For my first meeting, I was honored to meet with a former Eisenhower Fellow who is the Prime Minister's Deputy Secretary (Development) Public Service Division. We met over a delicious Singapore lunch (satay and a fried carrot and shrimp dish for me) and discussed economic development and foreign investment attraction in Singapore. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was the discipline applied in Singapore. They don't approach FDI as a "take what we can get" nor do they simply say "what do we want". Singapore looks at who is interested in Singapore, and then, for example, if a few clean tech companies approach them, they work with these companies to bring them in but focus far beyond these companies and look at what would benefit that industry overall such as by encouraging these entities to set up in the same area so they create a hub area for that industry and encouraging the SME suppliers to also set up in Singapor. They offer incentives but try and stay away from tax incentives believing it to be a "race to the bottom". Another great example was casino development. singapore, after many years of banning casinod, decided to offer two licenses in two locations they chose.. There was no cost for either license per se, and instead the bid process consisted of what the winners would do for the community. As a result, the winners were not those willing to pay the largest one time fee, but those willing to build architecturally significant buildings, that included high end hotels and high end shopping with the promise of economic development, tourism, city beautification and more. A lesson from which we in Pennsylvania can learn.
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