Business-friendly regulations and the Singapore Australia Free Trade Agreement have created an attractive market for Australian companies exporting to Singapore, according to Austrade senior trade commissioner Singapore, Maurine Lam.
Addressing a WA Business News Meet the Ambassadors function last week, Ms Lam said that, although the economic powerhouses of China and India were important to Australia, Singapore offered an excellent regulatory environment.
“A very recent World Bank international comparative study, Doing Business in 2007, has found that Singapore is the easiest country to do business with,” she said.
“They have scored consistently very highly in a number of areas, such as protecting investors, trading across borders and engaging workers.”
Ms Lam said the 2003 FTA between Australia and Singapore was strategically important and had helped to deliver a 127 per cent increase in revenue for Australian companies exporting to the country last year
“Three and a half years on, we have found that, with promotion of SAFTA, more Australian companies are looking at Singapore not just as a destination, but also using that as a gateway into the region,” she said.
One of the main winners under SAFTA was the beer and stout sector, where tariffs had been reduced to allow Australian companies, such as Fremantle-based brewer Little Creatures, to enter the market.
Ms Lam said the services sector was another beneficiary, particularly in the area of government procurement, where Australian companies had been given preferential treatment for tenders in 47 out of 117 Singapore government agencies.
“The mutual recognition agreement has strengthened the ties between professional bodies in the two countries,” she said.
Other WA companies to have ventured into Singapore after the free trade agreement were Henderson-based shipbuilder, Strategic Marine, which secured two contracts worth $9.2 million, to provide fast petrol vessels to Singapore’s coast guard, and biofuels producer Natural Fuels.
Ms Lam said the education and ICT sectors also held opportunities for Australian companies, while Australia held 40 per cent of the market share in the wine industry.
Although Singapore’s population of four million people was small, it hosted 9.7 million visitors annually and held an important strategic location between Australia and the global market in the Asia Pacific.
“The Asia Pacific collectively (has) about two billion consumers, and more than 800 million of them have got very high disposable incomes,” she said.
