Good morning.
Singapore’s reserves are shrouded in secrecy. What are they actually made up of? How is accountability ensured in their management? And why can’t we know exactly how much is there?
CNA answers these in the documentary series Singapore Reserves Revealed, featuring never-before-granted access, freshly-released archives, and exclusive interviews with top leaders. It includes eight web-exclusive episodes and a two-part TV special, which trended at #1 on YouTube.
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The production team trawled through decades of reports and documents, including former top-secret British government memos. They were brought, blindfolded, to a secret gold vault owned by the central bank; and went behind the scenes at GIC and Temasek to meet the people responsible for growing the reserves.
The financial complexities can be intimidating. “So the fact that this series is produced not by financial experts but TV producers helps – we have the same questions and doubts as the average viewer,” said supervising executive producer Sharon Hun.
How to make oodles of dry information interesting? Use colourful visual metaphors like football teams (GIC vs Temasek’s role) or a box of pizza (our overseas investments).
For instance, how to explain using the reserves to manage the Singapore dollar’s exchange rate? “The only visual reference we could find was a chart indecipherable to anyone without deep financial knowledge,” said producer Tiffany Fumiko Tay. “So, we used a dart board to illustrate how MAS tries to keep the exchange rate within a target range or ‘safe zone’.”
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There is also the untold story behind how the reserves protected Singapore during dark times. But besides being a rainy-day fund, did you know the reserves also do crucial things such as keep supermarket prices stable?
What surprised the younger producers to learn was the long and fiercely-fought history behind the reserves and how they came to be managed. “It was the result of many decades of fine-tuning and building on the, at that time, quite revolutionary ideas of Singapore’s forefathers,” said Clarisse Goh, one of the five producers.
Executive producer Tan Yew Guan said: “My hope is that our viewers would go away understanding that this is a treasure that belongs not to any government in power; this is an inheritance that belongs to all Singaporeans.”
And the first step to safeguarding anything, is understanding it.
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