Maritime Singapore - A Success Story

Imagine that you are standing on the Marina Bay Sands Sky Park looking out to the Sea and you see a number of ships anchored in the Singapore anchorage and passing by. You look at them, admire the view and then move on to appreciating the rest of the Singapore skyline. Now assume that one of those ships passing by or anchored is on fire – that will attract a huge amount of attention and possibly make it to news headlines! What I mean to say is that it is human nature to pay more attention to the negative rather than the positive. If things are going well and they usually are, no one really admires this. One hurdle and the world is criticising you. Shipping is no exception.

I have been living in Singapore for the last 10 years and have been involved with the shipping industry over last 23 years. I have never seen better planning and execution of developing the shipping industry in any area of the world. I must mention here that this article is solely my personal view and may or may not fully represent the view of my own company or the shipping industry in its entirety.

Singapore has always been geographically significant as a port but it did not take this position for granted and still does not. It has invested extensively and continues to still invest in soliciting shipping companies and related services so that they can function efficiently and Singapore can grow and benefit from it as well. Kudos to the entire government along with its nodal bodies such Singapore Maritime Foundation (SMF) and Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) and all the organisations involved in the Maritime Singapore for making this a success.

The first thing any industry needs is a conducive environment – Political and Economic – to function efficiently and grow. This was the first step and Singapore did it well. The infrastructure was already in place and growing well. The key was to leverage this to attract the shipping companies to base themselves in Singapore. MPA launched a host of schemes, most of them giving good tax incentives to shipping companies setting up here. The initial entry of the big commodity giants – Rio Tinto, BHP, Vale and others – into Singapore was the master stroke. As the ship owning companies followed – Singapore’s register of shipping is now the largest in Asia – the roster grew at a frantic pace. I remember when I joined my present company in Singapore in 2006 – we too had just opened up our Singapore office – I must have attended at least 20 “opening parties” in the first 6 months. With the big ship owning and operating companies opening shop here to serve their commodity clients, host of ancillary services followed – Ship Brokers, Ship Agents, Bunker Suppliers, Classification Societies, Marine Insurance companies, Maritime Lawyers to name a few.

Was this good enough for the likes of MPA and SMF? Not really. They wanted to make sure that these companies thrived and grew. Maritime Singapore is an eco-system which is dynamic and ever-changing. Like everything else in Singapore, the dependence on the rest of the world is immense and in Shipping, even more so. At every stage, from procuring employment passes to passing specific suggestions to MPA, there is a listening ear on the other side of the table and a will to execute positive changes. The shipping eco-system consists of the regulators, promoters, participants and educators. An example is in arena of Maritime Arbitration. For years, Singapore has been a trading hub and an arbitration avenue in form of Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) always existed. Maritime arbitration was lumped along with the trade related arbitration and that was not helping. SMF spearheaded the effort to launch Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration (SCMA), which is progressing in the right direction and is extremely crucial today in the maritime world. SMF has taken the lead in revamping crucial shipping contracts such as Singapore Sale Form (SSF) and New York Produce Exchange (NYPE) Time Charter 2015.

Along with these initiatives, Singapore invested in the soft assets as well. The initial stages of Maritime Singapore grew with host of expats coming into Singapore and setting up the offices and fuelling expansion of their operations. The real success would be if the future expansion plans of these companies would be serviced with manpower trained in Singapore. This has been achieved to a large extent by launching maritime educational courses being conducted by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore Management University (SMU) and Singapore Polytechnic (SP). They have tied up with other maritime business schools worldwide to keep themselves updated and give students the required exposure as well. Again MPA and SMF stepped in to grant scholarships to encourage students and recently launched Maritime Singapore Connect (MSC) program is designed to be one-stop for a career in Maritime Singapore. A series of other events, talks and symposiums have helped the cause as well. To add to this, MPA supports and collaborates a host of educational courses offering subsidies through the Maritime Cluster Fund (MCF). These courses are offered by recognised international maritime professional bodies such as Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers and others. Over the last 10 years, a sizeable corpus of trained manpower has been developed locally and that will have a lasting effect. This has not only benefited Singapore but the rest of the region as well. Again, I can give my own company’s example. We started in 2006 with a staff of three – all expats. Today, we are twenty eight with over 50 percent of staff being Singaporeans and Permanent Residents. There are scores of companies which have followed the same patterns. Another fact is that we still have more than 10 nationalities in our office and if there was one place in Asia where all of them would be happy to base themselves and their families, it would be Singapore.

The presence of these companies is growing, even in a low growth environment, and that is a huge benefit to Singapore as a whole and therefore benefiting each and every Singaporean as well. Maritime sector contributes a whopping 7% to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and that is in a challenging current maritime market. Shipping markets are cyclical in nature and sooner rather than later, the market will experience an upturn. It is heartening to see that Singapore is truly ready – with the required political will, the economic infrastructure, the professional bodies and the trained manpower and resources – to benefit from such an upturn.

Maritime Singapore truly works like a well-oiled machine and that is no mean feat. It is time to change our nature and appreciate this fact that it is running smoothly and not pay attention to this machine only when it has a small malfunction. It is an impressive display which deserves tremendous praise and applause. Hats off to each and every person and organisation which makes Maritime Singapore such a huge success.