Singapore will stage this year's Singapore Season in Beijing and Shanghai from October 12 to November 12, to showcase the city-state's arts and culture.

"We aim to present the artistic side of Singapore to raise awareness of Singapore as a multi-cultural global city," Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, announced on Tuesday night at a year-end event of his ministry.

Other highlights supported by the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (MICA) include the Singapore Art Show, a national platform for local visual artists to showcase their latest artworks, the biennial Singapore Writers Festival, and the annual Singapore Arts Festival, which will be rolled out here over the year.

These are the epitome of the MICA's support for the promotion of Singapore's creative industries, which comprise the arts, design and media.

The city state, with a population of about 4.5 million, has in recent years doubled its efforts to develop the creative sector, which has been proved to be one of the fastest growing sectors.

The government's vision is to raise the share of creative industries in gross domestic product (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 Asia creative hub.

(Xinhua News Agency February 14, 2007)