Key Industries

The most important business sector is the services producing industry with its main sectors international banking, trade finance, insurance and other services. Transport and logistics as well as energy supply and communication play an important role for Singapore’s GDP as well.

In manufacturing, the electronics and chemicals sector comprise the most important sectors. Given the city state’s high-population density and small land area, it is outstanding that the goods producing industries still earn 30% of GDP, mainly with high-end precision products. Many multinationals undertake investments in the lion city: just to name a few, Wacker Chemie set up its regional technical centre in 2007, Wiegand Metals invested 150 Mio SGD in a manufacturing plant and Lanxess previously set up a rubber manufacturing plant. For large-scale manufacturing, companies can set up their factories at either the nearby Malaysian state of Johor or the Indonesian island of Bintan, using Singapore as a platform to manage these operations.

To become an international centre in selected high-end industries like semiconductors, information technology, media, health services as well as biological and genetic engineering, the government specifically invests in education, research and development (R&D).  Thus the research hubs Biopolis (biomedical sciences), Fusionopolis (materials science, engineering, computing and others) and Mediapolis (media centre) were established recently. Moreover Singapore promotes R&D opportunities in Clean Energies, specifically solar technique. In total 2.6% of the GDP are invested in R&D; the private sector spent 2.2 bn EUR in 2007.

Other emerging businesses comprise the sectors automotive, lifestyle, natural resources, nanotechnology and intelligent systems.