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24 Sing. L. Rev. 204 (2004)
Automatic Discharge: The Panacea to Our Bankruptcy Woes

handle is hein.journals/singlrev24 and id is 208 raw text is: Singapore Law Review (2004) 24 Sing.L.Rev. 204-212 AUTOMATIC DISCHARGE: THE PANACEA TO OUR BANKRUPTCY WOES? AARON KOK* This essay looks at the question of whether automatic discharge should be now intro- duced into Singapore's bankruptcy legislation even though the concept was rejected during the bankruptcy reforms in 1995 and 1999. The focus is on the impact of the post-reform discharge regime on the state of bankruptcy in Singapore and its effec- tiveness in encouraging entrepreneurship. It will argue that although the current ills of the state of bankruptcy can be partly attributable to the post-reform regime, and that the success at encouraging entrepreneurship is ambivalent, automatic discharge should not be introduced as the panacea to these problems. The essay will show that from the experiences of other jurisdictions, automatic discharge will not solve the problems but instead bring with it a baggage of new problems. The current regime should remain, and other non-bankruptcy related measures should be taken to improve entrepreneurship in Singapore. I. INTRODUCTION When Singapore underwent a major overhaul of its bankruptcy laws nearly 10 years ago, automatic discharge was not introduced even though an easier regime in bankruptcy discharges was sought.1 As the reforms near their tenth anniversary, this paper will look into the viability of introducing automatic dis- charge into Singapore's BankruptcyAct2 now. It will do so in 3 steps. Firstly, it will set out the current discharge regime and the reforms leading to it. Secondly, by examining the impact of the current regime on bankruptcy and its effectiveness in achieving the objective of encouraging entrepreneurship, it will analyse whether At point of writing, the author was a third year student at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, academic year 2003-2004. I would like to convey my heartfelt thanks to Dr. S. Chandra Mohan, the former Official Assignee of Singapore, for his invaluable guidance and highly engaging classes in personal insolvency law. His constant encouragement to students to look at the larger law-policy framework beyond the black letter of the law has inspired several ideas put forth in this essay. I would also like to thank Geraldine for her gracious proofreading and comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Any errors herein remains solely mine. 1 Sing. Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 63, col. 400-401 (25 August 1994) (Professor S. Jayakumar). 2 (Cap. 20, 2000 Rev. Ed. Sing.) (hereafter referred to as BA).

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