Budget 2016’s targeted approach is good, but there’s a catch
Singapore Business Review – 13 hours ago
Ricky L • Remove
The following is posted on:-Reply
Tuesday, 1 May, 2012 2:57 PM
Ricky Lim
REACH RWEB Submission feedback RWEB2012050100010 via the REACH website: To raise productivity,
To raise productivity, everyone has a part to play :-
1. Business invest in capital tools and send workers for training
2. Workers upgrade skills to operate capital tools
3. Govt provide grants, provide good education, married govt R&D bodies with business etc
4. Government work with various industry to devise objective and tangible KPI to allow business, workers, union, gov, schools etc to shoot for the KPI.
5. Govt, business, bright individuals should scout overseas countries and industries that have make their industries productive and bring it back to Singapore and transform our business to be more productive.
6. Union encourage, provide relevant course for workers to upgrade
7. School train students in right course, right skills and married industry with courses.
8. Home, family members, social bodies have to support working members to provide a conducive environment for working members to be productive.
9. Look at whatever else things that can make the nation productive, to be productive.
10. Peg the wage increase vis-à-vis our regions, our competitors, our international competition to ensure that our wage increase are competitive and will not drive away business – causing massive job losses.
Sent: Tuesday, 1 May, 2012 3:24 PM
To: reachadmin
Subject: REACH RWEB Submission: Govt agenices working with industries to devise prodictivity figures
To elaborate further :-
(1) Ministry of Comm and iDA – should work with IT industries, foreign IT MNCs, local IT vendors etc to devise objective, tangible KPI productive figures in each technology areas and skillsets vis-à-vis global competition and regional competition – so that IT business and IT workers can target to meet the KPI productivity figures – and peg wage growth in % term and/or absolute term to the productivity figures and business profitability. Communicate this to the IT industries, business, IT workers, Union and schools. Make sure we are competitive with our global competitors and regional competitors.
(2) SLA should do the same with construction sector.
(3) Ministry of Finanace and MAS should work with the banking and financial sector. etc
- Ricky L • Remove
That is, the concept above is how to transform Singapore Economy in 2016 - sector-by-sector (conceptualising the KPI for each sector) ---- and using targeted approach to transform each sector, each industry one by one.
Only then productivity in each sector, in each industry can be successfully transformed - supported by empirical, scientific measures.
Good that after 4 years --- the idea is taken up. Industry Transformation Maps to be developed for more than 20 sectors
The maps will have initiatives aimed at increasing collaboration between firms and encouraging firms to invest in manpower.
By Nicole Tan
Posted 28 Mar 2016 12:53 Updated 28 Mar 2016 21:54
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Workers at a manufacturing facility in Singapore. (File photo: AFP/Roslan Rahman)
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SINGAPORE: More than 20 sectors in Singapore will get an Industry Transformation Map, tailored to the needs of each industry, to help drive productivity and innovation, invest in skills and promote internationalisation.
The initiative is part of the Industry Transformation Programme outlined in Budget 2016, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat told media on the sidelines of his visit to local firm Feinmetall Singapore on Monday (Mar 28).
Each map will have initiatives aimed at increasing collaboration between companies and encouraging firms to invest in manpower to deepen skills.
The maps will also suggest areas of innovation to enable firms to offer new products and services through better use of technology, as well as make a stronger push to help companies internationalise.
Teams will be set up for each economic sector, with input from various Government agencies including the Economic Development Board (EDB), SPRING Singapore, International Enterprise (IE) Singapore, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA). They will lead the development of roadmaps for each sector by integrating productivity, training, technology and internationalisation plans.
The sectors under the Industry Transformation Maps cover more than 80 per cent of Singapore's GDP.
During his maiden Budget speech last week, Mr Heng unveiled the S$4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme, targeted at providing support to firms and industries while driving innovation.
MORE INDUSTRY-WIDE COLLABORATION EXPECTED
Precision engineering firm Feinmetall has opened its doors to other firms in the industry to share its experience on improving productivity and adopting technology. By June, it plans to roll out training programmes, together with the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), that other companies in the sector can also tap on.
"The objective is to teach more people about basic maintenance processes in our company. What we want to do is impart our knowledge as well as share our equipment in our facility to enable more PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) and engineers to learn about the process of basic maintenance of our probe cards," said Feinmetall Singapore's general manager, Sam Chee Wah.
Feinmetall said trade associations and chambers have helped to facilitate these efforts.
Looking ahead, more of such industry-wide collaboration can be expected.
Precision engineering is just one of more than 20 sectors, covering more than 80 per cent of GDP, set to see new plans drawn up for future growth.
Speaking at his visit to Feinmetall, Mr Heng said the initiatives are aimed at helping firms pool their knowledge to ensure industries innovate and stay competitive.
"The challenges we're going to face will be much more complex, much more diverse, and it's going to be a much more fast moving world. Therefore our ability to respond to changes requires us to pool our knowledge in a much more targeted fashion, and in a way that allows us to create solutions and have those solutions proliferate," said Mr Heng.
"For example, if you look at many industries, many companies face many common problems, and common problems can be solved with a common solution. So if you have a common solution, we should try and replicate it across all the companies, especially SMEs (small and medium enterprises). And in that way, everybody benefits,” he added.
Budget 2016’s targeted approach is good, but there’s a catch
Singapore Business Review – 13 hours ago
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It still lacks specifics, analysts say.
Experts lauded Budget 2016’s more targeted approach at helping companies ride out the economic downturn, but cautioned that it remains to be seen how the new policies will be implemented in practice.
“The budget has a lot of specific, targeted schemes. It’s a lot of difficulty getting money out of the government for specific applications so I think jury’s still out on how this will work in practice,” said Shanker Iyer, FCCA, Chairman, Iyer Practice Advisers, speaking at the Singapore Business Review’s Budget Breakfast Briefing 2016.
Anuj Kagalwala, Asset & Wealth Management Tax Leader at PwC Singapore, added that while the Budget was less broad-based compared to previous years, it is still not as specific as it can be.
“I think it was not as targeted as we want it to be. The budget was very good on headlines, but lacks specifics,” he said.
Despite these concerns, the Budget’s targeted approach will still go a long way in helping enterprises combat the downturn.
“The key message that struck me was the theme of partnership; partnership between the government, the people, and businesses. It is no longer a top-down, or bottom-up approach, and neither is it private or public [centred]. It is now more in terms of a collaboration and partnership efforts,” said Lee Tiong Heng, Tax Partner, Deloitte Singapore.
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In Day 1 of the debate over Singapore's 2016 Budget announced by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, Members of Parliament focused on the finer details of implementation to ensure that the investments realise their intended outcomes.
- Posted 04 Apr 2016 17:00
- Updated 04 Apr 2016 19:18
SINGAPORE: Efficacy and accountability in government spending emerged as a key area of concern on Monday (Apr 4), the first day of the two week-long Budget and Committee of Supply debates in Parliament.In his Budget speech on Mar 24, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced significant spending in the area of support innovation and enterprise, including a S$4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme.Members of Parliament focused on the finer details of implementation, bringing up the need for government spending to be well accounted for, to ensure that the investments realise their intended outcomes.METRICS TO TRACK SPENDINGMP Foo Mee Har (West Coast GRC), for example, wanted to know what measures are in place to track Key Performance Indicators and outcomes on big-ticket investments such as the Industry Transformation Programme and SkillsFuture.“This is to ensure that these multi-year schemes achieve policy intent and deliver the expected outcome, namely the boost that’s needed to our capabilities and competitiveness," she said. "What lessons have we learnt from our experience of years past, where well-intentioned productivity schemes, costing billions of dollars, ultimately failed to lift productivity levels?”Also addressing the issue of lacklustre productivity growth, Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leon Perera suggested a productivity benchmarking system for companies.“This will be similar to how our household utilities bill show a chart of our electricity and water consumption, compared to similar sized households, and the national average. Economic promotion agencies of the government can agree on a company-level standard for, for example, poor, average, good, and excellent productivity for specific industries,” he said.Government agencies could then automate the extraction of data from financial statements filed with ACRA, and use this to derive a figure or rank for each company, said Mr Perera, adding that an improvement on a company’s productivity rank can be used as a criterion to grant access to government incentive schemes.MEASURING ROINCMP Associate Professor Daniel Goh noted that Mr Heng had announced significant investments, including a top-up to the National Research Fund.Citing the example of the United Kingdom, where public investments are estimated to have yielded social returns of around 20 per cent, he wanted to know if there is a framework in place to measure and evaluate the return on investment (ROI) in innovation and enterprise.“The public needs to know exactly how much of the value is being captured for the benefit of the Singapore economy and for the benefit of Singapore society,” he said.“If the government has an internal framework to measure and evaluate the ROI in innovation and enterprise, then it should share this with the public, and let Singaporeans know how we are faring vis-à-vis international competitors. If the Government does not have an existing framework, then now is the time to develop a framework to measure ROI in innovation and publicise it,” he said.SINGAPORE MUST BENEFITNominated Member of Parliament Chia Yong Yong also made a call for innovation spending to create intellectual property (IP) that is relevant to Singaporeans and Singapore industries.As Singapore is investing “billions of dollars” in innovation, and is “in it for the long haul”, Ms Chia, an IP lawyer, said that investment spending must be prudently disbursed and must realise its intended outcomes.“We need to own the IP, or at least, own rights, on a sustained long-term basis,” she said, adding that this issue should be considered more carefully when parties to a government-funded research collaboration involve non-Singaporean entities, which “happens pretty often”.She urged the Government to set clear guidelines for the retention of IP which are of strategic value to Singapore: “We want to be able to monetise such intellectual property rights, so that we can receive revenue, whether it be a one-time payment for transfer, or recurring revenue by way of royalties or license fees.”- CNA/ll -
Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat sums up the essence of the Budget statement, which was approved in Parliament on Wednesday (Apr 6) after two days of debate.
- Posted 06 Apr 2016 17:18
- Updated 06 Apr 2016 19:52
SINGAPORE: Going for “long-term vitality, and not short-term fixes” – this was how Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat summed up the essence of the 2016 Budget statement, which was approved in Parliament on Wednesday (Apr 6) after two days of debate.Taking note that many Members of Parliament have drawn attention to the short-term, cyclical challenges that Singapore faces, as well as longer-term, structural ones, Mr Heng said that this is why the Budget was “carefully calibrated” to address cyclical concerns without impeding restructuring.He emphasised that this restructuring – which includes the S$4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme (ITP) – while seemingly targeted at firms and industries, is ultimately about helping Singaporeans.“I hope that all firms will invest in their people, young and old, and start a virtuous cycle of higher skills, higher productivity, higher wages, which can then be reinvested to develop the firms further,” said Mr Heng, adding that firms must play their part by also redesigning jobs and developing staff.The Government will do its part, according to Mr Heng, by creating the right jobs, nurturing the right skills in Singaporeans, and enabling the right match between employers and employees, and between skills and jobs.WILL WE SUCCEED? “NO TEXTBOOK ANSWER TO POLICY”Mr Heng also hit back at those who had cast doubt on the achievements of the restructuring effort, which is now into its sixth year. He defended the Productivity and Innovation Credit Scheme (PIC), which had been singled out by MPs like Ang Wei Neng and Alex Yam as a scheme that was abused.He said that the PIC has “largely achieved its objectives”, which comprise raising awareness among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) about productivity and getting SMEs to undertake basic productivity efforts.“As at January 2016, 102,000 companies have benefitted from PIC. This is about 70 per cent of all active companies in IRAS’ records for Year of Assessment 2014,” said Mr Heng. “With this broad-based take-up of productivity initiatives, we can now move on to the next phase of restructuring, through the Industry Transformation Programme.”As to whether the ITP will succeed, Mr Heng said “there is no textbook answer” when it comes to policy and that the Government will, like businesses, need to embrace a spirit of enterprise.“We have some clear ideas of what we need to do, but we must be humble, and we have to figure it out dynamically, learning and improving as we go along, and working in partnership with businesses which know well what are needed,” he said.GOVERNMENT WILL STUDY MPs’ PROPOSALS “CAREFULLY”Mr Heng noted that many MPs raised proposals to support workers in the tough economic climate. These will be studied carefully, he said.
Consideration behind any measure which involves Government intervention in the labour market – such as retrenchment benefits and redundancy insurance – must “cohere to be effective over the long term”, and must not undermine the spirit of self-reliance among Singaporeans.Mr Heng also called for Budget 2016’s measures to be evaluated “in totality and over the long term”, to avoid a narrow focus on “individual winners and losers”.“Our larger goal is to make every Singaporean a winner in the long run,” he said. “When we support our SMEs, we are supporting good jobs for our workers. When we support our seniors, we are helping the families who are taking care of them… and when we keep our tax burden low, especially for the middle income, everyone benefits.”He elaborated: “So we have to see (things) in totality, and over the long term. And not just one measure over another, one group over another, and one year versus another year.”CLARIFYING CONCERNS, REBUTTING CRITICISMThroughout his speech, Mr Heng reiterated that Government support measures must be always calibrated such that they do not undermine the entrepreneurial spirit of firms, and do not weaken the bonds of family and community.With that, he addressed MPs’ concerns over specific policy measures, such as the eligibility criteria for the Silver Support scheme, and the proposed cap of S$80,000 on personal income tax reliefs.In response to calls for Silver Support – which aims to provide quarterly payouts to the bottom 20 per cent of senior citizens – to include seniors living in 5-room HDB flats or larger, Mr Heng said that there is scope for deserving seniors who “do not qualify automatically” to get help, on a case-by-case basis.“We acknowledge that there may be some seniors… who may need help, but do not qualify automatically. Seniors in these exceptional circumstances can request CPF Board to review their eligibility for Silver Support and we’ll consider the merits of each case,” he said.On criticism that the cap on personal income tax reliefs penalises working mothers, and runs contrary to the Government’s effort to encourage procreation, Mr Heng said the intent of the move is to make the tax system more progressive, and it would not affected nine in ten of those claiming Working Mothers’ Child Relief.“The Government remains committed to supporting Singaporeans in fulfilling their marriage and parenthood aspirations,” he added, noting the raft of measures available, including the baby bonus gifts, Medisave grant, the Child Development Account First Step Grant, and “significant” education subsides.In closing, Mr Heng appealed to Singaporeans to work with him.“There are many innovations ahead of us that we cannot yet imagine. Many personal and shared triumphs. Many moments of humanity, unity and beauty that will keep defining our Singapore," he said."Through all the good and bad unknowns of the years to come, I hope our spirit of enterprise and caring will run strong. I am honoured and excited to partner fellow Singaporeans on this journey. Let’s get to work together.”- CNA/ll
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