SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC) wrote in a July 27 (Thursday) Facebook post that there are several reasons why Singapore should consider upping the aid it extends to other countries, even when there are Singaporeans who themselves need help.
As to the argument that Singapore is a small country, Assoc Prof Lim wrote, “But we don’t say the same thing when it comes to other aspects of international finance: we want to be a global wealth management hub, and pride ourselves that we are a major financial center.
Why not foreign aid? Other small nations have wielded disproportionate soft power by being generous. We can do the same, build our global social capital, and beget much goodwill as a result.”
He began his post by recounting that as a doctorate student in California who did not have a lot of extra funds, he would load up on cheap junk food, such as double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s, to the point that his “American family (basically my landlord)” would give him fast-food coupons for his birthday or Christmas.
But now that he’s working and they’ve retired, he’s the one who’s been giving back.
“I now joke with them is how the little gesture all those years ago was probably one of their better ‘returns on investment,’” he added.
What he experienced as a graduate student “applies to virtually all cultural relations, and to international relations as well,” he wrote, drawing a parallel to how Singapore can extend foreign aid to other countries.
Aside from the moral imperative, this can “rebound” back to Singapore, as neighbours who are given aid may better afford “the higher value-added goods and services that are now a mainstay of our export basket.”
But helping others also fosters reciprocity. “Should we run into economic or security difficulties in the future, countries that we’ve helped may feel a greater impetus to help, since we’ve helped them before.”
Assoc Prof Lim acknowledged that Singaporeans have many needs amid higher living costs and slower economic growth, “and as the saying goes, generosity begins at home.”
However, he pointed out that “after COVID-19, the international community agreed on a mechanism for development assistance: a new issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). SDRs are a form of international currency, issued by the IMF, that can be redeemed for regular hard currency (like dollars, euros, or yen),” adding that “Singapore received a generous allocation, a significant amount of which we committed to reallocate to poorer nations, to support their pandemic recovery.”
And while the government said that Singapore’s aid commitments are proportionate to its size, Assoc Prof Lim added that a benchmark for giving would be useful.
“Most rich countries shoot for around 0.7 percent of GDP in foreign aid (many fall short, but there’s at least the aspiration). For us, meeting this target would require us to give away most of this new SDR allocation. But our commitment turns out to be a tiny fraction of this: less than 1 percent. This is pretty stingy stuff, and in my view, doesn’t satisfy any reasonable interpretation of ‘commensurate with our size.’
Perhaps more damningly, we are currently falling short of even this very modest target: we’ve reallocated less than a third of our original commitment thus far (to this, the government’s response is akan datang
/TISG
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