In 2015, the population of Singapore was estimated to be around 5.5 million people. The economy of Singapore was highly developed and based on the service sector, manufacturing, and exports. It had strong ties with other Asian countries as well as the European Union and United States. It had a high level of foreign investments which contributed to its economic growth. Politically, Singapore was a republic ruled by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong since 2004. In 2015, His Excellency Tharman Shanmugaratnam served as Deputy Prime Minister while His Excellency Lee Hsien Loong served as Prime Minister of the Republic. The Parliament of Singapore was composed of one chamber: Legislative Assembly. In terms of defence, Singapore had strong military ties with Malaysia which it joined in 1973 as part of its post-independence security policy. Singapore also maintained strong diplomatic relations with its neighboring countries in Asia as well as other countries around the world. See ehealthfacts for Singapore in the year of 2005.
Yearbook 2015
Singapore. In January, the Air Asia plane, flight QZ8501, which disappeared on its way from Indonesia to Singapore on December 28, 2014, was found crashed in Lake Java. On board the plane were 162 people, one of whom was from Singapore. According to COUNTRYAAH, Singapore is the capital of Singapore which is located in Southeastern Asia. None of the 162 onboard the plane survived. According to an investigation by the United Nations Flying Agency (ICAO), the plane had been plagued with technical problems for more than a week before the incident.
- Also see AbbreviationFinder.org for Singapore country abbreviations, including geography, history, economy and politics.
One man was sentenced the same month to pay the equivalent of SEK 121,000 for throwing fimps from his window, SEK 3,700 per thrown fimp. The man could be trapped with the help of pictures from surveillance cameras. According to the Singapore Environmental Protection Agency, the fine was the highest so far for such crimes.
Land grief broke out on March 23 when former Prime Minister and country father Lee Kuan Yew passed away 91 years old. Lee Kuan Yew was Singapore’s Prime Minister between 1959 and 1990 and was in power when Singapore broke away from Malaysia in 1965 and became independent. He was one of the founders of the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has been in office since 1959, and during his time as Prime Minister of Singapore, led the development from being a small port city to becoming one of the richest countries in the world. According to the authorities, over 450,000 mourners queued up to Parliament to take one last farewell to their former head of state on his trust they paired. Lee Kuan Yew was the father of Singapore’s current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In May, the customs in Singapore seized ivory and other exotic animal parts valued at the equivalent of SEK 50 million on their way from Kenya to Vietnam. The cargo, which was classified as tea, contained approximately 1,800 elephant beetles and also rhinoceros horns and teeth from large cat animals.
In August, President Tony Tan announced at the recommendation of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong new parliamentary elections that year, more than a year before the government had to announce elections in accordance with the constitution. The reason for making the election was stated to be that the government wanted to renew its mandate for voters to continue to govern.
During the election movement, immigration policy was primarily in focus. Many Singaporeans also expressed concern that young Singaporeans had difficulty finding jobs. The election was for 89 seats in Parliament, two more seats than in the 2011 election and was held on September 11. Winning became the People’s Action Party (PAP) which received 70% of the vote. Opposition Party The Labor Party (WP) received 12.5% of the vote. The design of the voting system, a majority voting system where the winner gets all the seats in the constituency, gave PAP 83 seats while WP only got 6 seats. The election results showed a clear improvement for PAP, which in 2011 received 60% of the vote.
The same month, the smoke spread from heavy forest fires in Indonesia to Singapore, where protective masks were distributed to the population, and more than 20,000 military and police officers from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore were deployed to fight the fires. In Indonesia, especially in Sumatra, forests have been burning for almost 20 years to make room for palm oil plantations, but according to researchers at the NASA Space Agency, feared that the spread of smoke would now be worse than ever since the weather phenomenon of El Niño made the air unusually dry.
In October, Pastor Kong Hee and several of his aides were sentenced for embezzlement. Kong Hee was the leader of a large church in Singapore and spent the equivalent of $ 140 million of church money to pave the way for his wife’s singing career in what was described as a “religious mission”. The pastor then embezzled an additional SEK 150 million to sweep the tracks again. His wife was not suspected of crime. According to the Reuters news agency, six people were sentenced to prison for between 21 months and 8 years depending on how involved they were in the fraud.
On August 9, Singapore celebrated 50 years as an independent state. The media noted the development of the city state as an economic success story, whose financial center is the fourth largest in the world. During the year, Singapore topped various world lists, such as number one on Bloomberg News Agency’s annual list of the world’s healthiest countries, number two on the World Economic Forum’s annual report on the world’s most competitive cities, and number three on Global Finance Magazine’s list of the world’s richest countries.