Don’t Frighten the Horses – the Political Economy of Singapore’s Foreign Exchange Rate Regime since 1981

In this paper we explore the links between Singapores foreign exchange rate regime since 1981 and the broader aspects of its political economy. Singapore has been remarkably successful in achieving fast growth, low and stable price inflation and a strong external position. An important part of this strategy has been its managed floating exchange rate regime, which is generally regarded as being successful, but this needs to be viewed within the broader context of the governments pragmatic socialism to keep inflation low and stable as the bedrock for attracting inflows of mobile foreign capital to sustain long-run export competitiveness, and an economic strategy based on high levels of centralized saving and investment, a high degree of government involvement in the economy and the relentless accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. Indeed, part of the reason why managed floating has been successful in Singapore has been because the credibility of monetary policy has been enhanced through the governments command over resources and its ability to respond quickly and flexibly to changes in economic circumstances using, where necessary, unorthodox policies of demand management to cut business costs. Exchange rate policy, therefore, becomes an integral part of the policy to redistribute income to capital to sustain employment and prevent mobile firms from leaving Singapore. By the early 1990s the imperative became to diversify the structure of the economy away from exclusive reliance on a predominantly foreign manufacturing base and to reduce the extent of government involvement in the economy and it became harder to justify high levels of centralized saving and investment. The dilemma is that the government is finding it difficult to extricate itself from the economy without compromising policy effectiveness, and there is little evidence that dependence of the economy on foreign capital and labour has diminished.