service-oriented, that in Taiwan is more manufacturing-oriented. At present, Singapore
manufactures private planes, and attempts to turn itself into a regional aviation hub,
providing a "one-stop" hub for comprehensive repairing, overhauling, testing and
renovating of aircraft in the region. Taiwan seems to have found a competitive edge in
aerocomponent manufacturing (such as flight safety, flight management and flight data
recorder equipment) and in designing, aided by CAD/CAE. As regards the chemical
industry, again, it is not new in the region. However, the present trend in the ANIES is
to increase the range of activities to include the provision of technical services, product
and process development, and marketing. Three sub-sectors can be identified as growth
areas: (1) specialty chemicals, (2) pharmaceuticals and (3) petrochemicals. Specialty
chemicals and petrochemicals are going to function as a supporting industry to
electronics, photographic, pharmaceuticals and food and beverage industries etc. For this
reason, the chemical industry of the region has still a lot of room to expand.
Light industries will continue to play a crucial role in future. A dominant proportion
of the light industries will still be the traditional industries such as textile and garment,
and consumer electronics. Amidst the development of new industries, entrepreneurs of
the traditional industries of the ANIES will continue to find means to survive or to
phase out their production smoothly. In future, we expect to see large scale relocation
of labour-intensive manufacturing processes to low cost countries in the region. The
ANIES themselves will move into some more profitable, non-processing activities and
at the same time the industry's technology will be upgraded and products diversified.
In future, it is anticipated that the ANIES will probably establish a vertically
integrated production system at the regional level to cater for the development of both
heavy and light industries. As mentioned earlier, the chemical industry is developing into
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