Maritime body aims to draw more foreign firms

THE Singapore Maritime Foundation (SMF) is retraining its sights on attracting more foreign players to Singapore after spending much of the past few years developing human talent for the sector.

Newly appointed executive director David Chin said the SMF has done well in its efforts to build maritime human resources.

But since taking over the helm last month, he is hoping to spend more time promoting Singapore as an ideal hub for service companies that serve the marine and shipping industries.

'In 2005 and 2006, we focused a lot on training and developing human talent, which makes up about 30 per cent of our targets,' he said in an interview with The Straits Times. 'For 2007, we need to spend more time on the 60 per cent, which is promoting Singapore as an international maritime centre.'

This, he said, will be achieved by a refocus on bringing more maritime ancillary services firms, such as insurers and bankers, to Singapore.

It is a job that should not be too unfamiliar to Mr Chin, who spent much of his civil service career at the Trade Development Board, now known as IE Singapore. He rose through the ranks to head the board's shipping division, which was responsible for promoting Singapore as a maritime centre.

Mr Chin's latest appointment, which came after the resignation of predecessor Teh Kong Leong, sees him returning to familiar ground as the SMF has, since its formation in 2004, taken over that function.

'One area that I would like to focus on is the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration,' he said, adding that he had been involved with the formation of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. 'I would like to work with the centre to get more shipping companies to do arbitration here.'

Mr Chin is also keen to put in place more formal benchmarks to assess the effectiveness of the SMF. 'We must evolve some performance indicators so that we can measure ourselves against other maritime centres and foundations.'

The SMF does not even have a proper performance appraisal system for its staff, he said.

Still, Mr Chin feels the foundation has done very well in the past three years, especially in establishing shipping and maritime courses at the local universities.

'The areas we concentrated on were difficult things to get started and we're now harvesting the solid work that had been done.

'Now we must find other things to do to grow it.'



BRYAN LEE