Content area
Full text
SHANNON L.D. SMITH*
Growth Triangles have been part of a recent international trend, particularly in Asia, whereby economic growth has spread across national frontiers into contiguous areas, cutting across political boundaries and systems, and occurring with or without government initiative and with or without formal institutions and structures. Not only are Growth Triangles an interesting example of sub-regional economic cooperation, they illustrate the nexus between national, regional and international dynamics, whereby it is virtually impossible to discuss economic transformation in any location in isolation from wider national, regional and global economic developments.'
As a result, Growth Triangles have captured the imagination of politicians, scholars, journalists and the business community, who have come up with a myriad of terms to describe these regional economic integration processes, among them `regional economic zones', `sub-regional economic zones', `transnational export processing zones', and `extended metropolitan regions'.
To what extent one or more of the above economic integration processes best describes the development of the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS-GT) is, however, of conjecture. Consideration, therefore, needs to be made of the specifics of cooperation under the IMS-GT.
The growth triangle idea
In December 1989, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, announced that Singapore, together with neighbouring areas of Malaysia and Indonesia could form a `triangle of growth'.2 The `Growth Triangle'-as it came to be known both as a geographic unit and as an economic concept, and as conceived by Goh-aimed to take advantage of a cross-border spillover of economic activity from Singapore into the contiguous Malaysian state of Johor and the Indonesian province of Riau. Goh's idea was quickly adopted and supported by Indonesia and, to a lesser extent, Malaysia.
The linkages can in some ways be seen as mirroring the fluid nature of political boundaries and economic exchange in pre-colonial Southeast Asia-the three areas once formed parts of the Johor-Riau Empire which, with the coming of the European powers, declined in importance, and was eventually divided into two, and later three, separate regions.3 However, despite historical associations, the present situation is not a rediscovery or throwback to any historical period, except geographically, due to separate political and economic development in the colonial and post-colonial periods.
The IMS-GT officially began in June 1990, when the concept was endorsed by...