We have a generation of workers for the past 15 years that hasn’t experience much unemployment. The unemployment rate since the 2000-2002 structural unemployment have stayed below 4%. It is why I wonder about the inner workings of the Singapore economy that enables us to keep employment while the world around us have been struggling. Employment is the thread that ties everything together. Without employment, there are uncertainty in life, in cash flow and it affects the consumption as well as personal investment decisions on an individual level. Yesterday, I came across an interesting article on an open look inside BHP Billiton’s Marketing Hub in Singapore. What interests me is that this group do not pay tax on the marketing fee that they earned when the products are sold to Chinese mainly in Singapore. Taking advantage of the tax status, what the government is looking for is

• keep MNC in ...

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