Special Economic Zones in the OIC Region:
Learning from Experience
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the Jurong Island SEZ. The opening and establishment of the Jurong SEZ led to creation of one of
the leading global maritime multipurpose ports with the capacity to hand bulk, general and
containerized cargo as well as petrochemical production. This has helped to drive the economic
performance of the state.97
5.3.6 Summary Success Factors
The key strategies contributing to Jurong Island’s success can be summarized as follows.
Governance
5.3.6.1 Strong Vision and Government Support
The development of the FTZ occurred with very close cooperation with Singapore’s
Government.
The Jurong Island Version 2.0 initiative was recently developed by government agencies such as
EDB, JTC, PUB (Singapore’s National Water Agency) and EMA (Energy Market Authority) in
order to ensure the long-term competitiveness and sustainable growth of Jurong Island. 98 The
vision aims to focus on five areas; water, environment, energy, alternative feedstock options and
transport and logistics. As part of this initiative Jurong Island will introduce shared pipelines,
utilities and logistics to enhance the ‘plug and play’ model which currently exists.
5.3.6.2 Effective marking and promotional activities
Strong marketing campaigns were developed to target international firms, supported with a
competitive incentive programme.
5.3.6.3 Establishment of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)
The government has been proactive in opening doors for businesses through bilateral andmulti-
lateral initiatives such as FTAs. The government has concluded FTAs with the USA, ASEAN,
Australia and New Zealand, Kingdom of Jordan, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Costa Rica,
Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Iceland, GCC, Panama, Peru with Brunei and Chile.
5.3.6.4 Government actively supports innovation and research and development activities
The Singapore Government has focused on promoting innovation within the offshore sector and
to support this has established a number of high quality research and development institutions
to develop the sector further on Jurong Island. This includes the:
97 Whilst this analysis has attempted to demonstrate the economic effects of the Jurong SEZ on the domestic economy it should
be caveated that there may be a number of economic reasons for the performance of the indicators analyzed. A more detailed
econometric analysis would be required to isolate the exact impact of the Jurong SEZ on the indicators analysed.
98