Dr Manmohan Singh did well to assure the Singapore PM of India’s commitment to reinforcing its status as an ‘investor-friendly country’
In recent years Singapore has emerged as one of India’s best friends, with shared interests spanning a wide field. Although the two countries had little more than cultural contacts to go on in the Cold War period, economic ties and defence-related arrangements between the two have burgeoned in the last 20 years with Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao initiating this country’s “Look East” policy in the 1990s, which Singapore warmed to without hesitation.
There also exists a rising degree of comfort between India and Singapore in strategic areas. As such, the three-day visit of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to India that ended on Thursday can help introduce a multiplier effect in the already rewarding bilateral ties provided India continues to lubricate the trade and investment environment on its side.
This, in short, is the implicit message Prime Minister Lee, who was visiting this country after seven years, has left behind. At a luncheon meeting with industry leaders, the visiting dignitary called India’s business climate “complicated”. Investors looked for “stability” and “predictability”, Mr Lee noted, and said: “They want to be sure the terms you go in on are the same for the next 20 to 30 years. The more these aspects can be strengthened, the better it will be for India.” This is basic and ought to be a given, although India’s fractious regime of politics in recent times has tended to raise anxieties in the minds of international investors. The major political parties, and not just those in government, need to be conscious that benefits can accrue to India provided it does a few things right. Much of the prickliness to boosting the industrial production and investment climate our political system shows in the name of ordinary people is often artificially generated to win short-term political skirmishes. This is shortsighted and self-defeating. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, therefore, did well to assure the Singapore leader of India’s commitment to reinforcing its status as an “investor-friendly country”.
But Dr Singh must find ways to live up to this by taking early steps on matters of industry concerns that do not require legislative sanction. The Singapore Prime Minister reminded us that his country is India’s second largest “cumulative investor”, and that Singapore is the “top overseas destination” for Indian companies, with 4,000 of them already operating businesses in the city state. Singapore is India’s largest trading partner in the Asean bloc, with which we need to enhance relations at all levels — economic, strategic and cultural, not least since this region looks to India to provide strategic stability and balance. For India, Singapore is a key state with which to enhance ties, and its concerns need to be taken on board.