Singapore’s recession-hit economy may take up to six years to recover in a worst-case scenario, influential founding father Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) said.
“The optimistic scenario is, two to three years, we’re out of this,” Lee, 85, told an audience at a local university late on Friday.
“At the worst, four, five, six years ... Because we are export-dependent,” he said, adding the country’s “imports and exports are the highest in the world as a percentage of GDP.”
Singapore is forecast to slip into its worst recession this year with the economy likely to shrink by up to 5 percent. The city-state’s worst recession since independence in 1965 was in 2001 when the economy contracted 2.4 percent.
The city-state was the first Asian country to slip into a recession when figures released in October last year showed the economy contracted for two straight quarters in the period to September.
Lee, an adviser in his son Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) Cabinet with the title minister mentor, said earlier this month the economy may contract by as much as 10 percent this year if exports continue to fall sharply.
The latest trade figures released last week showed Singapore’s key exports plunged 24 percent last month from a year ago as shipments to its key markets including the US continued to decline.
Lee said Singapore also needs foreigners to survive.
The city-state is not reproducing itself fast enough and the government has in recent years opened its doors to attract more talented migrants to avert a serious population shortage.
“Without new citizens and permanent residents, we are going to be the last of the Mohicans. We will disappear,” Lee said.
Singapore needs a fertility rate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain its population naturally but a string of incentives including monetary ones to encourage Singaporeans to have babies has failed to make an impact.
A report released this month by the Department of Statistics showed 39,935 babies were born last year, well short of the 60,000 births the country needs each year.
Singapore has a population of 4.84 million, including about 1 million foreigners who work in the country and their families.
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