us and bring new challenges for countries everywhere.

For a small open economy like Singapore, we are acutely aware of these challenges, because we have always had this sense of vulnerability about us since the start of our independence. Singapore has always been an improbable nation, forged out of the sheer collective will of our people. We know that it is very easy for small cities like us to fail. I had a very vivid reminder of this when I was a student at Michigan. Some of you may know, there is a ghost town in Michigan, called Singapore. It is true, I am not making this up. Singapore Michigan was founded in 1830s. Presumably, it was named after a trading port in the exotic Far East that had been doing very well by then because Singapore was started in 1819. News took some time to spread in those days. Singapore in Michigan became a trading hub for lumber shipbuilding and it lasted for about 50 years. And then around that time, this is around the mouth of the Kalamazoo River near Lake Michigan and about 50 years after it was founded, the shifting sand dunes around Lake Michigan swallowed up the ghost town. So the only marker of its existence today is just a signboard. So Singapore Michigan did nots last very long. Singapore in Southeast Asia has been around for some time; we have been independent for nearly 60 years and we are determined to keep going for a very long time.

But we can do this only through strong partnerships and that is why we value the partnership that we have with the US.

We therefore look forward to further collaboration with America, not just bilaterally but also in the region.

And that is why we are working hard to step up integration across Southeast Asia and ASEAN – not just in traditional areas like customs, trade and transport, but also in new areas like digital connectivity through the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA).

And hopefully a more integrated ASEAN will unlock new possibilities for businesses based here in Singapore. A US firm looking to capture these opportunities could establish operations across the whole region – you could have data centres in Indonesia, factories in Vietnam, and your control tower, innovation facilities and headquarters hopefully would be here in Singapore. 

Partnership with AmCham Singapore

So as highlighted in the theme of your anniversary, the opportunities are indeed boundless. And making these possibilities a reality of course will require a hands-on approach, not just by the Government but also by firms, and importantly by the wider business community.  And this is where the role of Trade Associations and Business Chambers continue to be critical – as convenors, as champions of organisational excellence, and as a conduit to doing good and giving back to the community.  AmCham in Singapore has been doing all these over the past 50 years. So we truly value the partnership that we have with you and the role that you have been playing in Singapore.

AmCham Singapore has done so much but just consider what we have been through in the last three years of Covid-19. I know when you look back today, the Covid-19 (pandemic) just sounds like a very bad dream, we all wish we could forget it.

But in that period AmCham played a critical role, providing time-critical feedback from your members; pitching in and working with us to support and implement our crisis response strategies.

And this close cooperation with our business community made all the difference, in helping Singapore saving lives and livelihoods throughout the crisis.

And these are the type of long-term partnerships we seek to forge with our business community here in Singapore, where you view Singapore as more than just a place of business, but also as a home away from home. Certainly we hope that all American firms will see Singapore in this regard, as a home away from home.

I am glad that AmCham Singapore continues to explore new ways for your members to make a difference in our economy and society. For example, championing corporate social responsibility, such as through the Memorandum of Understanding that you signed with National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre just now.

And tonight, I am also pleased to present the AmChamREPRESENT awards later, which recognises business excellence amongst member companies and individuals. My heartiest congratulations to all the award recipients.

Conclusion

Finally, to everyone here tonight, I offer my heartfelt thanks for the significant role that all of you have played in Singapore’s development over the years; many of your founding member companies continue to thrive here today, and are firmly embedded in our economic and social fabric.

Whatever the challenges in our journey ahead I am confident we will be able to overcome them together, and we can look forward to boundless years of partnership and success together. Thank you very much.

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