TR EMERITUS

According to PAP logic, this is because he wasn't paid enough. I think pay him a mayor's or a senior parliamentary secretary's salary would have prevented him from committing this crime. We need to increase everyone's pay again, so as to cut down on corruption.   Andrew Loh      Read More →

One of the highlights of my working life in corporate insolvency came from a meeting which involved one of Singapore’s foremost insolvency and restructuring practitioners. I was part of a team bidding for a case that was being held up in the American courts and my employer felt that it was necessary to rope in a “brand” name practitioner and so got this particular practitioner into the coalition that we were trying to assemble. Towards the end of the meeting, the solicitor who was trying to build the team turned to this practitioner and asked, “Are your fees competitive.” At that very instant, the practitioner said, “I’m NOT competitive at all,” and he said so with a certain amount of pride. I think of this moment and the way this man took so much pride in being “NOT competitive at all,” because it underlines one of the most fundamental aspects of doing business – price. One of my favourite clients said it best when he told me – tell me: 1.      What can you do? 2.      How quickly can you do it? 3.      How much will be cost me? As someone who was inevitably desperate for the job, the answer to these questions were as close as one could get to the following: 1.      Anything you want? 2.      It was done before you even thought of it? 3.      Nothing at all. Quite often, the most important factor in deciding who got the job, often boiled down to the third point. It is in the buyer’s interest to get away with paying as little as possible and the seller will inevitably try to show that he or she can give the buyer the price that he or she wants. If I look back at my freelancing days, I realise that I had one key advantage over my competitors, who were inevitably sizeable companies – price. I could do the job at a certain standard at price that my competitors could not do. When I took my last big job in the industry, I was presented with a quote that the client had gotten from a multinational and was told – “It’s yours if you can do it at half the costs.” I was hungry enough to agree and we ended up settling at around 40 percent of what the competitor had quoted. However, while I had won the job on the third point, the client had high expectations about the first point. I was expected to deliver coverage on a multinational level without the multinational team (which would have required a budget). I managed to deliver the expected results at the expected budget (so much so that they told me to invoice and paid on the spot) by working through a relationship that are not commonly used by conventional practitioners. Business is inevitably about balancing points one and two with point three. The adage is that success inevitably boils down to being able to be “good, fast and cheap.” I’ve noticed that national economies, particularly the Asian ones do something similar. Japan, the most advanced economy, built itself up by being able to make things cheaper and better than the West. Gradually, as prices rose in Japan, manufacturing moved to South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Being able to work cheap has done wonders for Asia. Millions have left poverty because we were able to give the multinationals a cheaper alternative. This went into hyperdrive when China started becoming the world’s workshop and India the back office. However, while price is often an important factor, I have to ask if this is sustainable, particularly for the mature economies like Hong Kong and Singapore. Our politicians are particularly fond of reminding us that in order to stay competitive in the global economy, Singapore needs to be competitively priced. I don’t think they’re wrong to suggests to say that Singapore needs to be “competitive.” We are a pipsqueak island with no domestic market or resources. Our larger neighbours have more to offer and so we got to be on our toes and constantly find things to offer the world. While I do understand that we need to be competitive in the global economic arena, I do question if the “need to be competitive,” is becoming an excuse to justify unacceptable practices, especially when it comes to making life better for the poor and needy. Just think of the two most common instances when the need to stay competitive is brought up to stop a discussion. They are inevitably: Having a minimum wage – common argument is that this will make us less competitive (read cheap) and therefore our economic system and well being will collapse; When it comes to slave labour from South Asia. Once again, the common point is that if we gave the slaves a dollar an hour more (and actually gave it to them) and got them to spend an hour less in the sun, our infrastructure costs would sky rocket and our economic system would collapse (believe it or not, even when Covid-19 was showing us very clearly that slave hovels were endangering the rest of us, there were people fretting that improving the lot of slaves would endanger our economic survival). Shouldn’t it be clear by now that a mature economy like Singapore’s can no longer compete on being cheap and we need to reinvent our focus on being good instead of being cheap. This is not to say that price will not be an important factor – merely that we need to compete on something other than price. I go back to my freelancing experiences and the insolvency practitioner who is proudly not competitive. I competed on price because I went to look for my customers. The insolvency practitioner has reached the stage where customers look for him. He does not need to be cheap. He does not need to do every job to stay alive – merely the ones that pay very well. There are examples of this. The most famous example of Apple, which designs products and reinvents the way we do things. Apple is an example of a company and business that creates our need to need their products. This is an example of what type of business Singapore Inc needs to aspire to. Unfortunately to be good, you need to pay and this where Singapore needs to get away from its obsession with “cheap.” Let’s face it we will never make things cheaper than China or 3D printing or do back office work cheaper than India or AI and that’s even if we give away factory land away and exempt foreign multinationals from paying CPF contributions to locals. Our economic role models can no longer be other developing countries. I think of the German model as an example. Germany has one of the highest hourly wages in the world: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/minimum-wage-by-country Yet, at the same time, Germany is also the third largest exporter in the world. Germany with one third of the population of the USA and not even 10 percent of China’s, competes in the global market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_exports What does Germany export? It exports good quality products. The ones that come to mind are Mercedes and BMW, which are known as some of the best cars in the world rather than the cheapest: However, there are others. The German economy or Europe’s largest and the world’s fourth largest, is driven by SME enterprises that specialize in unique goods for very niche industries. I think of the Rational Combi-Oven that every chef I’ve worked with used to drool over as an example. Isn’t it time we moved away from trying to be the world’s cheapest for the world’s big boys? Why can’t we be proud of being good and not being embarrassed of getting the world to pay for Singapore Inc’s products what it pays for that of the West. We’re a small economy but in the interconnected world we live in, there’s no reason why we can’t do big things on the world stage? Surely this is something the government should drive us towards.     Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →

As a former small businessman from the “Merdeka” Generation, I find that the stupidity of some businesses or its staff are simply beyond comprehension. I have a son who is getting married next month to a PRC girl in a small city in China. As I am already old and mobility is an issue, I am physically unable to attend their wedding, so I decided to remit some money to my son to buy a small apartment, as a wedding gift to the couple. So yesterday morning, I approached a Western Union (WU) in Clementi area with the intention of remitting S$50k to my son. To my disbelieve, I was informed by one of the counter staff that I can only remit a maximum of S$5000 to my son (recipient) per instance. I have used WU in the past and have never heard of such a regulation, so thinking that it may be a new regulation by MAS, I then asked that the S$50k be split into 10 remittance to stay within the S$5k limit, but was again informed by the staff that there is a limit of 1 remittance per day per recipient, so even if I ask 10 friends to remit the balances, WU would not process the transactions at all. I was further informed by the staff that I can only do another remittance to my son (same recipient) after 3 days subject to the same limit of S$5000, meaning that if I were to insist on using WU to remit the S$50k, I would need to visit WU every 3 days to remit S$5k at a time, utilizing a total of (50,000/5000) x 3 = approximately a month. Editor's note: TRE has called WU as a possible client and established that this was indeed the case. Not wanting to waste time since I have already wasted 3 hours queueing, I left the office and decided to use DBS bank thinking that since I have an account with the bank, it would be a breeze to effect a Telegraphic Transfer (TT), although it would take about 3 days for the remittance to reach my son compared to WU's within hours. Click to enlarge So armed with my son's banking particulars, I went to a DBS bank nearby, but lo and behold, I received another shock of my life when the teller told me that they cannot effect the TT because DBS bank requires an ENGLISH name and address for the receiving bank and my son's residential address in China. Having remitted funds to China just a few years back when I still in business, I calmly inform the teller that all that was needed to be done was to translate the Chinese bank name and address to Hanyu Pingin, but the teller refused to let me do so and insisted that it is not acceptable. I then tried to explain to the teller that since I am using SWIFT information for the TT, receiving bank's address is not a must and can even be omitted because whatever information required for the receiving bank for TT are already contained in the SWIFT. I also informed the teller that I have remitted funds to China in the past through other local commercial banks and I had only filled in the bank's location, i.e. province and city. To get my point across, I even informed the teller that even for my USA Paypal account, I had added a local bank account only with bank name, bank location and a SWIFT number and I could withdraw funds to my local bank account without any issue. Anyone with a Paypal account can simply verify this by trying to add a new bank account. Again, I received a flat reply that as long as I do not provide the name and address of the bank and the recipient's address in ENGLISH, my TT request cannot be processed. Exhausted after having wasted 3 hours queueing at WU and another hour at DBS, I went home. When I reached home, I called my son and asked if he could provide the information which DBS bank had requested in ENGLISH and was advised by him that most of the places in China do not have official english names and most of the time, Hanyu Pingyin is used without any problem, for example Peking and Beijing are internationally accepted, even for bank remittance. Anyway, I have decided to use a remittance service to remit the funds but just out of curiosity, can any banking-related readers or English experts please help me to translate the following address to English (not Hanyu Pingin). 中国农业储蓄银行 湖北省, 老河口市, 张集镇 胡家寨, 村委会对面前行150米. Thank you.   Ong Jimmy   * The actual name and certain details have been renamed and altered slightly to protect the writer's privacy.      Read More →