Singapore
The headquarters for all of ASEAN, and the region's one market with both a trade and an investment agreement with the EU
Singapore is not a sales market — under six million people. It is where distribution for all of Southeast Asia is run from, where the contract is governed and where the financing sits. The free-trade agreement with the Union (EUSFTA) has applied since November 2019 and tariffs are effectively nil in both directions; the value is in legal predictability and in the port, not in consumers.
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Setting up a company
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Legal forms
- ·Director and residence
- ·Minimum capital
- ·How long registration takes
- ·Documents to incorporate
- ·Registered address
- ·Bank account
- ·Licences and permits
- ·What to watch for
Taxes
Setting up a company and tax are the part of the profile you cannot assemble elsewhere in an afternoon. The rest of the page is open.
- ·Corporate income tax
- ·VAT
- ·VAT registration
- ·Withholding tax — dividends
- ·Withholding tax — interest
- ·Payroll contributions
- ·Tax reliefs
What it makes and needs
As a market: premium food and drink, medical devices, precision engineering and anything connected with aircraft maintenance, biotech and data centres. As a hub: almost anything moving onward into the region.
Money and payments
The Singapore dollar is freely convertible and monetary policy is run through the exchange rate against a basket rather than through an interest rate. There is no exchange control — funds move without permission.
Payment discipline is high and letters of credit are routine in regional trade — a Singapore bank is usually acceptable to a European supplier as both issuing and confirming bank, which is one of the main reasons to route business through Singapore at all.
Importing into their market
Singapore is effectively duty-free — customs duty is levied on only four groups of goods (alcohol, tobacco, motor vehicles, fuels). What is applied rigorously is import GST and the licensing regimes for controlled goods.
Every consignment needs a TradeNet permit even where the duty is nil — obtained by a declaring agent or a registered company. Alongside it, the invoice, packing list and transport document; controlled goods need the relevant authority's own licence.
Selected categories fall under the Consumer Protection (Safety Requirements) registration or Enterprise Singapore approval; food and drink are registered with the SFA and the importer must hold its own licence before the first consignment.
Practical matters
English is the working language of both government and business; contracts, courts and authorities all operate in it. For a Central European firm the language barrier is effectively nil.
The port of Singapore is one of the world's largest transhipment hubs and Changi has daily direct freight connections to Europe. From here distribution across ASEAN is a matter of days.
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A visa, legalising a document, an invitation letter, the commercial attaché before a trade fair — these only go through a mission. Below are the official registers rather than transcribed addresses: missions move and consular hours change several times a year, so a link to the register stays current where a transcript would not.
Where a country has no mission in Bratislava or Prague it is usually accredited from Vienna, Berlin or Warsaw — the register says which.
Every figure names the authority that published it and the date the line was last worked on. This is not legal or tax advice — verify a figure with the named source before you act on it.