SINGAPORE, Aug 19: The wealthy city state of Singapore had $159 billion worth of overseas investments at the end of 2002 even before recent regional expansion sprees by its state-owned enterprises, government data showed on Thursday.

Nearly half of the investment abroad was in Asia, while 28 per cent was in the region covered by the Caribbean and Latin America where several tax haven countries are located.

The Department of Statistics said the data released on Thursday for 2002 came from a survey of all local incorporated companies and local branches of foreign companies so it would not be a direct estimate of the so-called external economy.

It would also not include recent purchases by the powerful Singapore state investment holding firm Temasek, which embarked on a regional shopping spree in the last 18 months spending $1.5 billion under a new chief executive, Ho Ching, the wife of Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The size of Singapore's assets abroad dwarfs its annual gross domestic product (GDP) of about $95 billion. Analysts have long tried to estimate the size of Singapore's so-called external economy, which includes the foreign assets owned by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, state-owned Temasek Holdings and other government-linked companies as well as the private sector.

Temasek, which holds stakes in most of Singapore's big businesses including interest in Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings, has been buying stakes in banks and telecommunication firms from India to South Korea.

The government said 54 per cent of Singapore's investment abroad was in the form of direct investment, with portfolio investment accounting for 17 per cent of the total. China, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Indonesia were the top destinations for the direct investments aboard. -Reuters