Singapore, UK working on Investment Protection Agreement to ‘provide certainty and clarity’ for investors: Iswaran

SINGAPORE and the UK are working towards a new and modern UK-Singapore Investment Protection Agreement that would “provide certainty and clarity” for investors, said Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations S Iswaran on Wednesday (Jul 6).

“This is important given our large and growing bilateral relationship. Singapore is the UK’s third largest Asian investor, as well as third largest investment destination in Asia,” he said in a Facebook post, after a meeting with UK Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan in London where they discussed the plans on this bilateral agreement.

While in the British capital, Iswaran also met UK Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Kwasi Kwarteng, and the pair reviewed the progress of the efforts to develop a green economy cooperation framework by this year.

“Our intent is to jointly tackle the mounting global challenge of climate change and reduce our carbon footprint, while harnessing green growth and investment to create new jobs and opportunities for our people,” said Iswaran.

He added that the two countries’ partnership in the green economy and the new Investment Protection Agreement would form “the next wave” of cooperation.

“This builds on the strong momentum of the UK-Singapore Free Trade Agreement as well as the UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement that had recently entered into force,” he said.

Iswaran, who is also Transport Minister, is in the UK for the second leg of a trip to Europe that first saw him visit Germany, and will end with a stop in France.

When he was in Berlin, Iswaran met German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck and they jointly announced that both Singapore and Germany are working together to develop a bilateral Economic Cooperation Framework.

A press release by Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry said this inter-ministerial agreement would “further structure and deepen the economic policy collaboration on the government-to-government, government-to-business and business-to-business levels”.

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The framework will, among other things, promote private sector-led collaborations across sectors such as advanced manufacturing, mobility and green technologies. It will also lay the foundations of exploring further cooperation on workplace training, business matching and networking. Both sides plan to conclude and sign the framework by the end of 2022.