by Tng Ying Hui
References
Adam Majendie, “Wealthy Store Art in Singapore’s Tax-Free ‘Fort Knox,’” Bloomberg, May 18, 2010.
Alain Vandenborre, Proudly Singaporean: My Passport to A Challenging Future
(Singapore: SNP Editions, 2003).
Alain Vandenborre, The Little Door to the New World
(Singapore: SNP Editions, 2005 and China National Publishing Group, 2006).
Cris Prystay, “Singapore Bling ,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010.
Economic Development Board, Record 2010 Investment Numbers Momentum Expected To Carry Into 2011, January 24, 2011.
Lee Jian Xuan, “Private French Museum Singapore Pinacotheque de Paris to Open on Fort Canning with Cleopatra Shows,” The Straits Times, January 24, 2015.
Interview with Alain Vandenborre in March 2015.
Alain Vandenborre
Belgium, b.1960
Cyril Neville Watson
The Savvy Shipbuilder
Keppel Shipyard and Sembawang Shipyard started out as two small government-owned ship repair and building centres serving the region. Today, they are part of world-class conglomerates serving international clientele. UK-born Cyril Neville Watson, a pioneer of Singapore’s marine sector, was crucial in their transformation.
In the 1960s, the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) was in charge of maintaining and administering the Singapore port, including handling cargo and shipping operations. Realising that ship-repair, ship-building, shipping and deep-sea fishing industries had growth potential, the Singapore government formed Keppel Shipyard in 1968 as a commercial shipyard. It would also take over the ship-repair and ship-building services of the PSA’s dockyard department.
Swan Hunter, Britain’s most famous shipbuilding company then, was appointed the managing agent of Keppel Shipyard. Swan Hunter would also later become the managing agent of Sembawang Shipyard, to help it transition from a naval base into a commercial shipyard.
But barely a few years later, the Singaporean staff at Keppel Shipyard felt that British-born T. C. McLay, who was managing director of Keppel Shipyard, did not seem to have any intention to groom Singaporeans for leadership positions in the company.
Chua Chor Teck, who was then the general manager of one of Keppel’s subsidiaries, Singapore Slipway & Engineering, and Lawrence Mah, Keppel’s personnel manager, went up to then-chairman of the board of Keppel Shipyard, Dr Hon Sui Sen, and told him that they would like to take over the shipyard.
David Chin Soon Siong, who was a government scholar attached to Keppel Shipyard at that time, recounted Dr Hon’s reply in his oral history interview, “Hon Sui Sen said ‘Whilst I think you can take over, and I think you can do the job, in life it is not just about doing the job. It is the business angle. Will the shipowners trust that you can take over?’” So Hon Sui Sen decided that, “look, the most pro-local Swan Hunter man is Neville Watson.”
Watson was then-assistant managing director of Swan Hunter. He had demonstrated a keen interest in training Singaporeans. In 1972, Keppel brought Watson into its fold and appointed him interim managing director at Keppel Shipyard. Chua became the general manager. Watson was a master at handling all sorts of clients that came his way. He did not hesitate to tell unreasonable clients off and put them in their place. And when he had to entertain customers, he could stay up the entire night to do that. Watson instilled in the company a can-do attitude. Keppel Offshore & Marine’s Senior Adviser Tong Chong Heong, who was then a young engineer, recalled that Watson’s catchphrase was: “Come on, let’s go ahead.”
During the first year of the new team’s operations, Keppel achieved a turnover of $75 million. It docked 432 and repaired 1,663 vessels. It secured a $3 million contract to convert a Norwegian cargo vessel, the Farid Farres, to a livestock carrier. After grooming Chua to take over the post as managing director, Watson left to join the Sembawang Shipyard in 1974 as its managing director.
Watson’s main task was to make Sembawang Shipyard profitable. Up until 1971, it was a British naval base and did not have to worry about its bottom line. When the British pulled out, the shipyard, now a business and with Swan Hunter as its managing agent, struggled to compete internationally. The 1973 oil crisis made matters worse as the global shipping industry was in deep recession and many shipyards had been forced into bankruptcy.
Watson realised that Sembawang Shipyard had to be more competitive if it was to survive so he supported Lim Cheng Pah, personnel director, and Peter Vincent, the union president, in their productivity campaign initiative. He urged his staff to accomplish their jobs in half the time. “To hold our own in 1976,” he wrote in the organisation’s bi-annual newsletter, “we are going to have to become super competitive.”
By 1977, all repair berths in the yard were occupied. That same year, the shipyard also signed a multi-million dollar contract with the New Zealand government to modify one of its ferries designed to carry trains.
In 1978, Watson was promoted to chief executive of the Sembawang Group. During that time when shipyards all over the world were closing, the 1979 annual report recorded a good year for Sembawang Shipyard, with group net profits rising almost 84% year-on-year from 1978. The number of vessels repaired at the shipyard amounted to 238, an increase of 35% from a year ago. Then, Watson foresaw that Singapore yards would turn to large repair jobs as a mainstay, and this held true in the 1980s when the rise in tanker traffic drove the ship-repair business.
In 1989, he stepped down as group chief executive. Reflecting on Watson’s achievements, current executive vice president of Sembcorp Marine, Wong Lee-Lin, said Watson successfully “built the name of Sembawang Shipyard as an efficient company for doing ship-repairs and conversion worldwide because of his good relationships with many ship owners.” Under his charge, major oil companies like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell flocked to Sembawang Shipyard for repairs to its tankers.
Wong, who had joined Sembawang Shipyard in 1975 as an administrative assistant at the Personnel Department, also said, “For who I’ve become today, I owe quite a bit to Mr Watson.” Watson pushed for equal opportunities for women in the shipyard, which was mostly male dominated at that time. Wong had the opportunity to advance her career in the UK in 1977 when Watson suggested that she take on an overseas posting as a trainee in Swan Hunter’s main marketing department in London.
Turning Sembawang from a naval dockyard into a successful commercial shipyard was one of the highlights of Watson’s life, his wife Margaret said in an email interview. Watson also made other contributions, serving as chairman of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce from 1984 to 1986 and a board member of the Economic Development Board between 1983 and 1988. He was awarded the Public Service Star in 1980.
Watson stayed in Singapore for 27 years despite his yearning to go home. He was “enchanted with the way the country was run…and made very close friends,” said Margaret. Watson recounted in a 1990 The Business Times interview that he once told J.Y. Pillay, former chairman of SIA, of his memory of home in the UK, “I want to walk on the hills in the rain, I want to lie on the grass, I want to do those sorts of things. But I stayed, and stayed, and stayed.”
According to Chin’s oral history, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, described Watson as “an Englishman that I will make a Singapore citizen anytime he wants to be a Singapore citizen.” Watson battled with prostate cancer during the last two years of his life. He passed away in Singapore in 1996 at the age of 65. His wife Margaret now lives in the UK.
References
David Chin Soon Siong, interviewed by Patricia Lee, October 18, 2007,
accession number 003225/06, transcript, Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.
Melanie Chew, Of Hearts & Minds: The Story of Sembawang Shipyard
(Singapore: Sembawang Shipyard Pte Ltd, 1998).
“Message from the Managing Director,” SS News 5, Dec. 1975).
Richard Lim, Tough Men, Bold Visions: The Story of
Keppel
(Singapore: Keppel Corporation Limited, 1993).
“The man who Steered the Group for the Past 20 years,” The Business Times, 25 January 1989.
“Watson Returns to Take up Posts at Steamers,” The Straits Times, November 10, 1992.
Yong Mei Fong, “A Friend and Mentor lost,” The Business Times, April 30, 1996.
Interviews with Wong Lee-Lin, Margaret Watson and Tong Chong Heong
via email, in June 2015.
Cyril Neville Watson
United Kingdom, 1931–1996
Albert Winsemius
A Nation’s Transformer
Singapore’s transformation from Third World to First would not have been possible without the foresight of Dutchman Albert Winsemius. His ideas—from developing labour-intensive industries to grooming more engineers and making the port profitable—were part of the blueprint for Singapore’s economic development. He offered his advice and ideas over 23 years without receiving a salary.
Looking at Singapore’s economic policies for the past few decades, one cannot help but feel that Albert Winsemius’ invisible hand is present in all of them. Reading his proposals for Singapore’s economic development in the 1961 Winsemius Report is akin to recollecting the country’s transformation from Third World to First.
Before coming to Singapore in October 1960, Winsemius, a Dutch economist, had not formulated any plans for it to develop its economy. What he did know about the island-state was based on newspaper articles and opinions he had picked up. These opinions were of the “accepted fact that Singapore was going down the drain”, he recounted in his oral history. He added, “Whether it was going down the drain or not, I did not know and didn’t want to know. I wanted to study it and try to give some advice, not to go down the drain, but to go the other way.”
Winsemius led the UN Industrial Survey Mission to examine Singapore’s potential for industrialisation. At Changi Airport, a journalist asked Winsemius, “Are you going to have contacts with the trade unions?” Winsemius replied, “Yes”, only to realise later that the trade unions and the government were going at one another head to head. In 1961, the country lost about 415,000 man-days in a year due to strikes and labour unrest. As Winsemius would later describe in a media interview, “It was bewildering. There were strikes about nothing.”
Singapore was then a city of some 2 million people, with a stagnant economy and an unemployment rate of around 14%. The report thus quickly identified industries, such as garment manufacturing, ship breaking and building materials, that required minimal state investment and could absorb many workers. Winsemius also gave two other recommendations. First, the government had to improve the dismal state of industrial relations. In 1961, Winsemius told Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew that the most urgent task was to “eliminate the communists…if you don’t do it, forget about economic development. They will try to destroy anything which can promote Singapore because they have intentions other than what you have.”
Winsemius had consulted widely, with bankers, diplomats and trade union leaders, when putting together his report. He remarked that trade union leaders like Lim Chin Siong and Fong Swee Suan possessed “high intellectual, often organisational, capacities”. Describing them as “communist leaders”, he said he never reached a point of “understanding or confidence” with them. He said, “The discussions were an intellectual fight and not more than that, not concentrated on: how can we develop Singapore, create work, work that was even more than pay.”
Second, Singapore had to keep the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles along the Singapore River. This would symbolise Singapore’s acceptance of its colonial heritage and demonstrate that it was open to foreign investment. Winsemius concluded that Singapore had the “basic assets” for industralisation, with its people having a high aptitude to work in manufacturing. The UN team had observed that there were many small enterprises already involved in the local manufacturing industry, though these companies lacked the resources and technology to scale up. The government, said the report, could operate certain basic industries if neither local nor foreign enterprise was prepared to do so, but it would need to do this in tune with commercial and market principles.
Winsemius also believed that Singapore needed a common market with the Federation of Malaya, where goods produced in one state or imported into it could move freely to other states without duties. This would benefit Singapore’s manufacturing sector, Winsemius believed, and could create 50,000 new jobs over 10 years. But the common market idea never materialised, even though Winsemius held on to it, suggesting in 1982 that Singapore would benefit from an ASEAN common market.
Winsemius accepted an offer to be the Singapore government’s chief economic adviser after he submitted his 1961 report. He held this position for 23 years before stepping down in 1984. During this time, he was “instrumental to the development of the ‘tripartite’ system, the establishment of the National Wages Council in 1972, and the wage adjustment policy [Singapore] adopted in the 1970s. He successfully advocated for the expansion of technical and scientific education and training in Singapore’s universities and polytechnics,” said former civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow, who was Winsemius’ liaison officer from the EDB.
Indeed, Winsemius’ recommendations were instrumental in Singapore’s economic development after its separation from Malaysia in 1965. The Dutchman advocated having better-trained and skilled manpower for high-end manufacturing. He went to Eindhoven to convince Dutch electronics giant Philips to invest in Singapore. He cautioned Philips that if they did not do so, they would “miss the boat in the growing market of Southeast Asia”. By the 1970s, Philips had set up television and audio production plants in Singapore.
Winsemius then suggested to the government that Singapore could be a global financial centre. It could fill a gap in the financial markets of the world. But this meant Singapore would have to face the prospect of delinking the dollar from the pound sterling. However, the matter resolved itself as the sterling area was dissolved in 1972. Winsemius also foresaw the need to develop Singapore into a centre of international traffic and cargo transport. He told the government to “build an airport where the biggest (airplanes) can land and let everyone know that they are welcome to land there”, and encouraged the development of a container harbour to tap into international trade flows.
Winsemius lived in The Hague during that period, and apart from visiting Singapore two to three times a year, he kept abreast of Singapore’s development via The Straits Times which was sent to him by airmail. He asked his grandson to help him track the quantity of job advertisements in the paper, as this, he believed, told him much more about the state of the economy than official statistics, recounted Ngiam, in a speech he gave in 2007.
For his contributions, Winsemius was given a series of honours, including the Distinguished Service Order in 1966. During the 23 years that he served the government, he was neither paid nor formally bound by a contract to work for Singapore. The collaboration was based on mutual trust. Winsemius had a good rapport with the late Prime Minister Lee and the late former EDB chief Dr Hon Sui Sen.
When Winsemius passed away in 1996, Lee’s eulogy read, “Singapore, and I personally, are indebted to him for the time, energy and devotion he gave to Singapore.” The ties between Winsemius and Singapore have continued. When Lee passed away in March 2015, Winsemius’ children, Pieter and Aeyelts, flew here to pay their respects.
References
“A Common Market will Create More Jobs,” The Straits Times, June 21, 1963.
Albert Winsemius, interview by Tan Kay Chee, August 30, 1982, accession number 000246, transcript, Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.
Albert Winsemius, A Proposed Industrialization Programme for the State of Singapore
(Singapore: UN Commissioner for Technical Assistance, 1963).
Kees Tamboer, “Dr Albert Winsemius –Singapore’s Economic Engineer,” The Straits Times,
23 Septemb
er 23, 1996.
Lee Kuan Yew, From Third World to First (Singapore: Singapore Press Holdings, 2000)
Low Mei Mei, “Roll of Honour,” The Straits Times, August 9, 1985.
Warren Fernandez, “Winsemsius-Wisdom Still Valid as S’pore Starts off on the Next Lap,”
The Straits Times, Aug 3, 1991.
UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence, “UNDP and the making of Singapore’s Public Service—Lessons from Albert Winsemius,” accessed September 2015,
http://issuu.com/undppublicserv/docs/booklet_undp-sg50-winsemius_digital
Albert Winsemius
Netherlands, 1910–1996
EDUCATION
Dr Robert A.Brown
United States Of America
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Brother Joseph McNally
Ireland
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Prof John Norman Miksic
United States Of America
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Milenko Prvacki
Yugoslavia
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Mary Turnbull
United Kingdom
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Prof Wang Gungwu
Indonesia
—
Ann Wee
United Kingdom
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Prof Wu Teh Yao
China
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Dr Robert A. Brown
An Education Engineer
Singapore’s ambition to be the “Boston of the East”, where the NUS and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are world-class research hubs and centres of teaching excellence, was given a boost when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) opted to set up its first and only overseas campus here in 1998. American Dr Robert A. Brown was the dean of Engineering at MIT when the elite university chose Singapore as its partner.