Governing Public Enterprise in Singapore: Ownership, Coordination, and Public Value, 1960–2026

How can extensive public ownership coexist with market discipline, and when does it produce social value rather than protected rents? This article develops a historical, mechanism-based analysis of Singapore’s public enterprises from 1960 to November 2026, distinguishing listed government-linked companies, statutory boards, directly owned corporations, Temasek’s shareholder portfolio, and GIC’s management of government assets. A structured synthesis of academic studies, legal mandates, audited accounts and documented failures examines three competing channels: professional delegation and internal control; coordination of complementary assets and services; and market power or implicit support. Predictions, failure conditions and appropriate outcome measures are specified for each channel. The evidence rejects a presumption of universal commercial inferiority among sampled Singapore government-linked firms but does not identify a national growth effect of state ownership. An original reconciliation of the 2017–2026 Temasek valuation series shows that mixing the 2025 legacy and 2026 restated values exaggerates apparent one-year portfolio-value growth by 8.91 percentage points. Housing accounts, rail reliability, water security, airline and airport performance, corruption and investment losses expose distinct, non-interchangeable mandates. A bounded comparison with Norway and a pre-specified evaluation framework clarify institutional complements and transferability. The findings support a conditional proposition: public ownership is most defensible when mandate, decision rights, competitive access, transparent financing and independent accountability jointly constrain behaviour. The valuation exercise is descriptive; the proposed causal tests require further microdata and are not represented as estimated effects.