Excerpts from an article of Economist October Issue
- Singapore is “a developed country that grows at developing-country rates,” as Robert Prior-Wandesforde, an economist at HSBC, puts it.
- Its development plans assume the population will grow from 4.7m now to 6.5m in 40-50 years' time, mostly by immigration. Many of the new immigrants come from India and China.
- Singapore still has plenty of green space it could build on. But the plan, says Lim Eng Hwee, a senior planning official, is to keep this and find other ways to accommodate the growth in population and new businesses. One is to continue reclaiming land from the sea. Since independence Singapore's land area has grown from under 600 square kilometres (230 square miles) to around 700. Mr Lim says it could be increased to about 760 sq km by closing gaps between Singapore's main island and lesser ones. But this might prompt more envious grumbles from Malaysia and from Indonesia, another close neighbour, which has become reluctant to sell Singapore sand for its reclamation projects. Like Malaysia, Indonesia feigns environmental concerns about them.
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