Overview

Singapore is a small country without a hinterland or natural resources.  In the immediate years after Singapore’s independence in 1965, we benefitted from technical assistance extended by a number of developed countries and international organisations.  This helped transform Singapore from a Third World country to a modern city-state.  Today, we share our developmental experience and knowledge with others as a responsible global citizen to help them achieve their development goals. 

The Singapore Cooperation Programme (SCP) was established in 1992 to serve as the primary platform through which Singapore offers technical assistance to other countries.  Given our limited resources, we share our experience and expertise – in particular, in human resource development and economic development – with other countries in lieu of providing direct financial assistance.  To date, the SCP has trained over 80,000 government officials from 170 countries in the Asia Pacific, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.  Each year, we conduct some 300 courses and train close to 7,000 government officials. 

Although the SCP provides training to countries around the world, its primary focus is the ASEAN region.  We offer training courses to ASEAN member states in a diverse range of subjects such as public governance and administration, trade and economic development, environment and urban planning, civil aviation, land transport, port management, education, healthcare, and information and communication technology (ICT).  They are conducted both in-country and in Singapore.  We regularly review our courses to ensure that they remain relevant to the development needs of our friends.

Singapore also offers significant technical assistance to the newer members of ASEAN – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam– through the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI).  The IAI was launched by then-Prime Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong at the 4^th ASEAN Informal Summit in November 2000 to strengthen ASEAN and to promote ASEAN integration. Singapore has since made four pledges totalling around S$170 million to the IAI. Singapore has also established in-country IAI training centres in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to conduct training courses in areas such as English Language, Trade and Finance and ICT. These in-country IAI centres allow more participants to benefit from our training courses. We obtain regular feedback from the host governments and participants to ensure that the courses address their needs. 

Singapore also collaborates with 44 other key countries and international organisations to jointly provide technical assistance to other countries under our Third Country Training Programme (TCTP) framework.  This TCTP framework allows us to pool expertise, share resources, and tap each other’s networks to provide better quality technical assistance and to reach out to a greater number of participants.