Power price surge could zap Singapore’s recovery

Spiking LNG prices have knocked four power providers out of business and forced regulators to intervene in the market

A dramatic spike in global liquified natural gas (LNG) spot prices and other supply issues have sent shockwaves across Singapore’s electricity market, causing at least four power providers to exit the retail market and the city-state’s power regulator to announce pre-emptive measures to safeguard energy security.

So far there has been no disruption to local electricity supplies. But experts and analysts say the question is less about keeping the lights on and more about whether businesses and consumers will have to pay substantially more for power amid an ongoing global fuel crunch. Higher power costs would, in turn, diminish prospects for a robust post-pandemic economic recovery in the global business hub.

China, the United Kingdom and other bellwether global economies are likewise grappling with power shortages and supply disruptions linked to price volatility, which Singapore is highly exposed to as it generates 95% of its power from natural gas imported by pipeline or tankers. The city-state is also one of the few countries in Asia to fully liberalize its retail electricity market.

Gas prices have surged since the beginning of the year due to a confluence of factors ranging from rising consumption driven by recovering economic activity, increased heating needs from harsher-than-usual winter conditions and a series of unplanned global production outages. Industry watchers say it’s anyone’s guess how long current price volatility levels may last.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Highly vaccinated Singapore sets a worrying example

City-state has one of the world's highest vaccination rates at 84% but new Covid cases nonetheless recently hit a new record high

With 84% of Singaporeans fully vaccinated against Covid-19, one of the highest percentages worldwide, many had expected authorities would by now be easing, not maintaining, social distancing and other contagion-curbing restrictions. But that’s exactly what officials are doing as the island nation seeks to cope with its largest outbreaks since the start of the pandemic.

Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MoH) announced on Wednesday (October 20) that stricter curbs introduced in late September as part of a so-called “stabilization phase” implemented to minimize health care system strains would be extended for another month as daily cases have soared to all-time highs.

As other nations begin pursuing reopening strategies and treating the coronavirus as endemic, Singapore’s experience is now being looked upon as a sobering case study, particularly for countries that have until now kept cases low by relying on strict measures but are under mounting pressure to manage, rather than eradicate, Covid-19.

Singapore’s daily cases hit a record 3,994 on October 19, with the seven-day average number of new infections more than tripling in the last month. The overall death toll has more than quadrupled over the same period, rising to 280 on October 21 from just 65. Authorities, meanwhile, have attested to rising pressure on hospitals and healthcare workers.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Criminally convicted Najib free to leave Malaysia

Convicted ex-PM and his graft-accused wife allowed to enter Singapore after facing travel bans under previous governments

Criminally convicted former Malaysian premier Najib Razak, 68, and his graft-accused wife Rosmah Mansor, 69, are set to travel abroad for the first time in more than three years after courts in Kuala Lumpur allowed the pair to temporarily reclaim their impounded passports to visit their pregnant daughter in Singapore.

Lenience shown to the ex-premier and his wife have arguably validated misgivings that with the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) – the long-ruling party Najib once led – now back in power, the corruption-accused pair have a better chance of wriggling out of their legal troubles either through appeal, acquittal or even an eventual royal pardon.

A ruling by the Court of Appeal on Monday (October 18) permitted Najib to travel abroad from October 20 to November 22, just days after the country’s High Court approved a similar application for Rosmah, both of whom were barred from leaving Malaysia after the defeat of Najib’s scandal-plagued coalition at a historic 2018 general election.

In his application to the court, the ex-premier said he needed to provide mental and emotional support to his daughter Nooryana Najwa Najib, who experienced serious complications when giving birth to her first child and is due to deliver her second child soon at a private hospital in Singapore, where she lives.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Singapore curbs meddling but not everyone’s happy

Observers see sweeping new legislation against foreign ‘hostile information campaigns’ as a counter to Chinese cyber-espionage

The passage of a controversial bill aimed at preventing “foreign interference” in Singapore’s domestic politics has sparked debate in the city-state, with some airing concerns that the broadly worded Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act, or FICA, could negatively impact perceptions of Singapore as a global hub.

Others see the new legislation, approved by the country’s parliament on October 4 after a nearly 11-hour debate, as being at least in part a reaction to signs of increasing Chinese cyber-espionage across Asia and the risk it could pose to the multiracial city-state, which has a large Mandarin-speaking ethnic-Chinese majority.

Rights groups and activists, meanwhile, have argued that the law overreaches by giving broad powers to the government and limiting judicial review. Critics have described FICA as being crafted to stifle dissent and target political activists, community organizers and independent media outlets under the guise of defending national sovereignty.

Singapore’s powerful Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said in his parliamentary speech that FICA is part of a “comprehensive strategy to deal with foreign interference,” calling it a “calibrated piece of legislation to allow us to act surgically against threats” while describing the internet as a “powerful new medium for subversion.”

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

Malaysia’s Ismail reverts to a race-based past

New PM's five-year plan will ramp up pro-Malay affirmative action policies that have long hindered growth and competitiveness

A historic bipartisan agreement between Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s government and the opposition Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition will be put to the test on Thursday (October 7) when lawmakers vote on the newly installed administration’s first major policy initiative.

Ismail tabled his government’s five-year road map, known as the 12th Malaysia Plan, in parliament on September 27. The plan calls for 400 billion ringgit (US$95.53 billion) in spending on development projects including new highways and rail networks, affordable housing, as well as improvements in health, education and broadband connectivity.

The ambitious blueprint aims to reverse a pandemic-induced downturn while targeting high-income nation status by 2025, breaking free of the so-called middle-income trap that economists have long-regarded Malaysia as being stuck in, with its once high per-capita growth rate stagnating for at least a decade.

But a key plank of Ismail’s plan calls for dialing up of race-based affirmative action policies that critics have long argued are overdue for reform, a move that has been panned by economists, industry groups and opposition lawmakers who say such measures will only benefit “cronies” instead of poor and working-class ethnic Malays.

Read the full story at Asia Times.

Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.