The museum, located in Sentosa’s Imbiah Lookout, said in a Facebook post on Thursday (March 17) morning that the figures will be displayed at the courtyard outside the attraction.

The public are welcome to take photos with the figure from March 23 to March 27, said Madame Tussauds. They may also bring flowers as a gesture of respect.

March 23 marks the first-year death anniversary of Lee, who died at the age of 91.

“Lee Kuan Yew was highly regarded and well respected, both in Singapore and abroad. We hope this will encourage locals and tourists to take a moment to remember him, and what he achieved for the country,” said Craig Connor, general manager of Madame Tussauds Singapore.

“We will also have a special ’Book of Memories’ in which people may pen their thoughts about what they remembered Lee for and how he had inspired them in one way or the other.”

The book will be kept in the museum for public viewing.

The iconic figure of Lee and his wife smiling, arm-in-arm and seated against a backdrop of red flowers formed in the shape of two hearts, was unveiled at the museum’s grand opening in October 2014.

It was sculpted based on a photo taken by Kwa’s niece in Sentosa on Valentine’s Day 2008.

The museum also has another figure of Lee which he did during a sitting in 1997.

A proposed training programme lasting at least 10 hours – shorter than the 60-hour taxi driver vocational licence (TDVL) course – is being considered by the authorities for these private chauffeurs, sources told The Straits Times.

The licensing requirement, which follows a review that started last October, is expected to be announced by the Ministry of Transport next month during the budget debate.

There will be a “phase-in” period to allow drivers time to go for the vocational course, said industry sources who requested anonymity. It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of private-car hire drivers here.

Course credits attained during the proposed vocational training could also be used for the TDVL, should the drivers want to become cabbies.

Besides vocational licensing, sources said, the authorities are mulling over clearer markings on cars being used to pick up passengers. This could be through decals pasted on these vehicles to identify them.

Asked about the upcoming regulations, the Land Transport Authority said only that it was finalising the review. “More details will be made known in the coming weeks,” a spokesman said.

With a regulatory framework, Singapore will join other countries, such as the Philippines and Australia, which are moving towards regulating an industry that has come under heat worldwide for allegedly competing unfairly with taxis.

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan had said in October that, where justified, the government would “level the playing field” between taxis and private-car hire services.

The head of Grab Singapore, Lim Kell Jay, said vocational licensing can serve as an “added assurance” to commuters.

He said the company does its own screening in the form of “background checks, in-person registration, induction training as well as vehicle inspections”.

Uber’s general manager in Singapore, Warren Tseng, said he was “hopeful of a positive outcome” to the review – one that will ensure drivers can continue to have flexible work opportunities, and commuters, reliable transportation options.

Private-car hire driver James Koh, 53, said if vocational licences become a requirement, part-timers may find it a hassle and stop driving. “We have been operating for so long without problems, I find it strange that we need to have a licence,” he said.

However, National University of Singapore transport researcher Lee Der Horng said regulations actually benefit private-car hire services by legitimising them.

He said services like Uber and GrabCar should also disclose data on their platforms with the government, as taxi operators do.

“The government can have full visibility of how many vehicles are on the roads on a day-to-day basis, and how much mileage is clocked.

“By being better informed, policies can be adjusted to help solve transportation issues in Singapore, for example, by putting more taxis or private cars for hire on the roads.”

After 25 years in Singapore’s financial services industry, Song has endured enough business cycles to understand that job cuts come hard and fast in his field when business conditions sour.

Fortunately for Song, his jobless status was short-lived; within weeks, he was offered the chance to rejoin CIMB as an economist for its private banking unit.

But he knows that his industry is not out of the woods yet.

“There were far fewer initial public offering (IPO) or merger and acquisition deals last year, and that capital market slowdown had a tremendous impact on investment banking. Elsewhere, trading desks were also hit by the weak commodity prices,” he told The Straits Times.

“We’ve had a somewhat better start this year with the stock market on a good run, but financial institutions are still reeling from last year’s impact. The main industry theme now is caution – and if they need to fire to manage costs, they will fire. This has always been a very brutal industry.”

GLOOMY YEAR AHEAD

What happened at CIMB was part of a bigger story that has spooked Singapore of late.

As news of layoffs by international banks – from Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays to Standard Chartered, among others – continued to grab headlines in the past year, the anxiety around the future of one of the nation’s key industries has also deepened.

The troubling questions extend beyond the industry. Is the financial services sector facing a decline? If so, how long will it last and what does it mean for Singapore’s economy and employment opportunities more generally?

In the near term, the worry is certainly justified, DBS economist Irvin Seah said. “The downside risks for the financial sector are rising, due to the challenging external environment. The slowdown in China is having a broad-based impact on Singapore, and any interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve will also rock the financial markets.

“Domestically, Singapore’s dimmer growth outlook means companies are less willing to expand, hence less demand for loans. It doesn’t help that the property market is still cooling,” he said.

Bank loans shrank 1.2 per cent year-on-year in January, the weakest showing since March 2000, Seah noted as he warned of a “gloomy” outlook this year for the sector.

The headwinds are well understood by the major financial institutions here, with all three local banks – DBS Group Holdings, OCBC and United Overseas Bank – expecting only low single-digit growth in loans this year.

Plunging oil prices have also stirred up market fear over a potential asset-quality crisis, due to the banks’ considerable loan-book exposure to the struggling energy and offshore marine industries.

Talk of a banking crisis has irked DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta who, at a results briefing last month, said people are “misinformed” on the matter, before admitting that the bank will slow down on both hiring and senior staff wage growth this year.

A KEYSTONE FOR ECONOMY

How well the industry grows after a bumpy 2015 will have a decisive impact on Singapore’s economic outlook.

The finance and insurance sector may only be about 13 per cent of the economy in terms of nominal value-add to gross domestic product (GDP), but at a time when the nation is feeling the pressure of a prolonged manufacturing recession, it is now one of the biggest growth drivers, contributing to 25 to 30 per cent of GDP growth in the past four years, Seah said.

And despite all the grim tidings last year, finance and insurance still grew 5.3 per cent year-on-year, down from 2014’s 7.7 per cent but still the second highest behind only the 6.1 per cent growth notched up in the wholesale and retail trade sector, Ministry of Trade and Industry data showed.

In comparison, manufacturing – some 20 per cent of the economy – suffered a sharp reversal from growing 2.6 per cent in 2014 to shrinking 5.2 per cent last year.

That means finance and insurance chipped in about one-third – 0.7 percentage point – of Singapore’s total 2 per cent growth last year; it is an economic cornerstone the nation can ill-afford to lose.

The sector will be resilient enough to play that role in the long term, helped by Asia’s status as an investment destination, a Monetary Authority of Singapore spokesman said.

“Structural factors such as the longer-term rise of wealth in the region and Asia’s relatively lower insurance penetration rate among advanced economies should help to keep activities in these segments on an expansionary trajectory. The large demand for infrastructure in Asia will also drive growth in infrastructure financing and investment,” he said.

Against that backdrop, growth will come from areas such as corporate banking, project finance, fund management and insurance industries, the spokesman added.

NEW GROWTH AREAS

In other words, while the “low-hanging fruits” for growth are disappearing, the slowdown is not industrywide, with many segments still on track for growth, Singapore Management University finance professor Annie Koh said.

“In what I call the vanilla banking segment, where the daily bread- and-butter of loans and deposits business takes place, consolidation will continue.

“But I think the ’middle segment’ can thrive. This is where you facilitate the cross-border wealth and trade. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Asean Economic Community taking shape, I see a huge potential for Singapore, as an established trading hub in Asia, to play a big role in this space, to be the hub for wealth management and trade financing.”

This is why some operators, such as Manulife Asset Management (MAM), remain bullish even as other financial institutions cut down their presence in Singapore.

MAM Singapore chief executive Wendy Lim said: “The asset-management industry in Singapore has been expanding steadily in recent years at 14 per cent compound annual growth rate over the last five years… For Manulife, we are pleased to see a faster growth than that of the industry.

“We see tremendous growth potential in Singapore, given that it is a key wealth-management hub in the Asia-Pacific, its strong local talent pool and excellent regulatory infrastructure,” Lim noted, adding that MAM plans to expand its Singapore team this year.

UOB is also at ease with its own outlook, despite a 1.2 per cent year-on-year drop in 2015 net profit – the weakest performance among the three local banks.

“The financial markets are expected to stay volatile this year but we believe this is part of an economic cycle. Singapore’s financial services sector is sound and has the resilience to manage the impact from the global economic slowdown,” chief financial officer Lee Wai Fai said.

“From Singapore, UOB has built over the decades an extensive Asian network, which has given us an edge in facilitating rising cross-border trade and investment. Singapore will continue to be the base where we support our clients’ investments,” Lee added.

Acting Director of the provincial Department of External Relations Nguyen Hoàng Long said the event enabled local businesses to welcome a wave of investment from European partners since the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) was signed in 2015.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was willing to act as a bridge between the two business communities.

According to the provincial Department of Planning and Investment, local businesses exported over US$370 million worth of goods to the European market in 2015.

European countries are running 19 projects worth nearly $24 million in the province, making up around 2.4 per cent of the total foreign direct investment (FDI).

Lying at the heart of the south-central coastal region, Khánh Hòa boasts great potential in marine economy, especially sea and island tourism and transport services.

Nha Trang, Vân Phong and Cam Ranh Bays are regarded as three key economic regions in the province, which are appealing for foreign investment in various fields such as tourism, services, and industry.

Authorities have been applying preferential policies for overseas investors.

Representatives from the European Chamber of Commerce (EuroCham) in Vietnam spoke at length about the EVFTA, as well as a project to support European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with regard to intellectual property in Southeast Asia.

The country exported more than 856,219 tonnes for US$347.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 101.89 per cent and 81.73 per cent, and Huynh Minh Hue, VFA general secretary, indicated there had been too many orders to handle last year, including some large government contracts with Indonesia and the Philippines.

At a regular meeting of the association last week, he said exports of common white rice accounted for 32.68 per cent of exports, up almost five times from the same period last year, and exports of glutinous rice also surged due to high demand from China.

Exports of fragrant rice continued to grow steadily thanks to increased exports to China and Africa, he said.

VFA anticipates exports to reach 1.3 million tonnes in the first quarter, 56 per cent up from the same period last year.

Hue said the number of contracts to be executed remains high at around 1.4 million tonnes.

But with inventories at export firms 81,140 tonnes lower than at the same time last year – at one million tonnes – they have to buy rice, he said.

Prices are currently high in the domestic market despite this being the peak harvest season and the association announcing no plans to stockpile the grain.

High demand from exporters coupled with a forecast of falling output in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta due to drought and saltwater intrusion has pushed up the prices.

The Ministry of Agriculture and rural Development reported that by March 5 around 139,000ha of the winter-spring rice crop in nine provinces had been damaged by drought and saltwater, with the loss estimated at one million tonnes.

In previous years the VFA proposed purchasing one million tonne of rice for temporary storage at the beginning of March to support domestic prices, but this time farmers can earn reasonable profits at current prices.

According to rice traders in the Mekong Delta, a kilogramme of IR 50404 paddy in the field costs VND4,600-4,650, VND300 higher than a year earlier, and high-grade paddies are priced much higher.

According to Central Statistics Agency (BPS) data, exports to Japan rose by 5.3 per cent to US$1.11 billion last month from $1.05 billion in January, while exports to China increased 6.6 per cent to $945 million from $886 million in January.

“Exports to Japan and China have shown an improvement, an increase on a monthly basis,” BPS head Suryamin said at a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday.

However, accumulative export figures from the first two months of 2016 showed that Indonesia’s trade performance was still weak compared with the same period of 2015. Exports to Japan in January-February, at $2.16 billion, marked a 5.4 per cent decrease from the same month last year, while exports to China at $1.83 billion recorded a 9.65 per cent decline.

Japan is Indonesia’s second-biggest export destination, with an 11 percent market share, followed by China at 9.37 per cent. The United States, Indonesia’s biggest export market, has a 12.15 share.

The agency’s data showed that exports to the US in February dropped 6.8 percent month-on-month to $1.15 billion from $1.23 billion. Accumulatively, January-February exports to the US were down too, by 3 per cent to $2.38 billion compared with last year’s $2.45 billion.

In total, non-oil and gas exports in February were worth $10.19 billion, an increase of 8.67 per cent from $9.37 billion in January. Nevertheless, on a year-to-date basis, January-February exports were down 9.89 per cent to $19.56 billion from last year’s $21.7 billion.

Indonesia exports to the US, Japan and China were mainly textile and textile products, electronics, rubber and rubber derivatives, palm oil, forest products, footwear, automotive products, shrimps, cocoa and coffee. Seventeen of Indonesia’s total 24 commodities experienced an increase in February, Suryamin said.

The LSX on Saturday hosted the Investment Gateway: Opportunities to Wealth in AEC, with the aim of providing information on capital market investments and fundraising for people looking for opportunities to expand their business within the AEC.

Participants browsed various product exhibits set up by government and private organisations involved in the cap ital market. They also listended to a talk on investment opportunities in the stock market and learned from the experiences of the speakers.

The LSX invited experienced speakers on investment to share their knowledge and lessons, LSX CEO Vanhkham Voravong said at the opening ceremony.

The LSX offers choices among business units to pursue funds mobilisation for business expansion, the participants heard.

It also helps them to increase the efficiency of their busin ess operations and supply transparent services, and pursue greater modernisation, Vanhkham said.

The seminar also examined improvements to help the LSX move towards international standards in competition and relate with different stock markets in the region, he added.

Apart from that, the participants were able to open securities accounts and inquire about stock investments directly with securities companies during the event. The event received cooperation and was supported by various private and government organisations.

Vanhkham hoped that they would continue to provide cooperation and support to reveal knowledge about capital markets and stock markets among the Lao people.

The LSX currently has five companies listed, those being Banque Pour Le Commerce Exterieur Lao Public, EDL Generation Public Company, Lao World Public Company, Petroleum Trading Lao Public Company and the Souvanny Home Centre Public Company.

This year there will be three more companies listing on the LSX and Vanhkham expects the local bourse to have reached 25-30 companies by 2020.