Singapore: visit of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury
Published 20 October 2014
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Summary
Economic Secretary helps strengthen financial cooperation, promote inward investment opportunities and progress UK economic agenda. Media interviews focus on announcement to begin process of issuing the UK’s first RMB sovereign bond.
Detail
Andrea Leadsom, Economic Secretary to the Treasury (EST) visited Singapore from 7-9 October. The programme featured calls with Senior Minister of State Josephine Teo at the Ministry of Finance (MoF); Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS); and both of Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Funds (GIC and Temasek). She also attended lunches with British financiers and inward investors; held a range of interviews; and had an op-ed published in the Business Times.
Financial Cooperation
As the first Treasury Minister to visit Singapore since the Chancellor in February (during which he and DPM/Finance Minister Tharman agreed to set up the UK-Singapore Financial Dialogue and RMB Forum), Andrea Leadsom took the reaffirmed UK commitment to closer cooperation across financial services and welcomed the complementary relationship between our financial centres.
RMB internationalisation and its benefits featured prominently in discussions. Both MAS and MoF expressed their wish to collaborate on this agenda to ensure the development of new products and services, and agreed that the private sector-led RMB Forum offered a good opportunity for companies operating in both markets to grow the global offshore RMB pie business. British businesses and investors welcomed HMG’s plan to offer RMB sovereign bonds and to continue to develop an RMB trading hub in London.
Inward Investment Promotion
Andrea Leadsom stressed that the UK is open for business and undertaking a comprehensive infrastructure programme that offers significant new opportunities for investment.
During discussions with a range of other current and potential inward investors of all sizes and sectors, most painted a positive picture of their experience in the UK, with its friendlier corporate tax regime and as a gateway to the EU. These were tempered with some examples of where investors felt the UK could be more straightforward, such as visas for non-EU staff.
Economic Objectives
In meetings with MoF and MAS Andrea Leadsom welcomed Singapore’s steps to improve its tax transparency, including signing up to the G20/OECD agreement on automatic exchange of tax information. MoF in principle they had no objections to the agreement, but in practice there was a need for a level playing field across all financial centres.
Andrea Leadsom also raised the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement and our desire to see it completed as soon as possible.
Media
EST held a media huddle and also conducted two separate interviews with Thomson Reuters and 93.8 Live (Singapore’s largest English business radio station) focused on the concurrent announcement by the Chancellor to initiate the process to launch the UK’s first sovereign RMB bond. An op-ed on the strength of UK-Singapore economic and financial relations was also published in the Business Times.
Disclaimer
The purpose of the FCO Country Update(s) for Business (”the Report”) prepared by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is to provide information and related comment to help recipients form their own judgments about making business decisions as to whether to invest or operate in a particular country. The Report’s contents were believed (at the time that the Report was prepared) to be reliable, but no representations or warranties, express or implied, are made or given by UKTI or its parent Departments (the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)) as to the accuracy of the Report, its completeness or its suitability for any purpose. In particular, none of the Report’s contents should be construed as advice or solicitation to purchase or sell securities, commodities or any other form of financial instrument. No liability is accepted by UKTI, the FCO or BIS for any loss or damage (whether consequential or otherwise) which may arise out of or in connection with the Report.