GIC–MOE Economics Experience 2025

The school selected me to participate in the GIC–MOE Economics Experience 2025, an interactive programme organised by GIC and the Ministry of Education to give pre-university students a taste of how Singapore manages its investment strategy. The programme, hosted at GIC’s headquarters, helped me better understand how economic reasoning can influence the state's long-term decisions.

One session on “Reserves, GIC & Securing Singapore’s Financial Future” offered thoughtful insights: reserves are not merely a pile of savings; they are helpful for both current and future generations. A discussion with GIC Chief Economist Dr Prakash Kannan further reinforced this viewpoint, as he emphasised that rising global uncertainty, driven by geopolitical and climate developments, calls for less effort on accurate prediction and more on scenario analysis and institutional preparedness.

I also enjoyed the lecture “Sustainability in Practice: A Long-Term Investor’s Perspective on Navigating Climate Change, which shows how sustainability is part of the government’s core investment strategy, rather than being a secondary concern to economists. The last session, ‘Read the news like an investor’, extended on this by discussing frameworks for interpreting economic news and differentiating between short-term noise and long-term structural trends.

The program enhanced my understanding of economics. Rather than being an empirical subject, I now understand how economics is a discipline of judgement, trade-offs and long-term thinking. This programme offered a more evident appreciation of how economic analysis shapes Singapore’s resilience and of how future economists can play a meaningful role in stewarding national resources amid uncertainty.