'If you don't already have a BRI plan, you're too slow off the mark'

Singapore

SINGAPORE did not take China's proposal for the Silk Road Economic Belt seriously at first - until it became clear that Beijing was putting its money where its mouth was.

The amount is not measly. Channelled through state development institutions and commercial banks, the sum runs up to US$300 billion.

"And that's excluding all the financial resources that the central state-owned companies are also putting aside for investments," said Ho Chee Hin, group director of the China Group at International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, the trade promotion agency responsible for pushing Singapore companies to venture abroad.

He stressed that the sum supporting China's ambitious move to link countries located on China's ancient trade routes with countries beyond for trade and economic cooperation is "very significant". (For the sake of comp…