These last 2 years is certainly eventful for Singapore, despite occasional Covid 19 lockdowns and the dissapearance of physical meetings, events, conferences, and tourists. For one, the current administration has managed to put into place its next leadership renewal plan. They have also decided that it’s best for Singapore to ‘live with covid’, and everything seems to have been back to normal, pre-covid time. These 2 decisions alone are so big and important that people might have taken that for granted again. Imagine the repercussions if these 2 decisions were the exact opposite, with endless lockdowns, more budget would have to be allocated to alleviate the structural issues.

And needless to say, these 2 big decisions had been profound, and would most likely have the most impacts in years to come. Let’s examine these closer below.

  • Politics

With the 4G Leaderships issue largely settled, to be led by current DPM Lawrence Wong, the incumbent party seems sure footed going forward. Speaking at PAP’s biennial conference held in Resort World Sentosa on th Nov 2022, DPM Lawrence Wong had warned party cadres that the party can not assume that they would form the Government, in the next election. This is powerful because it reflects shifting mindset of the party’s top echelon that they will have a real political opponents in subsequent elections, most notably the Worker’s Party.

Factoring in the current shifting social norms and values (such as repealing Section 377A on LGBT and same sex marriage issues), these are clearly divisive issues which the Government need to be careful of and which are ripe for political exploitations by both internal and external forces.

  • Business & Economy

As reported by CNA. with the gradual relaxation of lockdowns due to Covid 19, all sectors in the economy registered growth, albeit slowing down to 4.4% in the third quarter of 2022. The manufacturing sector expanded by 1.5 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022 while the construction sector grew by 7.8 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2022. Among the services sectors, the wholesale and retail trade as well as the transportation and storage sectors collectively grew by 6.2 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter. The group of sectors comprising information and communications, finance and insurance and professional services sectors expanded by 4.0 per cent year-on-year basis in the third quarter. The remaining group of services sectors – accommodation and food services, real estate, administrative and support services and other services sectors- grew by 9.2 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter, faster than the 7.6 per cent growth in the previous quarter.

Despite the “strong” GDP report on Friday, ING’s senior economist Nicholas Mapa said he expects Singapore’s growth to slow down in the fourth quarter, with signs pointing to even faster inflation coupled with global trade softening on recession fears.

Opportunities

Notwithstanding the inflation, with the growing of the middle-class families and rapid urbanisation in Asia will no doubt increase demand for finance, hub services, logistics, as well as urban solutions. The digital economy also presents opportunities to transform industries, while new technologies can help to raise productivity in sectors like advanced manufacturing to which Singapore could tap from.

Labour Market

Recent mass layoffs at Tech companies such as Meta and Twitter affecting local employees won’t bode well for the economy. Tech jobs have quickly dissapeared amid rising inflation and higher cost of capital. With government’s pivot and message to young workers to learn digital skills such as coding and cloud computing, it is hard to say yet its effects on the labour market.

To tackle these challenges, and in a bid to spark ideas and dialogues almost about anything, the Government led by DPM Wong has initiated national conversation dubbed the Forward Singapore. If you are reading these, and are interested in the well being of our nation, please feel free to participate and submit questions through the following links:

To submit questions: Click HERE

To participate: Click HERE

escveritasLatest ThinkingPoliticsforward,future,SingaporeThese last 2 years is certainly eventful for Singapore, despite occasional Covid 19 lockdowns and the dissapearance of physical meetings, events, conferences, and tourists. For one, the current administration has managed to put into place its next leadership renewal plan. They have also decided that it's best for Singapore...Your Industries Online