Singapore, Australia to forge Closer Strategic Partnership

THE bottom line is that Australian companies need to look at Singapore not as a destination in itself but as a springboard to the wider Asian region . . .

AUSTRALIAN officials are in talks with their Singapore counterparts as both countries revisit the existing Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement, seeking to broader co-operation through a Closer Strategic Partnership (CSP). This would bring the relationship to a level already existing between Singapore and New Zealand — these two countries signed off on a Closer Economic Relationship (CER) agreement 32 years ago.
The timing is symbolically important, says Philip Green, Australia’s High Commissioner to Singapore. The proposal has been launched to coincide with Singapore’s 50th anniversary celebrations as an independent nation.
Green told a Trans-Tasman Business Circle lunch in Sydney that Australia recognised Singapore as an independent country just nine days after its independence on August 9, 1965.
Pointing to the Australia-New Zealand CER, Green says this has generated ongoing trade growth on average of seven per cent year yearly between the two countries.  “We want to create a similar dynamism in our relationship with Singapore,” he says.
Significantly, Green says that a new Agreement will not be a static one. Singapore and Canberra have agreed it should be a 10-year work programme known as Project 2025.
Singapore is Australia’s largest trade and investment partner in ASEAN and Australia’s fifth-largest trading partner overall. In 2014, bilateral trade between the two nations was AUD26.5 billion. Singapore is among the top 10 largest export and import markets for Australia.
At AUD80.2 billion in 2014, Singaporean investment in Australia was up from AUD60.5 million in 2013. Green says Singapore in 2014 was Australia’s biggest foreign investor after the United States.
 He says Australian companies must also bear in mind that the Singapore story is changing. It has become more global, and is now the global hub for wealth management and oil and gas, to name just two sectors.
In a few short years, he says, Singapore has become the second-largest private wealth management centre in the world — and is poised to take over from Switzerland as the world’s largest. It is also a hub for the global oil and gas industry, and is becoming a dynamic work hub for innovation.
Green says there is potential to work on the integration of financial and capital markets between Australia and Singapore, including co-operation on financial market infrastructure.
Under Project 2015, the two nations will work towards building additional research and development partnerships by focussing on the commercialisation of research among their respective agencies, academic institutions and private sectors.
There are other synergic co-operation opportunities, he says, including partnerships in the private sector for initiatives such as sharing information on infrastructure opportunities, collaborating on food and agribusiness opportunities (including aquaculture and fisheries), and promoting mutual recognition of standards, conformance and qualifications.
Singapore is not only capital-rich of itself. Considerable global capital now resides in the city-state, seeking a home in the wider Asian region. Green says, the two countries could work together on infrastructure projects, marrying Australian expertise with capital from Singapore. “The concept of PPP (public private partnerships) was invented in Australia (to build infrastructure),” he says.
Under Project 2025, the two countries will explore investment opportunities in sectors such as food, agribusiness and infrastructure.
“Singapore receives 2.5 times more tourists than Australia, so there may be some marketing capability that we can learn from them. And these are a growing number of Chinese tourists coming to Australia; Singapore would like some of them to stop in Singapore on the way, so there can be joint tourism co-operation.”
The bottom line, says Green, is that Australian companies must look to Singapore not as a destination in itself but as a springboard to the wider Asian region. He adds that, despite all the noise about Asian growth slowing down, the region is still the best growth story around.
“Asia is growing at twice the rate of the global economy.  By 2025, the number of middle-class (consuming) class will grow five-six-fold, compared to 2.5 times in the Middle East and Africa and 1.5 times in Latin America, with static growth in North America and Europe,” he says.
“We have complimentary skills to Asia, and we produce the food and services that will be needed by the region’s consuming class.”