Consumption patterns are being influenced by crosscurrents of technology, changing tastes, government policy, anaemic global growth and low-for-long interest rates. The spending shifts in Singapore will not only shape the local retail landscape, they will inform the debate on issues ranging from the unrest in Hong Kong to a universal basic income as a tool to counter inequality.
(Aug 5): Singapore is Asia’s Monte Carlo, a playground of the wealthy. The city-state has two casinos, an annual Formula One race, and the third-highest concentration of ultra-rich individuals after Monaco and Geneva. It’s home not just to the “Crazy Rich Asians” caricatured in the eponymous movie but also, increasingly, Brazilian and British billionaires.
Even the affluent in recently turbulent Hong Kong are beginning to find the rival financial centre a safer option for their money (if not yet their persons). So it’s all the more surprising that in the past five years, most of the spending impulse in Singapore has come from those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, while the condo-dwelling bankers and the landed elite have been relatively thrifty.
