SINGAPORE, Nov 22 — Singapore’s wealth management industry hasn’t seen a meaningful exodus of funds as a result of recent moves to adopt new global standards for tax transparency, according to Indranee Rajah, the city-state’s senior minister of state for law and finance.
“I don’t think there’s any significant outflows” since June, when Singapore signed up for a multilateral framework that facilitates the exchange of information on tax issues, Rajah said in an interview yesterday.
If illicit money does leave the country, that would be a good thing for Singapore in the long term, she added. “As far as we’re concerned, you should be here because you want legitimate activities. If there’s something wrong, obviously we will clamp down on that,” Rajah said.
Next year, Singapore will start sharing information on bank accounts held by nationals of other countries that are a party to a global tax transparency program supervised by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
About 78 per cent of the US$2.7 trillion (RM11.17 trillion) of assets under management in Singapore were offshore funds, according to the 2016 annual report of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Wealthy Indonesian and Chinese nationals are among those who have traditionally viewed Singapore as a key destination for their holdings. — Bloomberg
