Second Minister For Finance Speech About Dextrans

The Second Minister for Finance, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam delivered the Singapore Budget Speech for Financial Year 2007 in Parliament today. We bring you highlights of the speech which he mentioned about Dextrans Worldwide Group specifically.

Making Singapore the Best Place to Start, Grow and Globalise Businesses

Next, we have to press ahead in our efforts to create a vibrant and supportive environment for enterprises, big and small. Our strength and reputation as a base for MNCs and leading global companies is well known around the world. We will make Singapore equally reputed for being the best place for SMEs, local and foreign, to locate, grow and globalise.

I mentioned Rotary and Food Empire earlier. Both found themselves having to extend their reach out of Singapore at an early stage, and depend on markets abroad for most of their growth. In fact, about one-quarter of all our SMEs in Singapore now derive at least 50% of their revenue from overseas.

Many of our younger local players are going out to markets abroad at an even earlier stage of their growth. Dextrans Worldwide Group, founded just four years ago by two young Singaporeans, already has a bustling logistics business, managing inventory for major electronics manufacturers in China. Heulab was started by two NUS graduates in 2002 to create educational software on tablet PCs. Over 140 schools in Singapore, Australia, Taiwan and Qatar use their products to introduce creative learning in the classroom. All this in just four years. And Heulab was selected earlier this week as a launch partner for Microsoft's Windows Vista Programme.

Dextrans and Heulab are part of a new generation of local firms, fleet-footed, unafraid to venture out to the world early, and at the leading edge of technology.

We are also seeing the rise of a new breed of players in the form of global SMEs - much smaller than traditional multinationals, sometimes run by small groups of individuals, rooted in one place but taking advantage of globalisation to expand rapidly. Some of these are fast-growing small companies - or ‘gazelles' as they are called in Silicon Valley.

More of these global SMEs are now coming to Singapore. They want to be here because we are a place where they can access markets, talent and global financial services, and operate within a legal and regulatory framework that they are comfortable with. They may not make huge investments like the MNCs, but they add vibrancy to the economy and demand for financial and business services, IT and logistics. Many are now listing on SGX, and are expanding rapidly.

We should attract and root this new breed of players in Singapore. I mentioned Bob Chandran and Chem-oil, an example of a global SME we have brought to Singapore's shores. Another is LMA, a medical equipment firm that was based in UK, which decided to establish a headquarters operation in Singapore to manage its global regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and R&D. It has operations all over the world, and its products reach patients in over 100 countries.

OLAM, too, shifted from London to Singapore. It has a presence in 52 countries, managed from Singapore. Last week, OLAM announced that it is tying up with Chinatex, a leading Chinese state-owned enterprise. They will jointly invest in Brazil to source soybean. They will also invest together in China to process soybean and supply cotton to the domestic market.

That's how globalisation is being played - globalisation out of Singapore. We want to grow more Food Empires and Dextrans, and attract more OLAMs and LMAs to Singapore. We can provide the best conditions for them to start up, grow, raise funds, and reach out to markets in Asia and the world. We are already recognised as one of the easiest places in the world to do business. Each year, the World Bank compiles assessments of experts around the world. In its latest report, it puts Singapore as the most business-friendly economy in the world, ahead of New Zealand, the US, Canada, Hong Kong and the UK. After the recess, I shall announce how we will strengthen this further through our tax regime.