Singapore wooing investors

The city state struggles with rising business costs amid curbs on foreign workers

Singapore is targeting as much as S$ 13 billion ($ 11 billion) of investment commitments in manufacturing and services this year even as the city state struggles with rising business costs amid curbs on foreign workers.

The country lured fixed- asset investments of about S$ 16 billion last year, the Economic Development Board said yesterday in its annual review today. The government is also targeting as much as S$ 8 billion in business spending in 2013 from manufacturing and services industries such as information and communications, education and health care.

Singapore, which has been ranked the easiest place to do business for seven straight years by the World Bank, is competing with lower- cost countries such as neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia for foreign investment as an uneven global recovery hurts demand for exports. A government push to reduce the island’s reliance on cheap workers has tightened the labour market, pushing the unemployment rate to a six- quarter low.

“The adjustments that companies have to make in Singapore of course is a concern to us,” Leo Yip, the board’s chairman, said at a press briefing yesterday.

Investments this year should help generate 19,000 to 22,000 skilled jobs and add as much as S$ 18 billion to gross domestic product annually when completed, the board said. Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest consumerproducts maker, are among companies that are expanding their operations in the island smaller than New York City.