By JAMIE LEE

SINGAPORE companies making it to the Forbes' list of the best 200 Asia-Pacific companies earning less than US$1 billion in sales shrank to five from 14 last year.

The five Singapore Exchange-listed companies under the Singapore category of the 'Asia's Best 200 Under A Billion' list are: engineering group Boustead Singapore, marine player Ezra Holdings, producer of train parts Midas Holdings, education group Raffles Education and healthcare company Thomson Medical Centre.

Thomson Medical Centre is the lone fresh face from Singapore in the latest list of best small and midsize companies. The healthcare company is the smallest among the three listed hospital operators in Singapore in terms of market value, and has been expanding into Vietnam over the past few years.

The other four - Boustead Singapore, Ezra Holdings, Midas Holdings and Raffles Education - are repeat entrants from 2008.

Leaving this year's list are companies such as technology group Armstrong Industrial Corporation, water treatment company Asia Environment, construction firm CSC Holdings, property leasing company Straits Trading and offshore construction company Swiber Holdings.

Chinese and Hong Kong firms made up the lion's share of the companies picked. There were 78 companies coming from China and Hong Kong - constituting nearly 40 per cent of the companies listed - up from 63 last year.

Firms that made it to the list were selected from over 12,000 listed companies for consistent growth of sales and profits over three years, modest indebtedness and future prospects. These were based on sales and profits calculated as at August this year.

'Consumerism is once again a key driving force behind most of the companies in the list,' said Forbes, with 102 firms on the list being consumer-related, up from 78 last year.

With the recent economic downturn, just around 600 companies passed Forbes' criteria, down from over 1,000 in previous years.

Out of the 200 companies, more than half, or 136 companies were new entrants.

One Chinese debutant is Nasdaq-listed Internet search engine Baidu, which controls about 60 per cent of the country's search revenue compared with search engine giant Google's 33 per cent, data from a Chinese tech analysis firm iResearch showed.

Revenue of the most popular non-US site in the world has grown 29-fold in four years according to Forbes, reaching US$462 million in 2008 and US$151 million in profits.

At the same time, chief executive and founder Robin Li's personal stake has also ballooned to US$1.8 billion.

The other 64 firms that are no strangers to the list include Alibaba.com - the largest online business-to-business services company in China that was named as such because the founder thought his business was an 'open sesame' for small firms - and Chinese sports apparel and footwear retailer Li Ning.

This article was first published in The Business Times.