Enhancing the Budget to truly support SMEs

IN RECENT years, the Singapore Budget has increasingly shifted its primary focus from fiscal attractiveness to social equity in view of the widening income divide. Governments around the world have been struggling to find the right solutions to the income and wealth divide. They face pressures from the growing number of people displaced by the new financial world order, whose needs and demands are often incongruent with the measures needed to strengthen the macroeconomic pillars of the country.

While Singapore has benefited in no small way from this new financial world order, our policy makers have also not been spared from the need to mitigate the pain of those socio-economically displaced while steadfastly pursuing strategic economic policies. They are two sides of the same coin.

To buffer against disruptive volatility from movements of multinational companies in Singapore, it is imperative that we continue to strengthen, support and grow our small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which employ the majority of the Singaporean workforce.