Investing Curiouscatblog

Tag: Singapore

  • The Growing Market for International Travel for Medical Care

    Medical “tourism” is a potentially huge market. The size of the market is greatly aided by the extremely expensive and broken USA health care system. Even while the standard rich country provides the same, or better, results than the USA for half the cost they are not doing well either (so the USA is very bad compared to pretty bad results for rich countries on average).

    Medical tourism is on of the most attractive economic growth areas. However the competition is fairly high as the attractiveness of building such an industry is well known. Countries that have very good potential are: Thailand, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore (for high end solutions), Costa Rica, India, Philippines and Panama. India has some great advantages but they have a deeply ingrained and extremely unhelpful bureaucracy. It seems to me that that creates a burden that likely means India can’t complete with the others effectively.

    Even for the simplest aspect – visas for those seeking to bring income into the country as medical tourists I don’t have confidence India can do well.

    Cayman to Singapore Gain as Rules Stump Clinics: Corporate India

    India, which offers the world’s biggest savings for U.S. medical tourists, is losing clients to Singapore and Thailand as visa rules and greater awareness of drug-resistant germs that spread from the South Asian nation scare away patients. Government neglect means India may fail to tap the $40 billion market that’s expanding 25 percent a year, said Josef Woodman, founder of the guidebook “Patients Beyond Borders.”

    “They’ve done everything to ruin our prospects of becoming a tourism center,” Reddy said. “I once said India should become the global health-care destination–now I’m swallowing those words. It could grow 10-fold in the next five years, if only the government would facilitate it, the way others have.”

    India continues to be held back economically (across the entire economy not just in health care) by ineffective and burdensome regulation and government inefficiency.

    The USA actually has a portion of the medical tourism market – those that have no concern about price (royalty, trust fund babies, movie stars etc.). Those with any concern about price can find the same level of care in Singapore, Japan, France, etc. at a fraction of the price.

    I believe 2 or 3 countries in South East Asia will do very well with international medical care. The extent to which Thailand, Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia (and potentially others) do in this field could greatly impact their economic success. There is a great potential for Singapore and Malaysia to cooperate in this area (in Malaysia’s Iskandar region, which borders Singapore).

    Related: Traveling To Avoid USA Health Care Costs –
    Traveling for Health Care (2007) – Leading Countries for Economic Freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand…

  • Leading Economic Freedom: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland

    Hong Kong again topped the rankings, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Australia and Canada tied for fifth, of the 144 countries and territories in the Fraiser Institute’s 2012 Economic Freedom of the World Report.

    “The United States, like many nations, embraced heavy-handed regulation and extensive over-spending in response to the global recession and debt crises. Consequently, its level of economic freedom has dropped,” said Fred McMahon, Fraser Institute vice-president of international policy research.

    The annual Economic Freedom of the World report uses 42 distinct variables to create an index ranking countries around the world based on policies that encourage economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of private property. Economic freedom is measured in five different areas: (1) size of government, (2) legal structure and security of property rights, (3) access to sound money, (4) freedom to trade internationally, and (5) regulation of credit, labor, and business.

    Hong Kong offers the highest level of economic freedom worldwide, with a score of 8.90 out of 10, followed by Singapore (8.69), New Zealand (8.36), Switzerland (8.24), Australia and Canada (each 7.97), Bahrain (7.94), Mauritius (7.90), Finland (7.88), Chile (7.84).

    The rankings and scores of other large economies include: United States (18th), Japan (20th), Germany (31st), South Korea (37th), France (47th), Italy (83rd), Mexico (91st), Russia (95th), Brazil (105th), China (107th), and India (111th).

    When looking at the changes over the past decade, some African and formerly Communist nations have shown the largest increases in economic freedom worldwide: Rwanda (44th this year, compared to 106th in 2000), Ghana (53rd, up from 101st), Romania (42nd, up from 110th), Bulgaria (47th, up from 108th), and Albania (32nd, up from 77th). During that same period the USA has dropped from 2nd to 19th.

    The rankings are similar to the World Bank Rankings of easiest countries in which to do business. But they are not identical, the USA is still hanging in the top 5 in that ranking. The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) do just as poorly in both. The ranking due show the real situation of economies that are far from working well in those countries. China and Brazil, especially, have made some great strides when you look at increasing GDP and growing the economy. But there are substantial structural changes needed. India is suffering greatly from serious failures to improve basic economic fundamentals (infrastructure, universal education, eliminating petty corruption [China has serious problems with this also]…).

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  • Easiest Countries in Which to Operate a Businesses (2011)

    Singapore is again ranked first for Ease of Doing Business by the World Bank.

    Country 2011 2008 2005
    Singapore 1 1 2
    Hong Kong 2 4 6
    New Zealand 3 2 1
    United States 4 3 3
    Denmark 5 5 7
    other countries of interest
    United Kingdom 7 6 5
    Korea 8 23 23
    Canada 13 8 4
    Malaysia 18
    Germany 19 25 21
    Japan 20 12 12
    France 29 31 47
    Mexico 53 56 62
    Ghana 63
    China 91 83 108
    India 132 122 138
    Brazil 126 122 122

    The rankings include ranking of various aspects of running a business. Some rankings for 2011: starting a business (New Zealand 1st, Singapore 4th, USA 13th, Japan 107th), Dealing with Construction Permits (Hong Kong 1st, New Zealand 2nd, Singapore 3rd, USA 17th, China 179th), protecting investors (New Zealand 1st, Singapore 2nd, Hong Kong 3rd, Malaysia 4th, USA 5th), enforcing contracts (Luxemburg 1, Korea 2, Iceland 3, Hong Kong 5, USA 7, Singapore 12, China 16, India 182), paying taxes (Maldives 1, Hong Kong 3, Singapore 4, USA 72, Japan 120, China 122, India 147).

    These rankings are not the final word on exactly where each country truly ranks but they do provide a valuable source of information. With this type of data there is plenty of room for judgment and issues with the data.

    Related: Easiest Countries from Which to Operate Businesses 2008 – Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 – Looking at GDP Growth Per Capita for Selected Countries from 1970 to 2010 – Top Manufacturing Countries (2000 to 2010) – Country Rank for Scientific Publications – International Health Care System Performance – Best Research University Rankings (2008)

  • Looking at GDP Growth Per Capita for Selected Countries from 1970 to 2010

    I decided to take a look at some historical economic data to see if some of my beliefs were accurate (largely about how well Singapore has done) and learn a bit more while I was at it.

    GDP in USD for countries

    country
    		1970**
    		2010***
    		% increase
    Korea 1,320 20,200 1,430
    China 325 4,280 1,217
    Singapore 4260 42,650 901
    Indonesia 460 2,960 543
    Brazil 1900 10,500 453
    Thailand 850 4,600 441
    Portugal 3,970 21,000 429
    Japan 9,000 42,300 370
    Malaysia 1,900 7,755 308
    Germany 11,550 40,500 251
    UK 10,400 36,300 249
    France 13,600 40,600 199
    Mexico 4,160 9,200 121
    Panama 3,480 7,700 121
    India 555 1,180 113
    USA 23,350 47,100 102
    South Africa 3,930 7,100 81
    Venezuela 8,280 9,770 18

    I just picked countries that interested me and seemed worth looking at. I looked for some around the starting position of Singapore and close to Singapore geographically. And looked at Panama as the closest match to Singapore (for Singapore’s main 1970 asset, convenient for shipping lanes, and very close for GDP per capita).

    Malaysia and Singapore were 1 country after independence (from 1963-1965).

    I can’t imagine more than a couple countries could reasonably be argued to have had better economic performance from 1970 to 2010 than Singapore (Korea? China? Who else?). Singapore had very little going for it in 1970. They had a good location for shipping and that is about it macro-economically. No natural resources. No huge storage of wealth. No preeminence in science, technology or business.

    It seems to me that Singapore actually did have 1 other thing. A government that was to preside over a fantastic economic growth success. You won’t find many textbooks talking about the way to economic success is a very well run government. And there is good reason for that, I believe. Relying on a very well run government will nearly always fail. In some ways Singapore was like Japan but with significantly more government influence on the way economic development played out.

    I was surprised how poorly the USA has faired. It isn’t so surprising that we lagged. People forget how rich the USA was in 1970. The USA is still very rich but bunched together with lots of other rich countries instead of way out ahead as they were in 1970. And in 1970 the lead was already contracting, for what it had been earlier. But even knowing the relative performance of the USA had lagged, I was surprised by how much it under-performed.

    I was also surprised with India. I knew they have done poorly but I didn’t realize it had been this poor. The failures to greatly improve infrastructure, education and the stifling effect of their bureaucracy have been causing them great harm. They have been doing some good things in the last 10 years especially but still have a long way to go. Their premier education is actually pretty decent. The problem is the other 90% of the education is often poor and many people (especially women) hardly have any education at all. It is very hard to get ahead when you fail to take advantage of the talents of so many of your people.

    Related: Singapore and Iskandar Malaysia – Chart of Largest Petroleum Consuming Countries from 1980 to 2010 – Chart of Nuclear Power Production by Country from 1985-2009 – Top Countries For Renewable Energy Capacity

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