Speech by Minister Chan Chun Sing at the media briefing on Connect@Singapore during a visit to Connect@Singapore

1. Good morning friends from the media. Yesterday we announced our Phase 3 reopening plan in Singapore.

2. Today, I'm happy to announce the Connect@Singapore initiative that will facilitate business travellers coming to Singapore to meet their counterparts, without necessarily going through the processes of a long quarantine period. Let me explain why we have come up with this Connect@Singapore initiative. 

3. Global travel, especially business travel, has been severely impacted by the need for quarantine measures, and many people in different countries are unable to meet each other for business activities. For example, people from Country A might not be able to go to Country B for business meetings, and vice versa.

4. Instead, we have come up with a new concept called Connect@Singapore, so that travellers from both country A and B can safely meet in Singapore, and also to meet business partners in Singapore. Therefore, we have constructed a new facility, the first one of which is Connect@Changi.

5. With Connect@Singapore, the idea is for business travellers to come to Singapore for up to a period of 14 days. During the 14 days, they will undergo the necessary routine medical checks so to provide themselves with the assurance that they are safe, and to also provide the assurance to the meeting partners that they are safe. As they are not quarantined for 14 days before they meet their other clients and meet with fellow Singaporeans, we have also designed the facilities such that Singaporeans can come and meet with the foreign visitors through the meeting facilities and where both of them are safe. It can be a facility for Singaporeans to meet business travellers from elsewhere, and it can be a facility for business travellers from elsewhere to meet each other as well. That's why we call it the Connect@Singapore initiative. 

6. We have also received feedback from various business partners that many of them are looking forward to resuming some of these meetings with their management teams across the region, and that it's very difficult for them to travel around the region now. Instead, their senior management teams can come to Singapore to this facility to meet safely. 

7. The second point I'd like to make is that this is part of our wider plan to also test various other new initiatives and protocols to enhance our ability to triage and to prioritise the testing for different travellers with different risk profiles. Today, with enhanced testing capacities and enhanced capabilities in our testing and tracing technology, we are better able to customise the testing and tracing regime according to the different groups of travellers based on their different travel and risk profiles. This is the reason why we want to start this initiative to allow the world to reconnect at Singapore, because different countries will continue to have different risk profiles, and we should not let this hinder the normal functioning of a business meeting. 

8. There are also many other new features in these facilities to ensure the safety of the local staff working here; the safety of the local business travellers coming to these facilities; as well as the safety of the travellers themselves, to make sure that the three levels of safety that I mentioned is well taken care of. This is so that when a foreigner comes into Singapore, Singaporeans can feel assured and safe that they are taken care of. The foreigners interacting amongst themselves will also feel that they are safe. Very importantly, a third level of assurance is that when the foreigners go onward on their journey back home or to other places, they can be assured that they have a clean bill of health. This is so that there will be no misunderstanding that anyone may have caught the virus in Singapore. 

9. This is how in the overall plan, this is another step in our aim to re-establish ourselves as the business hub and as a financial hub where people can come and do business, and be assured of their health and safety in Singapore. This is but one of the steps in our ongoing journey, and we will continue to test out and pilot different ways of allowing business travellers to meet safely in Singapore. Thank you.