The period between 1966 and 1973 saw the fastest growth in Singapore's history. Large numbers of foreign managers and unskilled workers were brought in. Our entrepôt [?] economy was replaced by a diversified economic structure based on manufacturing, trade and finance.

Full employment was soon achieved. The emphasis then switched to higher skilled jobs and the production of better quality products, for example shipbuilding and repair, and tourism.

Four keys to the success of this policy were an able and stable administration; a hardworking and enterprising workforce which is well-educated and English-speaking; a strategic position in South-East Asia; and a good deep-water port.

1972 saw the National Productivity Board (renamed in 1996 as the Productivity & Standards Board (PSB)) being set up to conduct courses and seminars on productivity techniques, in-plant training and management consultancy services.

The government encouraged private enterprise and capital [?] through a three pronged combination of fiscal concessions (such as the granting of pioneer status to companies which were just starting up, tax reliefs, tax concessions on export profits and training subsidies), building more industrial estates with appropriate and adequate infrastructural facilities (for example, flatted factories for high-tech, skill intensive light industries near densely populated areas) and ensuring a favourable investment climate (including encouraging a responsible trade union movement).

Between October to March, Boon Lay, Pioneer and Tuas receive on average between 135 mm to 150 mm per month, Clementi, Jurong East and Jurong West receive between 150 mm per month and 165 mm per month, and Bukit Batok, Bukit Panjang and Choa Chu Kang receive more than 235 mm per month.

Between April to September, the figures for the same areas are less than 115 mm per month, between 115 mm and 135 mm per month and between 135 mm to 150 mm per month respectively.

Population densities in the Tuas and Pioneer areas are the lowest of the region [?], with fewer than 2500 inhabitants per square kilometre. Boon Lay, Jurong West, Jurong East and Clementi house between 2500 and 5000 people per square kilometre, Tengah, Choa Chu Kang and Bukit Panjang (the latter two with their executive condominiums) between 5000 and 10000 people per square kilometre, and Bukit Batok has up to 20000 people per square kilometre.

The average literacy rate [?] in the western region in 1990 was 91.1 percent, compared to the national average of 90.0 percent.

Jurong Industrial Estate is now a self-contained industrial town. It is the largest industrial estate in Singapore, covering nine thousand hectares. In 1992, 4500 companies had set up business there, employing a total of 277000 workers.

Recently opened is the thirty-seven hectare International Business Park [?] at Jurong East, which includes a ten-storey building with a rentable space of thirty-thousand square metres. Already around 240 companies have created twenty thousand jobs there. The park is for companies at all stages of operations in software development, research and ancillary activities.

Among these is the German Centre for Industry and Trade, which is one of two incubator centres at the park. The centre opened in 1995 to nurture small German firms for take-off in the region.

By June 1997, Southeast Asia's first silicon wafer polishing facility will be operational in Jurong. Covering an area of 1670 m², the plant will have a capacity of $20 million worth of fifteen- and twenty-centimetre wafers annually. Such test wafers are used to determine whether machines in wafer fabrication plants are running at optimal levels.

All these businesses, together with those in the twenty-hectare Tuas Techpark (ready in early 1998), will be able to take full advantage of the 1.9 kilometre-long, six-lane-wide, second Singapore-Malaysia link at Tuas, which will be open to traffic in early 1998. It will be much easier for vehicles to join Malaysia's North-South Highway from Tuas, via Gelang Patah, than from Woodlands. In order to cater to the projected capacity of 200000 vehicles daily, Jalan Buroh, Jalan Boon Lay and Tuas Road will be upgraded to semi-expressways, and Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim will be upgraded to an expressway. As a result, traffic congestion at Woodlands is expected to be eased by 14300 vehicles daily (about a third).

The Shell oil refinery at Pulau Bukom handles 440000 barrels per day (a barrel is equivalent to 159 litres; it is so called because oil was originally stored in wooden fishing barrels), out of Singapore's total of 1.15 billion barrels per day (the world consumes about sixty million barrels per day). Only ten percent of Bukom's output is for the local market. In fact, the installation at Bukom is the third largest oil refinery in the world, and is Shell's largest. Shell itself is Singapore's largest foreign investor, having invested about $4 billion into petroleum manufacturing and $2.6 billion into petrochemicals.

The Bukom facility is 6.5 kilometres away from the mainland, and actually comprises three islands - Pulau Bukom Besar is 155 hectares in size, Pulau Bukom Kecil is 55 hectares, and Pulau Ular ('Snake Island') is 35 hectares. The latter two islands began operations in the seventies. Presently there are eleven wharves in the complex. Up to three thousand people work in Bukom. It is very much self-sufficient, having its own fire station, tailor, barber, laundry and clinic.

Giving Bukom a run for its money will be the three thousand hectare Jurong Island, which, as mentioned above, will be formed by reclaiming [?] 1755 hectares around the present Western islands. The reclamation will take place in three phases.

The first will add 184 hectares by linking Pulaus Merlimau, Seraya, Ayer Chawan, Ayer Merbau and Sakra by September 1997. December 1998 will see the opening of a $400 million causeway to mainland Singapore, allowing materials to be brought in by land. A year later, the second phase, worth $640 million, will add 440 hectares by merging the first phase with Pulaus Pesek and Pesek Kecil. The third phase will add 1103 hectares and an LRT line to Bukit Batok by 2015. Development of land and infrastructure for the entire project will cost $7 billion. Land leases will last for thirty or sixty years.

One of the islands to be amalgamated into Jurong Island, Pulau Ayer Merbau, is already the site of an integrated petrochemical complex, operated by the Petroleum Corporation of Singapore (PCS). It was built in 1984 at a cost of $2 billion. A second PCS complex there will be operational by February 1997.

This latter complex costs $3.4 billion, and will produce over 500000 tonnes of ethylene and 225000 tonnes of propylene annually.

On another of the islands to be amalgamated - Pulau Seraya - Shell is building the 1200 m² Shell Seraya Research Laboratory, which is an $11 million research and development (R&D;) laboratory for the study of polyurethanes, which are used to make the foam found in products such as mattresses, furniture and car seats. Part of the operating costs will by supported by a grant from the National Science and Technology Board. The laboratory will be beside the company's existing $50 million polyols facility - polyols are the raw materials used in the production of polyurethanes. This latter facility produces eighty thousand tonnes of polyols annually.

The EDB estimates that a further 650000 tonnes of ethylene, 350000 tonnes of propylene and 400000 tonnes of aromatics will be required annually by 2000.

To meet this projected demand, an additional two integrated petrochemical complexes, operated by Mobil and Exxon, will be built on Jurong Island by then, each at a cost of $2 billion.

By late 1999, the island's daily industrial water needs of 150000 cubic metres of water (equivalent to ten percent of Singapore's non-domestic consumption) will be met by a 9.42 hectare $220 million facility on the eastern part of the island, which would also treat industrial water (by reverse osmosis [?] - the most cost-effective way) and hazardous wastes. The facility will have two plants producing high-grade industrial water (tapping the Environment Ministry's industrial water supply to the mainland), two to treat and dispose of hazardous waste and bio-sludges, and a utilities complex. Six months later, waste water from the plants will also be recycled. All these measures will mean that the individual companies on the island need not build their own treatment plants. The economies of scale they enjoy would lower their operating costs by at least a quarter.

Source: The Business Times

Towards 2000, there will be new shopping malls at Boon Lay (Jurong Point), Bukit Batok (West Mall), Bukit Panjang (Bukit Panjang Plaza) and Choa Chu Kang (Lot 1). Jurong East will have been developed into a Regional Centre [?].

By 2010, Tengah will be developed into a residential area, Jalan Bahar will have a business park, and an LRT system will be in place, linking Jurong Island with Bukit Batok. Jurong East will have watersports and its own yachting marina. Jurong River and Tuas will see business parks, and as a consequence, the MRT will be extended to Tuas. The latter may have some wafer fabrication industry, and sixty percent of its land area will be used for industry, compared to only twenty-eight percent presently. Singapore's first desalination plant will also most likely be built there.

All these business parks, together with the ones at Rochester Park and the SGH, will form the southwest Technology Corridor [?]. These corridors (the other being in the northeast) will be the industrial estates [?] of the future, and will be serviced by the Deep-Tunnel Sewerage System. The business parks in these corridors are designed to meet the needs of information-based industries.

Companies in high-technology industries can put their front-end, non-pollutive activities, such as light manufacturing, and their back-room office work under one roof, on a 3:2 basis. There will be workplaces and businesses, housing and recreational facilities (such as saunas, a gymnasium, a beer garden, a karaoke lounge), and even banks, medical and child-care centres.

For example, TeleTech Park - Asia's first purpose-built centre for the telecommunications and information technology industries - will occupy a 3.4 hectare site in the Singapore Science Park. It is a $80 million venture, and its infrastructure includes on-site satellite links, broadband ISDN, optical fibre links, video-conferencing and in-building wireless communications.

Companies specializing in R&D; which take up tenancy at the Park may be eligible for incentives from the EDB. By March 1997, nearly three years after the idea was first mooted, start-up technology companies will be able to be nurtured in a $11 million incubator centre called the Innovation Centre. It will be Singapore's first one-stop high-tech facility offering a supportive working environment for so-called technopreneurs to increase their chances of success in their crucial first two years of operation.

The leases on the 20 to 100 square-metre units are therefore non-renewable, but will be subsidized by as much as sixty percent. Furthermore, the companies will be able to share office services such as reception, secretarial support, meeting and conference rooms, a law firm specializing in commercialization and intellectual property, a business centre offering accounting and management consultancy services, as well as largely free advice on businesses and marketing, technical issues and financial services. Seed venture capital funding will also be available on the premises.

Through all these measures, it is hoped that a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship will eventually be cultivated in Singapore.

The concept of these technology corridors is similar to that of Malaysia's Multimedia SuperCorridor.