Thursday, March 4, 2010

Promoting Singapore as a Financial Center

Dear Mr. Tan

From 2005, the MAS has been aggressive in promoting Singapore as a financial centre. Singapore gave tax incentives of all sorts to attract financial institutions to relocate their biz to Singapore.

Many banks relocate their FX, fixed income, structured products biz to Singapore. Also, Singapore has attracted many hedge funds to set up offices here. While the effort did boost Singapore's GDP, it might have also led to the following:

i. inflated real estate prices in commercial offices, residental
ii. more structured products being structured and sold here to unsuspecting retail customers.


HCM