Many of us have very little knowledge of what goes behind the doors of Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Occasionally, Foreign Affairs comes into picture when we have international crisis such as the haze or the Michael Fay caning incident or the Pedra Branca incident.
However, it has been known that Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also dabbling in trade and investment which is quite puzzling as we thought that only Economic Development Board should be involved.
A recent GeBiz tender from MFA has raised my eyebrows.
Apparently, this tender invites training agencies to bid for lessons to be conducted for foreign government officials on how to invite investments into Singapore.
It brings many questions to mind.
1) Why is MFA using $13,000 of our money to train foreign government officials on how to bring their investments to Singapore? Shouldn't their own country do that? And even if so, why is there a tender for this? Isn't it Economic Development Board's duty to send their high flying EDB scholars to foreign countries?
2) The award tender goes to a company called "International Business Dynamics".
Click on http://www.ibusinessdynamics.com/ourexpertise.htm
This company doesn't even disclose the name and profile of its trainers and the webpage is badly/ poorly maintained.
3) The foreign country is apparently Laos.
Laos, being a landlocked country, is one of the poorest and doesn't even have money for it's own people and building its own infrastructure. Why does Singapore want to attract FDI from Laos? Singapore should instead focus on shunning away FDI from Laos.
And no wonder PM Lee boldly declared that Singapore is meant for everyone else and not just for Singapore citizens and has emphasized too much on GDP figures and FDIs.
http://www.ibusinessdynamics.com/ourexpertise.htm
CJ
TRS Contributor