1918 - 2010 Goh Keng Swee - People's Action Party - PAP

Goh Keng Swee: The Legacy
Goh-lden bequests
Goh Keng Swee’s contributions, which fall into three main areas, have been
fundamental to Singapore’s development. Petir looks at what he left behind
Jurong Industrial Estate was a swamp in the 1960s and was a flop initially.
THE ECONOMY
Industrialisation
As Singapore’s first Finance Minister,
Goh Keng Swee’s most major task
was to address Singapore’s unemployment
rate of 14 per cent and the needs
of a population growing at 4.4 per cent
annually. With no natural resources to
exploit nor any scenic landscape to develop
tourism, he saw industrialisation
as his only option.
Times were bad then. Recalled
economist Albert Winsemius, who was
part of a UN group sent to assess the
situation and who became Singapore’s
economic advisor: “There were strikes
about nothing. There were communistinspired
riots almost every day. The
general opinion was: Singapore is going
down the drain. It is a poor little
market in a dark corner of Asia.”
But his group saw hope in Goh’s
first five­year plan. Based on their re­
commendation, he set up the Economic
Development Board in 1961 to
market Singapore to foreign investors.
It had the pick of Singapore’s brightest
to doing the wooing. But few businesses
were interested. Forty to 50 calls
would see one success. It took a lot of
knocking on doors to change that.
Last year, the EDB brought in $11.8
billion worth of investments, creating
21,900 new jobs.
‘Goh’s Folly’
A total of 3,600ha of swampland in
Jurong were chosen as the site for Sin­
PETIR MAY / JUNE 10
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