Government does adjust land-use policies as needed

WE refer to the article "Govt reviewing land-use policies and planning guidelines" and the commentary "Singapore land-use policies should be more responsive to market changes" (BT, Feb 16).

These articles highlighted the need for industrial land-use zoning policies to be more responsive to economic changes, such as the blurring of lines between services and manufacturing.

The government has been progressively revising industrial land policies to cater to the changing business models and needs of industrialists. In the 1990s, we introduced the Business Park zone to better integrate manufacturing with knowledge-intensive activities. In the 2000s, we introduced e-business and media guidelines (which were further updated in 2014) to better cater to IT and media-related business activities. Zones like Business Park-White and Business-White were introduced in 2001 and 2003 respectively to provide greater flexibility by combining commercial activities and other compatible uses within industrial developments.