Refreshed maritime sector roadmap to grow value add by S$2 billion by 2025
SINGAPORE has refreshed the Industry Transformation Map (ITM) for the sea transport sector, which counts among its ambitions the development of Tuas Port into the largest fully automated container terminal port in the world, and to grow the sector's value-add by S$2 billion between 2020 and 2025.
The updated plan and targets were announced by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat at a keynote address at the opening ceremony of Singapore Maritime Week on Monday (Apr 4).
Called the Sea Transport ITM, the refreshed blueprint also aims to expand Singapore's international maritime centre ecosystem as well as nurture the MarineTech startup ecosystem.
"To strengthen the translation from ideas to action, we will also be setting up a Maritime Industry Tripartite Transformation Committee, comprising our businesses, unions, and government agencies to oversee implementation," said Heng.
Spearheaded by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) in partnership with the industry, unions and other government agencies, the Sea Transport ITM sets out the collective course for the next few years with an emphasis on innovation, human capital development and resilience.
It builds on MPA's strategic long-term plans to develop Singapore's Next-Generation Port and strengthen Singapore's International Maritime Centre.
The refreshed roadmap features updated strategies to address the challenges and seize new opportunities from the Covid-19 pandemic and shifts in global supply chains.
It focuses on 4 strategies, namely:
- Ensuring the relevance and resilience of MaritimeSG as a key node in global supply chains;
- Building a vibrant innovation ecosystem and actively developing new growth areas;
- Supporting maritime small and medium-sized enterprises and startups to grow into global champions; and
- Developing a future-ready maritime workforce equipped with global skillsets.
Overall, the Sea Transport ITM aims to bring about increased opportunities in physical and digital connectivity for resilience, technological advancements, and the global efforts for the green transition of the maritime sector, said MPA in a press statement on Monday.
The value add target would amount to an average growth rate of 2 to 3 per cent annually. There are also plans to create 1,000 additional good local jobs by 2025.
The initial ITM for the sea transport industry was released in 2018. At that time, the targets were to grow the sector's value-add by S$4.5 billion and create more than 5,000 good jobs by 2025.
When asked for the reasons for the updated targets, MPA said: "The Sea Transport ITM has been refreshed to update our strategies to address the challenges and seize new opportunities from the Covid-19 pandemic and shifts in global supply chains."
Heng pointed out in his speech that there is a greater strain on shipping, as air and rail cargo capacity has declined, owing to the closure of civil airspace over Ukraine which have led to either flight cancellations or longer routes. Shippers are also avoiding the China-Europe rail lines that cross into Russia.
"More than a hundred ships are stuck in ports in the Black Sea, with several damaged due to the conflict," he said. "With Russia and Ukraine accounting for 15 per cent of the global seafaring workforce, there could potentially be manpower disruptions to the maritime sector." Despite the disruptions, Singapore's sea transport sector aims to attract S$20 billion of industry total business spending over the course of 5 years from 2020 to 2024. This comes in addition to the goal of raking in more than S$25 million of venture capital investments into PIER71 startups, while growing the number of MarineTech startups supported by MPA to 150 from the current 30.
PIER71 is a joint collaboration between MPA and the National University of Singapore's (NUS) entrepreneurial arm, NUS Enterprise.
"New roles requiring skills in data analytics, data science, Internet of Things (IoT) engineering, software engineering, and sustainability management will grow in demand. In addition, we will support workers to undergo skill upgrading as existing roles evolve with increasing emphasis on automation, digitalisation and sustainability," said the authority.
The Sea Transport ITM is the first of the 23 sectoral ITMs to be refreshed under the ongoing ITM 2025 efforts led by the Future Economy Council.
MPA noted that the sector has made significant progress since the Sea Transport ITM's launch, and has remained resilient despite the Covid-19 pandemic and current geopolitical uncertainties.
This is evident from Singapore's record 2021 container throughput of 37.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), an increase from 36.9 million TEUs in 2020, it added.
Going forward, MPA believes Singapore's sea transport sector is "poised to see major transformation" given opportunities arising from global supply chain shifts, digitalisation and decarbonisation.
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