Singapore, region must work towards post-virus 'win-win' growth: Tharman

THE novel coronavirus pandemic could still boost Singapore's role as a business hub, even as governments will have to prioritise "ordinary people" and small businesses to recover and grow, said Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Tuesday evening.

He also stressed the potential for "a more resilient and more integrated Asian supply chain - in other words, an Asian production region - as well as Asian markets that are open to the world" in the future.

As the region emerges from the Covid-19 outbreak, "we're going to have to grow so that ordinary people can get back their jobs, their incomes can start to rise again, and, very importantly, so that our SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) can survive and look to a better future", he said at the virtual Standard Chartered Asean Business Forum.

Mr Tharman, who is also Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and head of Singapore's National Jobs Council, believes that this will involve redoubling efforts "to invest in the human capital of ordinary people" at regular intervals throughout their lives. He defined this group as blue- and white-collar workers, beyond "the best professionals" or other high-flyers.

Displaced employees must also have confidence that they will be able to bounce back, he added, even as he argued that this would entail industry-by-industry collaboration and support from the government, employer federations and training providers.

"It's actually doable. It doesn't involve major breakthroughs in thinking. It involves coordinating, it involves trust among all players... and that trust is really critical for ordinary people," he said.

Meanwhile, to a question on whether the rise of remote working during the pandemic could hamper Singapore's competitiveness, Mr Tharman replied that "Singapore is still a very cost-competitive location", relative to major Western economies, even if it is not so in much of the immediate region.

But he also argued that, amid both Covid-19 and growing geopolitical uncertainty, a more fundamental factor in keeping the Republic competitive would be its role as a highly trusted place to do business.

"Our whole raison d'etre is to be a hub within South-east Asia, within Asia, and to build win-win opportunities - because hubs don't take business away from somewhere else," he said.

Describing hubs as places that help businesses to intermediate, to diversify and manage risks and to improve efficiency, he said that Singapore can do that very well: "So there is a role for Singapore that I see accentuated in the post-Covid world, because trust and reliability, as attributes of a regional or global headquarter location, are going to be fundamental."

Mr Tharman also maintained that, despite protectionist behaviour elsewhere, most emerging economies are still looking outwards for both external markets and foreign direct investment.