Transcript of SMS Low Yen Ling at Alliance for Action on Business Competitiveness Media Soundbite

We have made good progress since the set up of the AfA in February this year. Over the past seven months, we have been engaging businesses from all sectors. The AfA comprises members from the Singapore Business Federation as well as the private and public sectors.

We had many sessions of focus group discussions and dialogues. Today’s meeting is the fifth main committee meeting. In fact, over the last seven months, we have conducted 19 industry engagement sessions. Through that all, we picked up the feedback and suggestions on how we can co-create solutions to sharpen our companies’ business competitiveness, and we identified three key areas of priorities moving forward – the first is manpower; the second is land; and the third one is strengthening regulatory competitiveness.

On manpower, the private and the public sector members of the AfA all came to an agreement that given Singapore’s resource constraints, productivity-driven growth is the best sustainable way forward. Given that backdrop, our economic model and business model will have to continue to shift from “business-as-usual” to a mindset where “transform is the new norm”. Many companies have already taken the first few steps because of COVID as it has catalysed the adoption of digital solutions for a lot of companies, including the micro-enterprises. This has given confidence to our companies to continue to press on with the transformation journey.

We have had robust discussions over the few AfA meetings to discuss how the Government can better support our companies, large and small, in their transformation journey. We want to give the assurance to the businesses that the Government is sparing no effort to support our companies in their transformation journey. There is also an agreement by the business leaders in the AfA, as well as company leaders we met during the focus group discussions that companies need to continue to invest in the pool of local manpower to raise productivity for sustainable economic growth.

From the various focus group discussions, we heard companies’ views on how to support them better, and how to intensify their transformation journey. One of the points raised is the need to gain access to higher skilled workers to complement local manpower. Companies also agree that as they do that, they will continue to make investment in their local manpower to improve productivity and innovation capacity to sustain economic growth.

On land, we have had MND, BCA, URA together with JTC sitting in the discussions. We had constructive and robust discussions among the representatives from the private and the public sectors, and we know that companies value certainty and predictability in their leases. This will give them assurance in terms of business sustainability and will facilitate their future-planning. We think this is a very valid point, and we are seriously studying recommendations to industrial land policies to better support our companies in meeting changing business contexts, while at the same time ensuring good and productive use of Singapore’s scarce land resources.

On regulatory competitiveness, there is also a consensus among the AfA private and public sector members that it is vital we work together as one Team Singapore, whether they are companies or regulatory agencies etc, to continue to strengthen regulatory agility. This is important in a fast-changing landscape because this will better place our companies to seize emerging growth opportunities, while considering all the broader policy considerations.

I will give you three examples. First, we will review regulatory frameworks to better support our companies to meet emerging needs as well as opportunities, for example, in the area of the green transition. This is why we are here at GreenPhyto. Second, we want to streamline regulatory approvals to reduce companies’ compliance burden. We intend to take a Whole-of-Government approach to do this. Third, we intend to strengthen the tools and enablers to better support industry compliance. Broadly, these are the three areas that have been intensely discussed and we have come to a consensus on the way forward.

What is interesting is that this is an exercise over seven months where we have come together to co-create solutions. Over the seven months, I observed the representatives from the public and private sectors coming together. This allows us to better appreciate each other’s challenges and considerations, and we will continue to work together in the next few weeks as we finalise the report to be shared with the media and members of public, and most importantly the businesses.

Why are we in GreenPhyto today? We have chosen this place to host our AfA meeting for a few reasons. It shows the strong camaraderie between the representatives from the private sector, the business leaders as well as the public sector. Ms Susan Chong, Founder and CEO of GreenPhyto, shared about the construction journey and we thought it would be meaningful for us to see the building. This is also an excellent example when we talk about how we need to continue to shift from a mindset of business to a mindset where transform is the new norm.

Ms Susan Chong has been a very successful entrepreneur and she founded Greenpac – a company which specialises in packaging. But in the last 11 years, she has also been quietly doing R&D on agri-tech, even before many countries talked about agri-tech. My understanding is that when fully implemented in half a year’s time, it will be a fully automated and weather-independent industrial vertical farm. I understand it is 25 metres high and apparently this is the tallest in the world. In terms of yield, I understand it will generate about 2,200 tons of vegetables. If you compare this with standard agricultural land, I understand that this is 45 times of the yield. I think this is a remarkable story of how Ms Susan Chong did not rest on her laurels, even though Greenpac was very successful. She continued to push the boundaries and identify growth areas where we can differentiate ourselves, transform and leverage on technology. Now, she has developed her own proprietary intellectual property and filed a patent for this. We are very proud of her project and the superior crop yield.

Even as we finalise the AfA project, we intend to build on its momentum to continue the strong partnership with the private sector to translate the eventual recommendations into action, so that collectively we can sharpen our enterprises’ business competitiveness together.