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Mar­i­ano Browne

Eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment is not a straight path, and poli­cies must be adapt­ed to suit each coun­try’s cir­cum­stances. A key learn­ing is that a coun­try must have a di­rec­tion­al goal to in­form its poli­cies and an over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy that has three crit­i­cal com­po­nents. The first is a clear sense of di­rec­tion and long-term goals. The sec­ond is pri­or­i­ties that guide the in­evitable choic­es and trade-offs. The third is to iden­ti­fy the al­ter­na­tive paths.

Last week, this col­umn not­ed that Sin­ga­pore passed through four broad phas­es, mov­ing from im­port sub­sti­tu­tion (1959-65) to an ex­port ori­en­ta­tion (1966-1973), in­dus­tri­al re­struc­tur­ing (1973-1984) and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion (mid-1980s on­wards).