A bookworm and news junkie gone to the blogs
The National University of Singapore is 34th and Nanyang Technological University 174th in the 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings powered by Thomson Reuters, released today.
American universities swept the board. Here’s the list of the world’s top 100 universities.
Singapore Population (Figures in Thousands)
Singapore now has 5.07 million people. But the population is growing more slowly – by 1.8 per cent this year, down from 3.1 per cent last year – with fewer new permanent residents and a lower intake of other foreigners. Several Asian countries have even lower growth rates, including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and India.
The number of Singapore permanent residents has gone up by just 1.5 per cent to 541,000 this year, after an 11.5 per cent increase last year. There are now 1.3 million non-resident foreigners, up 4.1 per cent this year after a 4.8 per cent increase last year and an astounding 19 per cent jump in 2007.
The Singaporean population has grown only 0.9 per cent to 3.23 million after a 1.1 per cent rise last year. China's population (1.33 billion) has an even lower growth rate (0.5 per cent in 2008 and 2009 ) and so does Hong Kong (population 7 million after 0.4 per cent growth in 2008 and 0.7 per cent in 2009). Taiwan's population (23.8 million) increased only 0.4 per cent and South Korea's (48.7 million) just 0.3 per cent in both 2008 and 2009 while Thailand's (63.9 million) went up by merely 0.7 per cent in 2008 and 0.6 per cent in 2009.
Singapore has the fastest growing population among all the countries I checked on the Asian Development Bank Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2010. You will find it here on the bank's website.
I didn't check Samoa and Vanuatu and a few other Pacific islands on the list. But, among all the other countries, Singapore posted the biggest population increase in 2008 and 2009, according to the figures given by the bank. It shows by what percentage the population increased in each country. Those are the figures used here in the chart and the following table, which includes all the countries I checked.
Singapore's members of parliament are paid more than the members of the House of Commons and the European Parliament and their counterparts in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
| Singapore | S$225,000 | ($166,000) |
| USA | $174,000 | ($174,000) |
| Japan | ¥1,300,000 a month | ($15,200 a month,i.e $182,000 a year). |
| UK | £65,738 | ($103,000) |
| European Parliament | €7,665 a month | ($9,880 a month, i.e, over $118,500 a year) |
| Canada | C$155,400 | ($151,000) |
| Australia | A$131,040 | ($118,000) |
| New Zealand | NZ$144,500 | ($103,000) |
(Table shows annual salaries unless mentioned otherwise.)
I discovered this after reading that the Indian parliament plans to treble its members' salaries. The Financial Times report says: "Parliamentarians in the world’s largest democracy currently receive Rs16,000 ($343, €266, £220) a month."
That's less than a day's pay for a Singapore MP.
Indonesia, Malaysia and India sent the largest number of visitors to Singapore in June, followed by Australia and China. The Singapore Tourism Board reported, as the number of visitors reached 950,000, the highest figure since last December and the highest ever for June:
Fourteen out of the 15 top markets registered positive year-on-year growth in June this year.
In June 2010, China ( up 65.8 per cent), Malaysia ( up 51.3 per cent), and Hong Kong (up 48.2 per cent) registered their highest growth out of the top 15 markets.
Visitors from India rose 6 per cent to 83,000.
Indonesia sent the most visitors: 214,000, up 34 per cent. Malaysia sent the second biggest contingent, 93,000; India, third; Australia, fourth, 75,000; and China, fifth, 69,000.
Singapore has the second highest income gap between the rich and the poor, as indicated by the Gini coefficient, among the 38 countries with very high human development, according to the 2009 United Nations Development Report. Only Hong Kong has a higher income gap. See the table on this web page. You can also build your own tables using various economic indicators by going to the statistics page and you can read the report here.
The UN report says: The Gini index lies between 0 and 100. A value of 0 represents absolute equality and 100 absolute inequality.
Singapore, according to the 2009 UN report, had a Gini coefficient of 42.5, exceeded only by Hong Kong (43.4) among the countries with very high human development.
Here we compare Singapore's Gini coefficient with the figures for the rest of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asean Nations (Asean) and other countries with which it has close links. The figure tends to be lower in European countries, as this chart shows. All the figures are from the UN report.
Singapore has the highest immigration rate in Asia Pacific after Hong Kong, according to the 2009 United Nations Development Report. Hong Kong's emigration rate is also higher than Singapore's.
I looked up the report after Ms Amy Khor, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Water Resources, mentioned the UN Human Development Index in Parliament. You can see the report here and the statistics here.
Singapore is ranked 23rd on the index, as she said. It is one of only five Asian countries with very high human development, according to the index, based on life expectancy, literacy and standard of living. The others are Japan (10th), Hong Kong (24th), South Korea (26th) and Brunei (30th).
Norway is first, Australia second, Iceland third, Canada fourth and Ireland fifth on the list of 38 countries with very high human development, which include all the rich Western nations though some do better than others: the Netherlands (sixth), Sweden (seventh), France (eighth), Switzerland (ninth), America (13th), New Zealand (20th), the United Kingdom (21st) and Germany (22nd). The Middle East is represented by Israel (27th), Kuwait (31st), Qatar (33rd) and the United Arab Emirates (35th).
Interestingly, some of the countries with very high human development also have high immigration rates. It's as high as 20 per cent in Ireland, 13.1 per cent in Ireland and 11.8 per cent in New Zealand. Hong Kong is also close to double digits with 9.5 per cent. The United Kingdom also shows a slightly higher figure (6.6 per cent) than Singapore (6.3 per cent). Emigration from the United States is as low as 0.8 per cent, same as that from India, but just a little more than from Japan (0.7 per cent) and China (0.5 per cent). India and China are not on the list of 38 countries with very high human development, which are all named at the end of this post.
State-owned enterprises or government-linked companies (GLCs) are taking a bigger and bigger share of the economic pie in both Singapore and China. And, in both countries, labour gets the lowest share of the national income in the form of wages.
So says Singapore-born Linda YC Lim, a professor of business strategy at the University of Michigan, in a paper which asks: Why do East Asians save so much?
One reason is high property prices. Then again, "Some economies—Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong—have forced-saving schemes or national “provident funds” with high rates of mandatory contributions out of earned income."
Nevertheless, there is a growing income gap between the rich and the poor. It is the high income earners, GLCs and multinationals that are thriving in "corporatist" Singapore, she adds.
Unlike in other East Asian countries, domestic consumption in Singapore fell from 46.3 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1990 to 38.6 per cent in 2007 and in China from 50.6 per cent to 36.4 per cent, says Lim. Private consumption and wages are probably held in check in Singapore by the presence of a large and growing foreign workforce which, like the multinationals, wants to send money home, she adds.
The Singapore economy lagged behind East Asia as a whole at the end of last year. Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia all grew more than Singapore in the fourth quarter. And so, of course, did China. Only Hong Kong and the Philippines posted weaker growth. This chart is based on the World Bank report released this week.
Download the report from the World Bank to see how the Asian economies performed against one another in various ways. See how the Singapore foreign reserves, stock market and exports compare with the other Asian economies.
Singapore suffered a bigger drop in exports than China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam during the recession. See the chart below based on the World Bank report released yesterday.
But the Singapore stock market rebounded more strongly than any other market in the region except Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan, according to the same report. This chart shows all four were back to nearly pre-crisis levels last month.
Hong Kong has bigger foreign reserves than Singapore, but look at China's growing giant pile.
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Abhijit loves reading, writing and getting news and information online.