Singapore's industrial development has witnessed a shift from that of an importoriented strategy in the early 1960s to an export-oriented one since it left Malaysia and the possibility of an enlarged common market in 1965. It was eligible for GSP benefits from sixteen countries in 1985, namely, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, the EC, Poland, Hungary, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Finland, the Soviet Union, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States (see UNCTAD, Handbooks on the schemes of various countries). In 1985, when Singapore's per capita income reached 70 per cent of New Zealand's, the latter removed Singapore from its GSP list. Australia revised its entire GSP scheme and reduced preferential margins to only 5 per cent for all products. Under the EC GSP scheme, only a total of thirty-seven items were of interest to Singapore in 1986.

Table 1 shows the value of total GSP exports to all donor countries since 1972. While it appears to have grown significantly by some forty-six-fold, from S$70.8 million in 1972 to S$3,269.9 million in 1986, as a percentage of total exports from Singapore, GSP exports over the period averaged only 4.6 per cent, ranging from 1.2 per cent in 1972 to 7.2 per cent in 1984. The negative growth rates of GSP exports in 1985 and 1986 reflect the severe depression of 1985.

Table 2 shows GSP exports from Singapore to the United States over the period 1984–88. Exports which are GSP-free formed less than one-third of total exports (GSP-free plus dutiable items) to the United States in 1984 and 1985. This increased to 50.5 per cent in 1986 and over two-thirds (64.1 per cent) in 1988. The average growth rate of GSP exports over the period was 30.4 per cent compared with 18.5 per cent for total exports over the period 1984–88.

On the average, GSP exports accounted for 4.6 per cent of total exports over the period 1972–86 (the average of the last column in Table 1).