1. Good afternoon to members of the media.

2. We are happy to welcome BioNTech to establish its Regional Headquarters for Southeast Asia in Singapore, as part of its global expansion plans, and to build a fully integrated mRNA manufacturing facility in Singapore. When built, this new facility will add to the production capacity for various kinds of vaccines in Singapore and will strengthen the resilience of our supply chains. We are also thankful for the partnership between the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the BioNTech team over many months, whereby we have arrived at this point.

3. I was sharing with Professor Sahin earlier that this is just the start of a long-term partnership that we are looking forward to. In time to come, we hope to strengthen our collaboration with BioNTech, not just in the production field but also in the R&D field. To that extent, we will continue to partner closely with BioNTech for their global expansion plans.

4. We would also like to thank BioNTech for its confidence to plant its investments in Singapore. This is testament to the competitive advantages that Singapore can provide to biopharmaceutical majors like BioNTech, because of our ability to help major companies to mobilise capital, aggregate talent and protect their Intellectual Property, and to provide collaboration in areas such as R&D, so that we can value-add to all our relationships with our major investors.

5. We will continue to strengthen our connectivity networks to ensure that we are not just serving the Singapore market, but also regional and global markets. Singapore has a track record of making sure that we will continue to allow our investors to fulfill their commercial obligations even in the worst of times, such as in crises, so that our exports can continue to reach different parts of the world and to service different markets. We will continue to ensure that we have such predictable, long-term and coherent policies to allow investors to have confidence in Singapore.

6. Thank you.