PM Lee Says Global Depression 'Not On The Cards'

Source : The Business Times, December 5, 2008

A global depression is unlikely to happen because governments have learned lessons from the world economic meltdown in the 1930s, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Friday.

Mr Lee, speaking at a forum with foreign correspondents, repeated predictions that the city-state's current recession would last a year, followed by several years of slow growth.

'I think a global depression is not on the cards,' he said Lee.

'The governments have learned lessons from the 1930s and they will not repeat the same mistakes, so this is not the end of the world.'

Singapore went into recession in October following two successive quarters of negative gross domestic product growth. The official growth forecast for 2008 has been slashed to 2.5 per cent, from 7.5 per cent in 2007.

'I think that the recession, in the best of the experts' judgement, may last a year, maybe if we're lucky, three quarters,' Mr Lee said.

'But the recovery from the recession is likely to be weaker than from previous recessions and we must be prepared for several years of low growth,' he said. -- AFP