Page 4 - Budget-2019-Highlights-en - (For Flip Book)

Budget 2019 offers a strategic long-term vision towards building a strong, united Singapore and a vibrant and
innovative economy. If your anticipation for the Budget was in the area of tax reduction and Budget goodies, you
would be disappointed.

The changing global and domestic landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for us. The Minister of
Finance emphasised the need to persist with our industry transformation efforts in order to strengthen our
competitiveness. The three key thrusts announced to see us through the continuing transformation journey are
(a) building deep enterprise capabilities, (b) building deep worker capabilities and (c) building deeper partnerships
within Singapore and across the world.

In terms of building deep enterprise capabilities, government agencies continue to commit to provide support at
various stages of a company’s growth, be it in the areas of providing customised assistance, better financing
options or assisting SMEs with their digital transformation.

Companies, big or small, are encouraged to reassess their mode of operations, re-engineer business processes
and automate to raise efficiency and productivity. With the proposed reduction of the foreign worker
dependency ratio ceiling in the Services sector over the next couple of years, all businesses, and not just the
Services sector, must start to seriously think about investment in technology, train workers and reduce reliance
on foreign labour. To this end, the Productivity Solutions Grant to help businesses adopt off-the-shelf technology
may be considered. There is also the Automation Support Package, which is being extended for two more years,
to support businesses that deploy large-scale automation such as robotics and Internet of Things solutions.

It goes without saying that companies and workers must stay on top of rapid advances in technology, especially
digital technology, in order to thrive in this competitive and technology-intensive environment. The Government
encourages every worker to learn new skills and every firm to automate its operations. Businesses must step up
training and job redesign for their workers in order to equip them with the right skills and knowledge to face
tough challenges ahead. Embracing upskilling and reskilling is key to building deep worker capabilities in order to
allow workers to stay relevant and employable in this digital age.

To be successful, companies need to compete to differentiate themselves and cooperate to solve common
challenges. To this end, the third thrust talks about building deeper partnerships within Singapore and across the
world. The Minister affirmed that trade associations and chambers play a significant role in helping businesses to
improve access to local and international networks in an effort to develop industry-wide capabilities and they will
continue to do so in this area.

The pace of technological innovation is rapid and global economic weight is shifting towards Asia. Singapore
stands to gain as global MNCs are looking to expand into the fast growing Asian markets. Concurrently,
Singapore must be a city for Asian companies ready to go global and venture into new markets overseas.
Singapore must seize the opportunity to position itself as a Global-Asia node of technology, innovation and
enterprise and to prepare our people to face up to the challenges and ride on the wave of the Fourth Industrial
Revolution.

Partner
18 February 2019

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