The Hindu Business Line : Singapore's four-day biz meet inaugurated

`Global Entrepolis @ 2006', a business networking meet organised jointly by Singapore Business Federation and Singapore Economic Development Board, was inaugurated here this evening by the President of Singapore, Mr S. R. Nathan.

The four-day event would host over 55 different conferences on a variety of topics covering financing, technology and investment pitches made by many countries. Also, over 400 exhibitors are participating in the `Enterprise Exchange' exhibition, which is a part of the event.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Nathan, noted that since the first Global Entrepolis meet in 2003, the annual event had "blossomed exponentially". In 2003, there were 19 conferences, 130 exhibitors and over 10,000 participants. Deals estimated at S $100 million were announced. Global Entrepolis of 2005 saw 41 conferences, 190 exhibitors and 14,000 participants and deals worth around S $ 900 million, he said. The current year's events began on Monday morning, although the formal inauguration by the President happened in the evening.

A notable feature of this year's proceedings is the inclusion of three sessions relating to India. The one called `Global Indian Business Summit' took place this morning, in which the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr Narendra Modi and the President of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Mr S. K. Poddar, spoke. Mr Modi showcased the advantages of Gujarat and its potential for growth.

The other is a separate session on `Gujarat: Architect of Prosperity', which is to take place on Tuesday.

Mr Modi and the Chief Secretary of Gujarat, Mr Sudhir Mankad, will speak in the session.

The third is the Tata Forum, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, in which senior officials of the Tata group, including Mr R Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata & Sons, will speak.

Inaugurating Global Entrepolis @ Singapore, 2006, Mr Nathan said that a key feature of Singapore was entrepreneurship "where creativity and innovation could thrive and research and development could flourish." He pointed out that the island nation had more than 1,40,000 companies of which about 30,000 were foreign-owned. (There are about 2,000 Indian companies in Singapore.)

MAXA Award

The President also gave away the 'MAXA award' (manufacturing excellence award) to Seagate Technology International, the world's largest manufacturer of hard disk drives. The MAXA award was recently instituted and Seagate is the first awardee. Two other companies, BD Medical Singapore and Philips Domestic Appliances and Personal Care Singapore received awards for product innovation and for leveraging Singapore's strategic advantages, respectively.

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