Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with about 400 Singaporeans living in Brunei on Wednesday (Jan 24) evening on the first day of his state visit to the country.<\/p>\n
Mr Tharman said it is not incidental that he chose Brunei to be the country of his first overseas state visit, adding that it reflects the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d the two countries share.<\/p>\n
Singapore and Brunei commemorate 40 years of diplomatic ties this year.<\/p>\n
Mr Tharman commended the Singaporeans in Brunei, saying they play important roles in building the Singapore image.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour experience here also enriches Singapore,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause you get to develop a new way of looking at Singapore, looking at the world, and we need that diversity of perspectives in Singapore.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I’m sure when you eventually return, you’ll be adding something to Singapore that comes from your experience having lived overseas, and that too, is valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Tharman is on a three-day state visit to Brunei from Wednesday to Friday at the invitation of the country\u2019s monarch, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.<\/p>\n
He is accompanied by Mrs Jane Ittogi Shanmugaratnam, and a delegation that includes National Development Minister Desmond Lee, and Minister in the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs and Education Maliki Osman.<\/p>\n
The relationship shared by the two sides is underpinned by close ties between their leaders, starting from the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew and the Seri Begawan, father of the current Sultan.<\/p>\n
Singapore and Brunei hold frequent and regular high-level exchanges.<\/p>\n
In recent years, both sides have also expanded their cooperation into new areas, including emerging ones such as climate change, renewable energy, and digital connectivity.<\/p>\n
Economic cooperation between the two countries, which are heavily dependent on external trade, is strong.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Singapore was Brunei\u2019s fourth largest trading partner in goods. Singapore\u2019s total trade in goods with Brunei was S$3.83 billion (US$2.86 billion) in 2022, an increase of 41.6 per cent from 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe empathy is there. Because we are both small states,\u201d said Dr Alan Chong, senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmall states have to survive by being \u2018eternally paranoid\u2019 and vigilant. And this is where there are unquantifiable aspects to this special friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finance and defence cooperation are the two key pillars of bilateral relations, reflected in the longstanding Currency Interchangeability Agreement, which has helped facilitate trade and investment flows, and Brunei\u2019s provision of training facilities for the SAF.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam met with about 400 Singaporeans living in Brunei on Wednesday (Jan 24) evening on the first day of his state visit to the country. Mr Tharman said it is not incidental that he chose Brunei to be the country of his first overseas state visit, adding that it reflects the \u201cspecial relationship\u201d the two countries share. Singapore and Brunei commemorate 40 years of diplomatic ties this year. Mr Tharman commended the Singaporeans in Brunei, saying they play important roles in building the Singapore image. \u201cYour experience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/USBnews24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}