Singapore has a highly developed market-based economy, which historically revolves around extended entrepot trade. Along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, Singapore is one of the Four Asian Tigers. The economy depends heavily on exports refining imported goods, especially in manufacturing. Manufacturing constituted 28 per cent of Singapore’s GDP in 2005. The manufacturing industry is well diversified into electronics, petroleum refining, chemicals, mechanical engineering and biomedical sciences manufacturing. Singapore is the busiest port in the world in terms of tonnage shipped. It is the world’s fourth largest foreign exchange trading centre after London, New York City and Tokyo.
Singapore has been rated as the most business-friendly economy in the world, with thousands of foreign expatriates working in multi-national corporations. The city-state also employs tens of thousands of foreign blue-collared workers from around the world.
The term Four Asian Tigers or East Asian Tigers refers to the economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. They are also known as Asia’s Four Little Dragons. These territories were noted for maintaining high growth rates and rapid industrialisation between the early 1960s and 1990s. In the early 21st century, with the original four Tigers at or near to fully developed status, attention has increasingly shifted to other Asian economies which are experiencing rapid economic transformation at the present time.
The four Tigers share a range of characteristics with other Asian economies, such as China and Japan, and pioneered what has come to be seen as a particularly ‘Asian’ approach to economic development. Key differences include initial levels of education and physical access to world markets (in terms of transport infrastructure and access to coasts and navigable rivers, which are essential for cheap shipping).
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