Keng Swee Goh

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Goh Keng Swee DUT (Chinese: 吴庆瑞; pinyin: Wú Qìngruì; 6 October 1918 – 14 May 2010), born Robert Goh Keng Swee, was a Singaporean politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore between 1973 and 1985. Goh is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of Singapore. He was also one of the founders of the People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed the country continuously since independence. Goh was a prominent member of the country's first generation of political leaders after Singapore became independent in 1965. He served as Minister for Finance between 1959 and 1965, and again between 1967 and 1970, Minister for Interior and Defence between 1965 and 1967, Minister for Defence between 1970 and 1979 and Minister for Education between 1979 and 1985. As Minister for Interior and Defence, Goh's main objective was to strengthen the country's military and domestic security capabilities after the British had withdrawn its troops from the former British Crown colony, which made the newly-independent nation vulnerable. A key policy was the creation of National Service (NS), a mandatory conscription system for able-bodied young males. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had mentioned that he wanted a conscription consisting both men and women however, Goh rejected it, citing that the labour cost would be too great for the newly-independent nation. During Goh's tenure as Minister for Finance, he declined to allow the central bank to issue currency, favouring instead a currency board system as this would signal to citizens, academics and the financial world that governments cannot "spend their way to prosperity", the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) was later established in 1971. In 1981, Goh also expressed the view that the central bank need not hold large amounts of cash in reserve to defend the currency, proposing that the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation be established to invest excess reserves. At the time, it was unprecedented for a non-commodity-based economy to have such a sovereign wealth fund. The foreign merchant bank, Rothschild, advised on the GIC. (Source: DBPedia)