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2012, May 24

What the World and Singapore Will Look Like in 2030

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What the World and Singapore Will Look Like in 2030

by Darryl Wee, ACCA, 12 August 2010
topics:
Risk Management
tags:
2030 ACCA CDAS Chin Kwai Fatt climate change Darryl Wee de-conglomeration forecasting G20 IFRS oil Singapore trade patterns water

Predicting the future can be a notoriously tricky business. Things that people declare with certainty will happen often don’t, while things that no one saw coming have a horrible habit of actually happening.

 
The future today is not tomorrow. A look back only twenty years ago demonstrates this perfectly. In 1990, South Africa was still afflicted by apartheid; the USSR was still around; the internet was an academic’s plaything; and the idea of F1 cars racing at 300 kph through the streets of downtown Singapore was laughable.
 
Predicting the future means challenging some of the basic assumptions of the present. This is precisely what ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has tried to do with our latest paper, Where next for the global economy: A view of the world in 2030. The report collates the opinions of fifteen global experts, including CNN’s John Defterios, KPMG’s global head of tax Loughlin Hickey, the World Bank’s Tony Hegarty, and PwC Malaysia’s MD, Chin Kwai Fatt.
 
The World in 2030
As country head of ACCA Singapore, what interests me personally is how this future will affect Singapore and our members. So, what will the world look like in twenty years time and what will this mean for Singapore?
 
  • The world in 2030 will have a flatter distribution of global power. We’re already seeing this process take place with the G7 becoming the G8, and most recently with the G20 coming to the fore. By 2030, a reduction or even removal of trade barriers and the wider dispersion of influence will see regional competition and suspicion replaced by a genuine desire amongst countries to work together. The ‘East’ and emerging markets will no longer be spoken of as ‘the next big thing’. We will be the big thing.
 
PwC’s Chin Kwai Fatt predicts that “if the resulting landscape is such that… emerging economies will have a greater role, there will be a higher degree of mutual dependence – to the extent that we will not just be relying on the US domestic market. Hopefully emerging economies will create new market ‘clusters’ which, in turn, will promote two-way economic potential between the US and other trading nations. It will therefore become a two-way flow, rather than a parallel universe, where goods are shipped to the US while capital is shifted to the East.”
 
Singapore, early on, had realised its role in the Asian landscape, and has effectively invested in developing symbiotic relationships with China, India and with the rest of her neighbours. As other countries provide potential for investments and market growth, Singapore provides expertise and knowledge. Using this win-win approach, Singapore is poised to ride the next growth curve in the Asian market.
 
  • The world in 2030 will be in the midst of an eco-crunch. While countries may well see the world’s wealth as shared, there will be serious tensions over the dwindling supply of natural resources. Oil may be one of the world’s biggest commodities today, but in 2030 it will be fresh water. Declining resources will be put under pressure by a global population heading towards 9 billion by 2050, according to UN predictions. This will mean sustainability issues are no longer in business or government silos, but will be a burning issue for every stakeholder in the global economy.
 
Singapore may not contribute to global climate change on the same scale as China or the US, but it will be hit disproportionately harder. As a small island with few natural resources to call its own, Singapore will undergo rapid diversification of their export commodities toward high value-added services such as information technology and communication based services, financial services, and educational services.
 
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