Hong Kong no.1 in World Competitiveness Rankings

[Diamond_Gold]

OCBC -world top bank? maybe based on credit rating. But the international market share wise, it is no where in the top 10.

FYI, OCBC bank, a 100% local owned, is the no.1 top most efficient bank in 2 consective years 2011 and 2012.
OCBC world's strongest bank for 2nd straight year

Pay close attention to the bolded words, my objective here is just to use it as a counter argument against a shamesless indian buddy of yours who proclaimed that indians own/ rulee over our banks in Singapore. If not, we real singaporean would not even bother to brag about it.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

FYI, OCBC bank, a 100% local owned, is the no.1 top most efficient bank in 2 consective years 2011 and 2012.
OCBC world's strongest bank for 2nd straight year

Pay close attention to the bolded words, my objective here is just to use it as a counter argument against a shamesless indian buddy of yours who proclaimed that indians own/ rulee over our banks in Singapore. If not, we real singaporean would not even bother to brag about it.

Yeah that was a weird Indian claim.

As far as I know, almost none of the major banks in the world are Indian-owned.

 

[Diamond_Gold]

show me 1 ill remark i made. just because you repeat something a 100 times, it doesnt become true.

Look and read carefully conversation between you and another singaporean flagger, Roll in Deep as follows:

and then we may even possibly go down to chinas level
living in slums and being happy is better than living in those screwed up HDB working 8am to 9pm , being tense abotut job security, eating crappy makan at hawker center out of polystyrene box and getting colon cancer . yes slum dwellers are happy without having much and you guys are kiasu living in wealth

Original PostBy shelly
Source: http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/183961-india-shining-greece-asia-4.html#ixzz1wdCZIa6t

BTW, why I can't find the full posting from you, did you intentionally erased the highlighted part? What a pathetic loser, LOLOL.

 

[Diamond_Gold]

I have honour. I contribute to the society in this country in a positive way, and they will gladly give me the citizenship. I am in no way ditching my country. I am only taking on additional responsibility. now 2 countries are fortunate to have me.

Yeah, we should believe you especially when you are holding on to a ticket (ICO) that allow you to escape out of the country when the situtaion turn sour.

Ditching the "Honour" thing aside, How will you going to be fair with both your host (Singapore) and motherland (India) when there is a situation that require you
to choice side.

Yeah again, both India and Singapore are so damned fortunate to have such a citizen that will potientially abandon one of them in time of crisis. LOLOL. Ooops, seemed like you already did that to your motherland. So there is another big question here for you, "Will or when you do it again?"

Last but not lest, you are an utterly shameless guy by self-proclaiming India and Singapore are fortunate to have you. What GREAT CONTRIBUTIONS you have made for us so far ??????? LOLOL.

 

[UnChosen]

I agree with what you said about the ranking being useless, but disagree on Singapore & Hong Kong cannot lose due to the financial hub status.

I will speak more from a Singapore perspective, firstly Singapore is not an international trading desk it’s more a Wealth Management centre for South East Asia and finance really plays a small part on Singapore GDP. We have other things like shipping, oil refining etc which play bigger roles. Money as we know flows in an out, the minute Singapore has an air of doubt people will start moving money to Switzerland before you know it.

Firstly we have no natural resources only a population of talented people and strong government, the government has to try and ensure the citizens standard of living is met while ensuring cost is low. To ensure there are jobs for everyone (not everyone works in finance) the government has to ensure the talent pool meets what the industry needs, 10 years ago it was engineers now its games and graphics designers. The government is trying to keep one step ahead of competition and goes even to the stage of trying influence the students what to study. And of course to get the companies interested in starting up in Singapore barriers of entry has to be low. Why rent a shop in Singapore at 20,000 USD per month when you can rent the same size shop for 2000 USD in Malaysia.

Hong Kong and Singapore though similarly sized are vastly different in nature, we depend on Indonesia for Gas to power our generators and Malaysia for water. Both of which we should gain independence of in about 10 years time. We have to sustain a defence team which also zaps our labour force. All food has to be imported. The list I assure you is endless
We have limited land, neighbours who control our chokepoints, declining population supplemented by migrants. If we are not competitive how else do we survive, we do not have the luxury to compete in manufacturing so have to constantly up the ante. F1 night racing & Casinos for tourism, biosciences (for next generation) etc are just an example of the extend the government is taking. Fyi manufacturing was our strong point but there is no point competing with China.

Can it be honestly and openly said we are non competitive? If Germany rested on their laurels for 5 years I am very sure they will still have food on the table simply because they can grow it.


To CD
Thanks for the encouragement on the thread I arrived late lol


I welcome migrants who contribute to Singapore economy positively and as long as they are willing to integrate with our manner of live (strange as it may sometimes be). I work with an Indian lady from Mumbai and honestly I couldn't tell that she was not from Singapore. She works hard and is humble though voices her opinions too loudly I very much would welcome her as she has made Singapore her home

Let me clarify what I meant a bit. I wasn't saying Singapore isn't competitive, I was saying that it's competitive in such a way that really isn't applicable to most countries in the world.

Singapore, HK, and Switzerland are the equivalent of calling New York or Shanghai "separate countries". It's extremely difficult/impossible for a country bigger than a city to be competitive like that, because finance, shipping, and refineries can really only support a very tiny population. Good for Singapore for finding its niche before everyone else and capitalizing on it, but for other bigger countries, mass manufacturing is pretty much the only answer...unless the country has natural resources lying around.

The last big country that tried to turn its economy to be entirely service based ended up creating a technology bubble followed by a housing bubble and the disintegration of a significant portion of its manufacturing. Guess which country it was?

To me developing good manufacturing is far harder than developing good services. No one wants to do the "dirty" work involved in manufacturing if they can help it.

 

[Diamond_Gold]

In fact you are the one who was constantly writing bad things about India even before i started to respond to you.

Am I WRONG to refute those who have posted abusive and ridculous comments, or someone who hijacked my country identity or use my country name to post garbage or nasty comments against others.

I usually put out negative remarks on the specific individual (indians) but never on the general whole. In fact, I don't think I could even come close to be racist, unreasonable, nasty and sacastic like many of your kind did here.

FYI, I normally prefer not to judge anyone by what/ who he is, but base on the character and behaviour he showed. So don't blame me for treating you like **** when you the one who misbehaved.

 

[Anonymous user]

Let me clarify what I meant a bit. I wasn't saying Singapore isn't competitive, I was saying that it's competitive in such a way that really isn't applicable to most countries in the world.

Singapore, HK, and Switzerland are the equivalent of calling New York or Shanghai "separate countries". It's extremely difficult/impossible for a country bigger than a city to be competitive like that, because finance, shipping, and refineries can really only support a very tiny population. Good for Singapore for finding its niche before everyone else and capitalizing on it, but for other bigger countries, mass manufacturing is pretty much the only answer...unless the country has natural resources lying around.

The last big country that tried to turn its economy to be entirely service based ended up creating a technology bubble followed by a housing bubble and the disintegration of a significant portion of its manufacturing. Guess which country it was?

To me developing good manufacturing is far harder than developing good services. No one wants to do the "dirty" work involved in manufacturing if they can help it.

Singapore actually had a very strong manufacturing base in the 70's and even 90's, many of my associates parents started their manufacturing in Singapore before it become less economically viable to do so. I recall at one point in time cheap handsets were manufactured here, bearing in mind most manufacturers in Singapore were contract manufacturers who chased the lowest cost.

We will have to agree to disagree on some points, but I can see where you're coming from your argument.

 

[UnChosen]

Singapore actually had a very strong manufacturing base in the 70's and even 90's, many of my associates parents started their manufacturing in Singapore before it become less economically viable to do so. I recall at one point in time cheap handsets were manufactured here, bearing in mind most manufacturers in Singapore were contract manufacturers who chased the lowest cost.

We will have to agree to disagree on some points, but I can see where you're coming from your argument.

Very few countries had been able to transition from "cheap labour" manufacturing to high tech manufacturing, unfortunately. Most become stuck like Mexico and some South American countries where the economy just hovers around low-middle income and doesn't really get anywhere.

I mostly posted to highlight the fact that once some of these country run out of natural resource (including Canada) or human resource (such as China) it is going to get extremely difficult to remain competitive because they can't really copy the HK/Singapore model.

 

[Diamond_Gold]

Yeah that was a weird Indian claim.

As far as I know, almost none of the major banks in the world are Indian-owned.

This is what will happen when one's view and anlysis skill is limited, who lacks the ability to interpret or to comphere the given information which may supplied by source/s that want to serve it's own agenda only.

 

[Anonymous user]

Thanks for the explanation but there is more to it, and it's not just racism. I mean, when they see me, most of them don't think of me as a Bangladeshi (in their minds, they have a certain image of a Bangladeshi, so they do not imagine that I can be a Bangladeshi), but as soon as they hear/know that I am a Bangladeshi, sometimes they behave differently, usually they become somewhat suspicious or aloof upon finding the nationality, but not before it.

My concern is not that much about racism, and besides, it's not like backward Western countries where racism is part of life, and gangs go on to beat people of other races if they happen to be (perceived as) 'weaker'. Racism is not that much of an issue, but I think (quite rightly) Bangladesh and other poor countries' are treated with some degree of suspicion, in general, because of lack of information and/or some other issues due to past experiences by those citizens.

I do not care much about English proficiency anyway. Is Cantonese the most frequently used language in Hong Kong?

Oh I think I should have congratulated Hong Kong for this 'achievement' though we should always take any ranking prepared by Westerners with a grain (or more) of salt. In particular, we should notice that a lot of these rankings are subjective, which is why countries like India rank so high. A considerable weight is allocated to that part of the survey where citizens of certain countries rank their own countries. As Indians and Americans tend to be deluded into thinking that everything about their countries are just about perfect by their propaganda ministries and media, their rankings continue to be higher than they should be year after year.

Hi Banglar Lathial,

I was going to reply to you on this but forgot.

Unfortunately you are right, the locals in Singapore do tend to portray Bangladeshi’s in a certain image mainly due to the large influx of low cost labour in Singapore for the last 15 years in the construction industry, unfortunately we had cases of molest which was suspected to be by some labourers which added further issues.

I myself worked in the construction industry at one point and had the good fortune of working with several labourers, we had a good laugh many a time and I tend not generalize and I do admire them for the hard work they put in to contribute back to their home countries.

Over the years we would have been receiving more higher talent Bangladeshi’s and I believe the perception for several people have changed, I cannot say the change will happen soon but I hope Singaporeans will be less discriminatory if we have proved otherwise.

I saw a local lady today at the drink store having a hearty discussion with a Bangladeshi chap ordering coffee about how he should use certain hand gestures to indicate that the coffee packet should be tied, it’s a small but least positive show of acceptance I would hope.

Singapore’s not perfect but luckily the people are mild mannered and tend to be abusive on the internet, as opposed to countries I’ve been to where they can abuse you on the spot lol.