SINGAPORE (Xinhua) -- In trying to stay ahead of the competition in a rapidly changing global economy, Singapore, a city state with a population of more than 4 million, has in recent years doubled its efforts to develop its creative industries, which comprise the arts, design and media.

For decades, Singapore's prosperity has been accredited to the investment-led economy, focusing primarily on manufacturing and service industries. To reinvigorate the island state as an innovation-fueled economy, a prime directive has been issued to cultivate the landscape with imagination, creativity and knowledge. Multidimensional creativity, artistic creativity, business entrepreneur ship and technological innovation will be the new currency of success.

The creative industries, which have worldwide been observed to be among the fastest growing sectors of developed economies, not only contribute towards the economy directly, they also have a powerful, indirect impact on the rest of the economy. To succeed and thrive, Singapore must tap on the promising cluster and recognize them as one of the vanguards of economic growth.

Currently, the creative industries are estimated to account for more than 7 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) and are forecast to grow by an average of 10 percent each year.

Singapore is in a distinctive and unique position to promote the creative industries because of its cosmopolitan society and confluence of diverse cultures, businesses and technologies. It's compact size and dense mix of activities spanning arts, business and technology also facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration and experimentation, which are conducive to growth of the creative industries.

The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) spearheads a national collaborative approach involving all relevant government agencies, industry players and stakeholders to develop the creative industries.

Creative Industries Singapore has been formed within MICA to coordinate policies and programs for the creative industries. Through the Creative Industries Development Strategy (CIDS), a three-pronged approach comprising Renaissance City 2.0, Design Singapore and Media 21, the city-state aims to double the GDP contribution of this new and promising sector to 6 percent in 2012.

Renaissance city 2.0 is to build on the original Renaissance City blueprint to develop the city-state into a highly innovative and multi-talented global city for arts and culture. Design Singapore is to establish the city-state as Asia's leading hub fordesign excellence, where its design cluster is fully developed into a key driver of national competitiveness and creativity. Media 21 is to develop a thriving media ecosystem rooted in the city-state with strong international extensions.

In Singapore, the creative industries have proved to be one of the fastest growing sectors. From 1986 to 2000, the sector's growth was 13.4 percent, outpacing overall economic growth of 10.6 percent.

In 2003, Singapore's creative industries made up 3.6 percent of GDP, and employed more than 90,000 employees.

The government's vision is to continue to grow the creative industries to create more jobs and value-added in the coming years. To achieve this, it is investing more than 200 million Singapore dollars (about 120 million U.S. dollars) to develop the sector over five years from 2004 to 2008.

As Singapore, which has no natural resources, seeks to remake its economy and stay competitive, it has no choice but to enhance its creative capacity as well as develop its creative industries. Where there is a will there is a way. There is no doubt that Singapore will achieve its goal of raising the share of creative industries in GDP to 6 percent in 2010, employing 5-7 percent of the national work force and establishing a reputation for the city state as a new Asian creative hub.