SINGAPORE: Dilapidated. Poor infrastructure. Backwards.
These were some of the first things that came to mind when TODAY asked young Singaporeans what they thought of Southeast Asia.
But contrary to their perceptions, the region is flourishing economically and socially, charting exponential growth over the past one to two decades.
In fact, a report by worldwide management consulting firm McKinsey & Company released on Sept 14 found that eight out of 18 of the world's best-performing emerging economies – including Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and Vietnam – are in Southeast Asia. These economies averaged at least 3.5 per cent annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth over 50 years, or 5 per cent annual growth over 20 years.
Last week, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong noted that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will become the world's fourth-largest economy by 2030 after the United States, China and the European Union.
Despite such a promising outlook for the region, policymakers and businesses continue to face an uphill task in getting young Singaporeans to seek their fortune in Southeast Asian cities over their more glamorous counterparts such as London, New York or Shanghai.
Last month, panellists at a business forum said that among other things, young Singaporeans do not know much about their Southeast Asian neighbours, and would often choose to go to European countries for overseas internships or student exchange programmes.
"I think lots of young people in Singapore are global, but not necessarily regional," said panellist Li Jianggan. Li is the chief executive of Momentum Works, which builds and manages tech ventures and has a particular focus on Southeast Asia. While he understands the allure of Western countries, Singapore's "big backyard" is ultimately Southeast Asia, he had noted.
Overlooked, underappreciated
With some companies struggling to find young Singaporeans willing to uproot themselves to work in neighbouring countries, former Asean secretary-general Ong Keng Yong told TODAY that youths here traditionally perceive going abroad as taking up opportunities in Western countries.
"Until the last few years, there has been very little effort in promoting similar opportunities in Southeast Asian countries. Naturally, young Singaporeans grew up aspiring to travel abroad to outside of Southeast Asia to pursue advancement in careers," said Ong, who is currently an Ambassador-at-large and the executive deputy chairman of Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
For Cheong Jin Hao, general manager of homegrown mobile-phone distributor Raduga, finding Singaporeans to work in its Myanmar office when the company expanded there in 2010 was a challenge. The country's erratic weather and hygiene issues did not help to make its recruitment drive any easier.
"They find it very comfortable to work in Singapore rather than go to Myanmar, where you have to face power outages, poor Internet connectivity… especially in the early days when we just went in," he said.
Xiao Ban Soya Singapore employs two Singaporean trainers, who travel to its Southeast Asian stores to train the locally hired workers there. Co-founder Max Yeow said that the trainers would initially complain about issues such as Internet connectivity, traffic, cleanliness and quality of life.
Eventually, however, they grew to like those experiences, he added. As the company has contacts or partners in the countries they expanded to, which include the Philippines and Vietnam, the Singaporean employees were able to get "the really local experience" and start appreciating their surroundings.
"There are more 'whys' in the beginning, but in the end there will be more 'ahs' once they understand the local culture and history," Yeow said.
Some students and employees, who had worked for extended periods of time in such countries, told TODAY that while there are more rural and undeveloped areas where they worked, compared to Singapore, the infrastructure in big cities such as Bangkok and Jakarta is not to be sniffed at.
Lynette Lau, who completed a six-month-long internship with ride-hailing firm Grab Indonesia last year, said that the infrastructure in Jakarta "mirrors that of a developed city", only that "it's not that clean and the traffic is crazy".
"In the city centre and office districts, it's quite developed," the 20-year-old said. "The malls are great, really big. Offices are like those in the Central Business District. But if you travel more to the outskirts then there are fewer high-rise buildings."
When it comes to safety, a key concern for some young Singaporeans, Lau said that her own worries turned out to be unfounded. As part of her work in expansion analytics and operations, she travelled to 10 cities such as Bandung, Lombok and Medan – several times on her own.
"A lot of my juniors (in Ngee Ann Polytechnic) were worried about going to Indonesia because of safety, cleanliness, this kind of things. But when I went there, I was surprised myself.
"It's not that unsafe if you don't go to shady areas. I went to very undeveloped cities where there is only one mall in the whole city and the airport is so small, and you think it's really dangerous, but I travelled alone to these places… no harm came to me," she added… CONTINUED…
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