Linking leases to productivity not practical

THERE remains a lot more work to do, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said last week about Singapore's drive to raise the productivity of its companies and industries.

Four years after Singapore set a big national target to sustain 2-3 per cent annual productivity growth over a decade, the goal is no less challenging - and the need to plug away at it has only started to grow. Beyond various schemes and incentives to spur firms and workers to upgrade, what are needed are "systemic improvements" across entire sectors to…