Value-added 'falls short as measure of productivity'

Singapore

THE chief executive of the Building & Construction Authority (BCA) has pointed out the inadequacy of the value-added (VA) metric as a measure of sectoral productivity.

John Keung says VA, which the government uses as a yardstick, is, on its own, insufficient as a way of "sizing up what is really happening on the ground", especially in the building sector. The building sector has earned the reputation of being a "productivity laggard", but Dr Keung says this is not true if other sector-specific indicators are used.

He prefers to look at site productivity, which takes the total constructed floor area and divides it by manpower used on-site (measured…