Mr Sam Tan at the 8th ASEAN ANSYS Conference, 12 Oct 2010

Speech for Mr Sam Tan, Parliamentary Secretary FOR TRADE AND INDUSTRY & INFORMATION, COMMUNICATIONS AND THE ARTS AT THE 8TH ASEAN ANSYS CONFERENCE, nanyang executive centre, 12 OCTOBER 2010 AT 9.15 am

Mr Terence Chan

CEO, CAD-IT

Prof Soh, NTU HPC Center

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

Good morning. I am pleased to be here today for the opening of the 8th ASEAN ANSYS Conference. This biennial conference provides an excellent opportunity for engineers, designers, researchers and members of the academia from the ASEAN region to network, share and learn from one another.

This year’s theme for the conference – Smart Engineering for a Sustainable Future is apt as many companies are now realising that smart engineering can help drive innovation and achieve sustainability.

Towards a Sustainable Future

In a globally competitive environment, companies can no longer compete just on price alone.For them to succeed and thrive, they need to develop strong capabilities that create high value while keeping business costs competitive. This includes development of intellectual property, high quality, innovative products and services with high degrees of differentiation and demand.

Indeed, the need for sustainable development has never been stronger. Governments all over the world are seeking solutions to preserve the environment by optimizing the use of resources such as energy, water and raw materials.In Singapore, the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development ( or IMCSD) initiated the Sustainable Blueprint, in 2008. One key area of focus of the blueprint is to develop local capabilities that could help improve the way resources such as energy and water are used and optimized. In this regard, $680 million has been set aside to build new capabilities in Clean Energy and Water Technologies.

The government also recently announced a new $1 billion fund for research to tackle large, complex national challenges such as energy and environmental sustainability for the next five years. The National Innovation Challenge (or NIC) seeks to attract projects studying long-term solutions to major issues facing Singapore such as sustainable urban development, efficient city transportation systems or cost-efficient clean energy.The first NIC will look at boosting our energy resilience by increasing Singapore's energy options, reducing carbon emissions and boosting energy efficiency. In addition, the diverse expertise that willbe built up from developing innovative and impactful solutions to address own challenges and problemscan in turn help to generate the growth of new industries so as to exploit global opportunities.

Incentives to Help Drive Innovation

The Singapore government has also recognised the important role that home-grown IP and high-value products and services play in building a sustainable future for Singapore.For instance, from merely making products that are owned by others, we need to design and make our own.In this regard, the DesignSingapore Council works closely with other government agencies, the design community, industry and education institutions to promote and develop upstream design activities.

At this year’s budget, the Productivity and Innovation Credit (or PIC) scheme was introduced to support local companies as they invest in a broad range of activities along the innovation value chain. One of these qualifying activities is investment in automation equipment such as the purchase of Product Lifecycle Management, (or PLM software), of which Engineering Simulation is a key component.

For many companies, PLM is becoming an indispensable means for them to automate their processes and to streamline their operations in order to meet the increasing demands of today’s product development and manufacturing needs.Through the PIC, companies are eligible to apply for up to 250% tax allowance on a combined cap of $600,000 of their qualifying expenditures for Year of Assessment 2011 and 20

Foras such as today’s conference are also important in helping companies to maintain the momentum as they seek to constantly upgrade and innovate. Today’s conference is an ideal platform for the sharing of experiences, expertise and best practices across ASEAN in terms of how smart engineering can be exploited to achieve further innovation and sustainability.Such foras also provide institutions of higher learning, research institutes and industries with the opportunities to collaborate and explore new innovative solutions that could even be applied successfully across the ASEAN region.

Concluding Remarks

I would therefore like to conclude by congratulating the organisers of this two-day Conference for putting together a robust programme. I wish everyone a fruitful and successful Conference.

Thank you.