Singapore Lean Global Expansion

Introduction

Singapore has built its economy as being the preferred business expansion destination within Asia. Its geographic location along the Straits of Malacca has made it a historically strategic hub for global trade, commerce and shipping. Despite being a resource constrained island of 5.5 million, Singapore has leveraged this to develop an advanced, business and technology forward economy.

Ease of Doing Business

Singapore ranks within the top 3 on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report. Singapore accomplishes this consistent ranking through transparent, corruption free regulation and a competitive corporate tax rate of 17%. Despite being a South East Asian country, the laws were designed in English, using common law to be accessible to foreign business. The government uses modern, best in class software solutions to make ease of reporting user friendly.

Professional Services Industry

Singapore has long been a hub for finance, led in part by competitive corporate tax and zero capital gains tax rates. This has supported a competitive, highly developed professional services industry to emerge. Managing a global expansion will inevitably require partnering with multiple vendors and Singaporean professional service providers are accustomed to supporting foriegn firms. This includes service providers such as lawyers, accountants, corporate services, corporate secretary, insurance brokers and banking.

Talent

The Singapore education system ranks amongst the highest in the world according to OECD. The education system promotes pragmatic career paths to keep its citizens competitive such as legal, accounting, engineering and sales. Singaporeans will often hold a more global mindset and experiences than populations from neighboring countries. Companies planning a go to market global expansion should consider Singapore as their sales hub due to the ability to connect with countries throughout the region.

Access to the region

The one drawback of Singapore that many companies expanding to Asia cite is the small population size of 5.5 million people does not present as attractive of a customer opportunity compared. Further, the Singapore economy is so efficient that the problems of Singaporeans do not always provide a clear carryover to problems of other Southeast Asian nations. When companies expand to Asia they often are drawn to larger populations such as the total of South East Asia (650 million people), India (1.3 billion), China (1.4 billion) or Indonesia (270 million). Despite the relative small market size, Singapore provides the perfect landing pad for companies first exploring Asia and provides access to manage the region.