Transcript of SMS Low Yen Ling at the AfA on Business Competitiveness Media Doorstop

English Soundbite

In the last few years, our businesses have gone through unprecedented challenges as well as disruptions from the pandemic. Many of our businesses have adapted very well, and also transformed their businesses, and with that, come out of it being more resilient. 

But the world now is in a flux. What we are seeing is a very uncertain and volatile global economic environment. We work very closely with our trade associations and chambers, and have many regular dialogues with our businesses. We take regular feedback from them, and we know that they are facing complex, multi-faceted challenges. We understand the pressure that our businesses are facing, and we are committed to working closely with them to address their concerns and their needs. We hear and we know that they are concerned about rising business costs, resource constraints and they also hope that the pro-business regulations can be more flexible. And we want to work closely with them, and we are committed to put in place structures so that we can facilitate private sector-public sector partnership, taking a systematic approach to address these concerns and needs. 

That is why two months ago during the Committee of Supply debate in Parliament, I announced the setting up of the Alliance for Action on Business Competitiveness. This is a committee that is a private sector-public sector partnership, comprising 19 members from the industry, business communities, trade associations and chambers, business associations, industry associations, trade unions, as well as the government representatives. We will work together in the next few months to reach out to the business community, and in fact, in the last few months, we have already had our first AfA meeting. Today we are having our second AfA meeting and in the last three months, we have gone out to conduct dialogues, focus group discussions, looking at a few areas. 

The AfA will focus on three areas – first, manpower; second, land; and the third on regulatory competitiveness. On manpower, our most precious resource is our people. We would want to look at recommendations on how we can support our businesses to transform their workforce to help them to build capabilities. When the need arises, to provide them access to complementary workforce to enhance their competitiveness. On land, we will explore using the AfA platform to look at how we can further optimise the use of Singapore’s land to support our strategic business and productive activities. We are also looking at leveraging the AfA platform to potentially refresh our existing land use policies to see how can we better cater to emerging sectors and competing land use needs. On the third pillar – regulatory competitiveness – we are using this platform to further streamline the processes to make our business environment even more pro-business. We will use this opportunity to refine and to refresh supportive regulatory framework to improve the ease of doing business. The third part of this pillar, we will also look into issues and opportunities arising from nascent growth areas, such as supporting our companies to transit to a low-carbon future – the green transition. 

We will synergise the AfA platform with our existing Pro-Enterprise Panel. Using the Pro-Enterprise Panel, we have been working very closely with relevant ministries and agencies. And one such agency is SCDF. SCDF has been working with other government agencies, in particular LTA, to promote the adoption of Electric Vehicles (EV) in order to reduce carbon emissions from land transport. One important component is for them to look at the fire safety requirement of the EVs. To that end, SCDF has been working very closely with LTA to incorporate the fire safety requirement into the submission process. In so doing, the submission process is being streamlined for the company that is trying to install the EV charging infrastructure. In the past, they would have to submit two applications – one to LTA and one to SCDF – but both agencies have come together to synergise and dovetail without compromising safety. In one stroke, by streamlining the process, it means the fire safety requirement has been complied by the EV charger through the registration process of LTA, without having to submit an additional or separate submission to SCDF. This is very welcomed by the industry. In fact, this is an example where, by working to streamline processes, finetune our supportive regulatory framework and look at some of the nascent areas, we can help our businesses to save cost and time in submission, approval and application. We did some quick calculation. This will lead to a saving of at least S$15 million for the sector by year 2030. 

The AfA is looking at these three pillars, including using this opportunity to strengthen our regulatory competitiveness because it is important to help our businesses, reduce complexity in navigating government regulations. While Singapore cannot only compete on cost, we must maintain a competitive edge by being agile in regulatory review. We will be open and we are able to address regulatory challenges or regulatory pain points surfaced by the trade associations or businesses. To that end, in the last month, the Government has set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on Pro-Enterprise Rules Reviewto support this effort. This is being led by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, and comprises Minister Shanmugam, Minister Desmond Lee, Minister Tan See Leng, Minister Chee Hong Tat and myself. We will use this platform to identify regulatory pain points and gather feedback.

I would like to urge the business community, trade associations, business associations and industry associations to come forward and be involved in dialogues conducted by the AfA, so that we can co-curate recommendations and suggestions to be submitted. 

Chinese/ Mandarin Soundbite

这个行动联盟平台我们注意3个课题 。第一个课题是怎么利用这个平台来探讨怎么帮助我们的企业加强人力资源。第二个课题是怎么帮助他们加强土地的资源。第三个是加强监管方面的竞争力。

人力资源这一块，我们将会探讨怎么去协助、帮助我们企业的员工让他们提升他们的技能，还有转型。与此同时，我们也会考虑帮他们引进互补的劳动力，来加强他们的竞争力。第二个课题是土地资源，我们将利用行动联盟这个的平台来探讨怎么更善用新加坡有限的土地，然后考虑怎么去针对性地支持战略性的一些商业领域，包括一些高端的制造业。而且，我们也会检讨我们的一些土地用途政策，怎么去应对新兴增长领域的发展。监管方面，我们希望利用这个平台加强监管方面的竞争力。这一方面，我们将会探讨怎么去精简各部门的流程，让我们的经商环境可以更加亲商。我们也希望可以检讨一些新兴增长的领域，包括可持续发展，的有关条例。

所以这个行动联盟平台是一个非常重要的平台。我们呼吁我们的商会、商团可以积极地参加、给予反馈。我们同心协力地推出一些建设性的推荐。政府方面也会大力支持行动联盟的这个平台。上个月，颜金勇副总理就已经设立了一个跨部门委员会由他来领导，也包括了各部长们。我也有参与这个委员会的工作。这么做是希望我们可以同步经行让政府部门可以更灵活、更有效地应对我们企业给予我们关于政策还有条例地反馈。