Labour productivity dragged down by domestic sectors

Singapore

SINGAPORE's labour productivity has been weighed down by a shift in employment towards less productive sectors, with domestically oriented industries lagging far behind export-oriented ones. Still, the government's ambitious 2-3 per cent annual productivity growth target remains, albeit as an "aspirational" goal, said Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) Permanent Secretary Ow Foong Pheng on Tuesday.

According to a new MTI study, the productivity performance of export-oriented sectors has far outstripped that of domestically oriented ones. From 2009 to 2014, productivity growth of the former stood at 5.3 per cent per year on average - significantly ahead of the latter's 0.8 per cent.