Pro-Enterprise Disruptor Award

With more than 90% of our food imported, diversification is an important strategy adopted by SFA to ensure a resilient supply of safe food. This ensures that disruptions from any single source does not affect Singapore severely as our importers can turn to alternative sources to maintain stability of our food supply.

Following Malaysia’s export ban on live chickens to Singapore on 1st June 2022, Singapore’s source of chilled chicken supply was severely affected. SFA worked swiftly with the food industry (e.g. key importers, traders, and retailers) and source country authorities to manage the evolving situation and import food from more sources. SFA worked closely with the associations and industry players to ramp up procurement of chicken from alternative sources such as Thailand and Australia. With SFA’s facilitation efforts, imports of Thailand’s and Australia’s chilled chicken rose 4.8 times and 4 times, respectively in June 2022, compared to overall imports in
2021.

On 30 June 2022, SFA with the National Parks Board (NParks) approved Indonesia for the export of frozen, chilled and heat processed chicken and chicken meat products to Singapore. With more countries accredited, local importers could expand their sources to support their business continuity plans. Not only have these initiatives ensured food supplies remain available in Singapore but also created more opportunities for related local enterprises (e.g. food  vendors depending on chicken as an ingredient) to keep their businesses going during challenging times.

The Lao PDR-Thailand-Malaysia-Singapore Power Integration Project (LTMS-PIP) involves the cross-border power trade of up to 100 megawatts (MW) in capacity, from Lao PDR to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia using existing interconnections. As part of the LTMS-PIP, EMA issued Singapore’s first electricity importer licence to Keppel Electric Pte Ltd, which allows Keppel to start importing electricity into Singapore.

This initiative serves as a pathfinder towards realising the vision of an ASEAN Power Grid (APG), a key regional initiative to enhance interconnectivity, energy security and sustainability through electricity interconnections. Having successfully commenced on 23 June 2022, this import trial provided an opportunity for Singapore and Singapore businesses to tap on renewable energy sources in Lao PDR. As the first successful multilateral cross-border electricity trading initiative involving four countries in Southeast Asia, it will also pave the way for larger scale electricity imports of up to 4 gigawatts (GW) in capacity by future importers into Singapore by 2035.

Conventional cross-border fund transfers and remittances have been plagued by longstanding pain points which include long transaction times and high costs. Transactions would take a few days to complete, at an average cost of 6% of the transfer value. The PayNow-PromptPay linkage is the world’s first direct connectivity of two countries’ national fast payment systems. It allows customers of participating banks in Singapore and Thailand to make instant and secure account-to-account fund transfers using just their mobile phone numbers, similar to how local PayNow fund transfers are performed.

Customers of participating banks in Singapore and Thailand are now able to transfer funds of up to S$1,000 or THB25,000 daily across the two countries, at any time of the day, through their mobile banking or payment applications. There is also no need to populate information fields such as the recipient’s full name and bank account details. The transfers will be completed within a matter of minutes, representing a marked improvement over the average of 1-2 working days needed by most cross-border remittance solutions.