Sunday, June 21, 2009

Once a Tiger, Always a Tiger


Yep. I am looking at a 16-year span in the life of Panthera Tigris:

Period I (1987-1996): Exports increased by 2.86 times while the Singapore dollar appreciated by 50% with respect to the USD. In fact, exports and the Singapore dollar rose every single year.

Period II (1997-2002): Exports keep on increasing to reach 3.78 times their 1987 levels in 2002 while the Singapore dollar is about 22% lower than its 1996 level but is still close to 18% higher than its 1987 mark. Of course, during that period, Singapore went through two major and real storms: the Asian crisis and the SARS outbreak.

And at the end of 2008 the Singapore dollar was almost back to a 20-year high while exports increased by an additional one-third over its 2002 levels.

4 comments:

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

Poor little Tiger that doesn't want to grow up.

akagugo said...

I wonder what shape Dodoland's data would yield for the same time-frame... and plotted alongside Temasek's data!

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

We know what the currency movements look like. We just need to add the trade figures.

Sanjay Jagatsingh said...

As per the above chart SGD clipped a 50% increase against the USD in 120 months. Which is about half what I asked for the Indian Ocean Tiger. Might not be too unreasonable given that our currency has been treated like pudin mai over the last couple of decades.