The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, which handles the investments of public funds and is chaired by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's Senior Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, does not answer to anyone, not even parliament. Even the Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, is not on its board of directors. Accountability is just as alien a concept. Take the case of the acquisition of Micropolis, a disk-drive manufacturing company in the United States, by Singapore Technologies, a major GLC. Within a year the computer firm sank, taking down with it approximately US$400 million. The government stated the obvious - the loss resulted "in a diminution of the government's assets". What Singaporeans really want to know is: who was responsible for the debacle?

More recently, the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) dropped a bombshell when it announced that it had lost heavily in acquiring the Thai Danu Bank. Exactly how heavy was the loss? DBS said it was raising provisions for its stake in the Thai bank from $241 million to $763.4 million. Following the fiasco, the bank's management offered what was manifestly evident (again) - that the deal had been an "expensive mistake". But the real question is: who is accountable?

The ruling People's Action Party (PAP) has a penchant for huge projects, which it likes to believe that the domestic private sector has neither the initiative nor the wherewithal to undertake.

A few years ago, the government embarked on a plan to transform Singapore into an "intelligent island" where all homes and offices would be integrated into one huge broadband network run by the government. A few years and US$200 million later, only 14 per cent of the country's Internet users had bothered to connect to the state-run computer network. The Infocomm Development Authority, the organisation tasked to do the job, admitted that it would be several more years before it could even get the figure up to 20 per cent.

And how can Singaporeans forget the Suzhou Industrial Park disaster? The PAP put aside US$20 billion to build baby Singapores all over China. The idea was to show the world how to run business the Singapore way. Local authorities did not take to such a plan, and it did not last long.

Mergers are also in vogue. First, there was Keppel Bank and Tat Lee Bank. The latter, a private bank, had incurred huge losses in its dealings in Indonesia. Along came Keppel Bank, funded by public money, to merge with it. No questions were asked and no answers given. Then Singapore Technologies merged with another GLC, the "debt-laden" Sembawang Corp. There has never been any explanation for Sembawang's debts or why two companies with such different financial backgrounds linked.

The mother of all "mergers" was between the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) and the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS). POSB was a robust financial institution that had served lower-income Singaporeans well for decades without incurring losses or debts. DBS, on the other hand, was haemorrhaging money. But the PAP ignored all public objections and pushed the deal through.

Government-led acquisitions and mergers are easy to do when the deals are made on home ground. But when the GLCs venture overseas, the flops come thick and fast. The star-crossed acquisitions that SingTel made, first with Cable & Wireless HKT and later with Malaysia's Time Engineering, come to mind. These failures, however, did not surprise. The inability to deliver on deals by the biggest state-run company in Singapore is just a symptom of the problem with GLCs.

Yet in May, the Straits Times, Singapore's state-controlled and only morning daily, trumpeted on its front page: "It was a marriage announcement to beat all marriage announcements." The newspaper was describing a deal between SingTel and Richard Branson of Virgin. Calling Mr Branson a "marketing maestro", the Straits Times reported that SingTel and Virgin had got together to sell cellular phones and Internet services. This was definitely a time for celebration, especially for SingTel, after two failures. But in the US$1 billion deal that gave SingTel a "50 per cent stake in Virgin Mobile (Asia)", SingTel will pay US$700 million. Not bad for Mr Branson, who pays just a little more than a quarter of the investment for a 50 per cent stake.

GLCs are business dinosaurs that have no place in Singapore's future economy. The Singapore government needs to get out of business quickly and let Singaporeans get on with the show.