BrigadierGeneral George Yong-Boon YeoSingapores Minister

BrigadierGeneral George Yong-Boon YeoSingapores Rosetta Stone software Minister forTrade and IndustryAs Singapores current Minister forTrade and Industry and a long-time Government Minister,Brigadier General George Yong-Boon Yeo has been at theforefront of Singapores drive to become a knowledge-basedeconomy.BG Yeo had a distinguished academic career,winning the prestigious Singapore Presidents and SingaporeArmed Forces Scholarships. He graduated from CambridgeUniversity with a Double First and served in the SingaporeAir Force before attending Harvard Business School andgraduating with an MBA with high distinction (BakerScholar).He was promoted to the rank of Brigadier Generalin 1988 and that same year resigned from the military toenter politics at the age of 34. Since then BG Yeo has heldthe positions of Minister of Information and the Arts,Minister of Health, Minister of State for Finance and SecondMinister for Foreign Affairs. He Rosetta Stone Spain Spanish has been SingaporesMinister for Trade and Industry since June 1999.BG Yeohas been a strong advocate of Singapores policy of openingits doors to talented foreigners and has spoken frequentlyabout how governments can address the challenges posed byglobalisation. A topic he has frequently addressed is howcountries need to retain their talented citizens and attractqualified foreigners to ensure they have a large enoughtalent pool to thrive in the knowledge-driven economies ofthe future. Talent is mobile. Capital is mobile.Knowledge is mobile. So unlike in the industrial world whereyou are trapped within a jurisdiction and at the mercy of amonopoly government, in the coming world, governments willhave to compete for that same talent, capital andknowledge, BG Yeo told the Wall Street Journal.With apopulation of only three million Singaporeans plus onemillion foreigners, the key to Singapores continuedeconomic vitality was its willingness to keep its doors opento foreign talent and its ability to make internationalcompanies feel completely at home. This means that inthe natural course of things, many players, including CEOs,would be non-Singaporean. This is what we have got toaccept, because without bringing our standards up tointernational levels we cannot compete in this newenvironment, BG Yeo said.In its bid to attract talentand make Singapore a technology capital and hub fore-commerce, the Republic has developed cultural facilitiesand its arts scene and has transformed the educationsystem. In the past, the (Singapores) whole educationalsystem was designed to suit an industrial economy. Peoplewere trained in certain skills to plug into differentsectors of the economy. But Rosetta Stone English for the new economy we needpeople with broader skills because everything is changing sofast. This means equipping them more generally so that theyhave a knowledge of science, computers, biology, culture andare able to adjust as the economy evolves, BG Yeo toldBusiness Weekrecently.