Speech by SMS Lee Yi Shyan at the Retail and Food Services Productivity Benchmarking Seminar 2014 at Lifelong Learning Institute

Mr Tan Peng Yong, Chairman, Programme Advisory Committee of Singapore Productivity Centre, 

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning. I am pleased to be here with you at the inaugural Retail and Food Services Productivity Benchmarking Seminar.

In early 2010, the Government set an ambitious target of achieving 2 to 3 per cent in annual productivity growth over a decade. In the first five years, Singapore’s productivity is expected to grow by slightly over 2 per cent on average. We are therefore on track in our productivity drive.

However, most of the gains were achieved in 2010, when the global economy rebounded and bolstered our recovery. We must therefore not rest on our laurels. To ensure our companies’ competitiveness and continue to create good jobs for Singaporeans, we have to press on with transforming into a high productivity economy.

When we drill down the productivity numbers at the sectoral level, we have found that the export sectors typically do better. This is because they are competing internationally, are more capital intensive and require constant upgrading to stay competitive. However, we also have sectors that are lagging behind. Retail sector and the Food Services sectors are unfortunately amongst the sectors that have not fully exploited the potentials for productivity gain.

This was the reason why in August last year, I announced the establishment of the Singapore Productivity Centre or SPC, as the national competency centre for the Retail and Food Services sectors. The setting up of SPC would allow us to focus our energy to understand and develop the retail and food services sector.

Over the past year, SPC has already out-reached to more than 450 food companies and 500 retailers through a range of initiatives, such as training, study missions and productivity consultancy. SPC is off to a good start but of course, more could be done.

In fact, SPC partnered DP Information Group in March this year to initiate the Retail and Food Services Productivity Benchmarking Exercise. This exercise aimed to help companies benchmark their performance against their peers in various sector-specific productivity indicators. As the Chinese saying goes: “知己知彼，百战百胜“， our firms cannot be fighting blind and hope to beat competition without knowledge of competition. The bench-marking exercise will show them where they stand in the industry in terms of productivity, and later on where they stand in terms of international average and best in class companies.

I understand that SPC will be sharing in greater details the benefits of benchmarking, especially how it is applied to the use of information and communications technology (ICT), skills development and operational efficiency at the firm and industry level. As SPC gathers more firm-level data, they will be able to construct industry-level data for the participants’ use, and later for international comparison. Benchmarking helps us understand our productivity gaps.

I understand that SPRING Singapore will cover the cost for companies to participate in SPC’s benchmarking exercise from 2014 to 2016. I therefore urge our SMEs in the retail and food services sector participate actively in the exercise to build a pathway for productivity upgrading.

May I wish you a fruitful day ahead. Thank you.