By Kees Tamboer
Dr Winsemius' first impression was anything but hopeful. "It was bewildering," he
remembers. "There were strikes about nothing. There were communist-inspired riots almost
every day and everywhere. In the beginning one has to very careful about passing any
judgement - one does not know the country, one does not know the people, one does not
know the men and women who are trying to steer this rudderless ship. But after a couple of
months the pessimism within our commission reached appalling heights. We saw how a
country can be demolished by unreal antitheses. The general opinion was: Singapore is going
down the drain, it is a poor little market in a dark corner of Asia."
Within a year, on 13 June 1961, the Winsemius team offered Singapore a development plan.
The final assessment was written by Winsemius personally: 'Expectations and Reality' was
his motto. This was permeated with an emotional appeal for unity, a passionate warning that
time was running out if Singapore was not to sink away into the mud. The gloom was not
completely unrelieved, there was one bright spot on the horizon: "In our opinion", wrote
Winsemius, "Singapore has the basic assets for industrialization. Her greatest asset is the
high aptitude of her people to work in manufacturing industries. They can be ranked among
the best factory workers in the world."
Shirts and Pyjamas
After delivering his development plan in the summer of 1961, Winsemius became the chief
economic adviser to the Singaporean government. He held this function for almost twenty-
five years, and at no time was there ever any written contract. The collaboration was based
on mutual trust. Twice a year Winsemius flew to Singapore to spend about a fortnight there
- one time it was to help drafting the plans for the coming year, the other time for checking
and steering. Part of the deal was that he would come immediately should the government
let him know that his help was needed at short notice, which was, for instance, the case in
1965.
"When we started with the implementation of the first development programme, Winsemius
recalls, "I was convinced that a policy of protection of the home market would come to
nothing, because there was almost no home market. I immediately advised them to try and
form an economic federation with Malaya. As soon as this aim was achieved, I assumed, we
would be able to move over to the next phase and try to conquer a position on the world
market. Four years later Singapore was expelled from the Federation, and there were the
signs of some initial panic in the state. In my opinion there was no longer any reason for
such a reaction. On the contrary, this is the best day of my life, I told my friends in
Singapore, for in those first years of development Singapore had proved that it was able to
overcome internal antithesis and to work together to build up a manufacturing industry that
would certainly be competitive in the long run."
Albert Winsemius distinguishes five main phases in the economic development of
Singapore.
"The first step", he explains, "was to set up low-value industries, such as the production of
shirts and pyjamas in factories in which women could work. The contribution made by the
women during the initial years of industrialization has never really been properly studied.
This contribution can easily be underestimated. It was the only manufacturing activity then
with sufficient experience. The sewing machines could be rented, and the girls and women
had experience in working with them. Therefore a very quick start was possible in the field
of shirts and underwear. This aspect of early industrial development deserves more attention
than it has received so far."
Upgrading
The Separation in 1965 marked the beginning of the second phase. The Housing and
Development Board (HDB) started with an enormous building programme, under the
leadership of Mr. Howe Yoon Chong. "This was very inspiring, people could see what was
being achieved. On Sundays fathers and mothers showed their children in what kind of new
dwellings they would live presently. In that same period we succeeded in interesting, just as
had happened in Holland fifteen years earlier, big oil companies like Shell and Esso in
establishing refineries in Singapore.
The third phase was that we started as soon as possible with the upgrading. Singapore
became very active in promoting education for technical jobs, especially for the electronics
industry. In the beginning it was quite a difficult job for me to convince people at the top of
the big Dutch electronics company Philips to set up production plants in Singapore. I went
to Eindhoven, where the headquarters of Philips are situated, to warn them: you have to
hurry, I told them, otherwise there is a very real danger you will be too late and then you
will be sure to miss the boat in the growing market of Southeast Asia. The result is that
Philips is now one of the big investors in Singapore and is doing a very fine job there.
The fourth phase was to make of Singapore an international financial centre. Formerly the young state was bound to the English pound sterling. I knew a Dutchman who had lived and worked in Singapore; he was an employee of the Bank of America in London at that time. I visited him and told him we wished to transform Singapore into a financial centre for Southeast Asia within ten years. He told me it could be done in three or four years. He took a globe and showed me a gap in the financial market of the world. Trading, he explained, starts at nine o'clock in the morning in Zurich in Switzerland. An hour later London opens. When London closes, New York is already open. After closing time on Wall Street, San Francisco on the American west coast is still active. But as soon as San Francisco closes, there is a gap of a couple of hours. This gap can be filled by Singapore, should the government not shun taking some drastic measures - such as cutting its links with the British pound.
Container harbour
And the fifth and last phase was that we transformed Singapore into a centre of international
traffic and transport. My advice was: build an airport where the biggest aeroplanes can land
and let everyone know that they are welcome to land there. In other words, do not use
landing-rights to protect your own Singapore Airlines. They followed this advice and it
became a success. And thanks to this initiative Singapore has become a tourist centre too,
especially for short stays. In the same vein, we started to construct a big container harbour.
In Holland I had been chairman of a committee to advise the Dutch government on the
problems to do with shipbuilding, so I had some knowledge about what was going on in that
world. I saw the enormous growth of container transport between the United States and
Europe, concentrated initially in the harbour of Rotterdam. So I advised the construction of
a big container terminal in the harbour of Singapore, taking the risk of overcapacity and
unoccupancy during the first years for granted. The advantage was evident: Singapore would
be the only harbour in the region with container facilities. Nevertheless it was a hard job to
convince the harbour authorities. Only after a small conversation with the minister the
decision could no longer be postponed. Nowadays Singapore, after Rotterdam, has the second
largest container harbour in the world. That surely is something of which to be
proud."
"In my opinion", says Dr. Winsemius, "it would be next to impossible to transplant the
Singapore wonder elsewhere. I have experienced it in other countries. I have given advices
to the government of Greece and, for five years, to the government of Portugal. It is
senseless to launch an economic development programme in a country which lacks political
stability and does not have a government that sticks to that programme in the knowledge that,
one day, it will be recognized and rewarded by the voters."
Kees Tamboer is the economic editor of the Dutch daily Het Parool