Dell Considers Partnering With Singapore Govt for Hub

Dell executives are in active talks with the Economic Development Board, the country’s chief investment attraction agency, regarding the relocation of the PC giants regional hub to Singapore.

This includes the possibility of even co-investing with
third parties to start operations in the country.

“This is an area the (Singapore) government wants to invest in, so they would be able to find ways to invest so that we can become part of their drive to become an Internet hub,” said Morton Topfer, Dell’s vice-chairman.

“We are having discussions with the government about
expanding our capability and infrastructure in Singapore to
take advantage of a lot of the technological advantages that
exist here,” said John Legere, the company’s president for
the Asia Pacific. He declared emphatically that “Singapore will be our headquarters.”

Specifically, on the cards are plans to make Singapore
the base for its “Web farms,” an operation which enables the
company to handle its regional Internet orders as well as
help companies launch themselves into the Internet. Now, the
latter function is being handles out of Tokyo, the company
said.

They said Singapore’s proximity to its manufacturing
plant in west Malaysia and the Australian market is also
making it lean towards bigger operations in the republic.
Dell could raise its staff strength to a couple of hundreds
as a result of the move from the current 130, they added.

One of the key edges Singapore has in attracting
companies doing business on the Internet is that it has started giving a concessionary tax rate of 10 percent on offshore trading income derived from transactions done over the Internet.

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