Singapore releases Economic Strategy Review Final Report with more detailed proposals

[SINGAPORE] The Economic Strategy Review Final Report was released in full on Wednesday (Jun 24), with further details of the 32 recommendations that were published with an executive summary on May 13.

These include specific new proposals such as those calling for a review of Singapore’s taxation framework to help startups attract foreign talent, and the expanding of the SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme to cover more workers beyond the existing salary cap.

The government will study the recommendations and work with industry partners and unions to translate them into action, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information said in a statement.

The report sets out the country’s strategy to secure growth and create good jobs for Singaporeans in a “fundamentally changed global environment”.

Its 32 recommendations fall into eight focus areas – four aimed at securing economic growth, three at creating good jobs and one on beefing up resilience.

Seven recommendations were unveiled in January, at the Economic Strategy Review’s (ESR) midterm update; the full slate was presented at the Singapore Business Federation’s Future Economy Conference in May.

In its final report, the ESR reiterated the three “strategic imperatives” which will guide Singapore’s next phase of economic growth and which inform the eight focus areas of the review.

First, the Republic must sharpen its value proposition, focusing on where it creates the most value and has “hard-to-replicate advantages”.

Second, its institutions, firms and workers must become more agile and adaptable.

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Third, the country must “build resilience alongside efficiency”.

Formed in August 2025, the ESR committees conducted more than 80 engagements with more than 7,700 people from various sectors.

32 recommendations

Of the eight focus areas in the report, the first is that Singapore should build global leadership in key industries while taking bold bets on emerging ones, even if not every investment is expected to succeed.

Second, it should position itself as a hub where artificial intelligence solutions are developed, tested and deployed, rather than compete to build frontier models or host data centres.

The third thrust is to strengthen the Republic’s role as a connected and trusted global hub.

This includes its role as an energy hub. Said the report: “In the near to medium term, Singapore should continue to anchor and expand the trading mandates and operations of major oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas) players in Singapore.”

There may be scope to expand capabilities in areas such as LNG bunkering, ship-to-ship reload operations and supporting storage infrastructure, it added.

Singapore could also explore developing a futures market to support the hedging of energy products.

The fourth thrust is to foster a more dynamic enterprise ecosystem that helps firms to not just grow, but also restructure or make a transition when needed.

As part of this, the ESR called for foreign worker policies to be revised to better account for startups’ “unique circumstances”.

It proposed a review of the taxation framework for employee share-option plans and other employee share-ownership schemes, to help startups attract top-tier talent.

On jobs, the ESR called for creating a broader range of good jobs, alongside stronger support for workers facing career setbacks and disruption.

One specific proposal in the final report calls for expanding the SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme to cover more professionals, managers and executives.

The report noted that the scheme, for involuntarily unemployed workers, is currently capped at workers earning up to S$5,000 a month.

Separately, elaborating on the earlier announced idea of “career bridges”, the ESR recommended identifying sectors with strong labour demand – such as the care economy – and investing in “transition pathways” into them.

For at-risk workers, data can be used to design more personalised job-matching and placement support.

“By analysing role adjacencies, labour demand, job transition patterns and wage prospects, and matching these with workers’ skills and competencies, more personalised transition pathways can be developed,” said the report.

“This can be complemented by targeted training to close skills gaps, and partnerships with industry to identify potential employers.”

The eighth and final thrust is to build economic resilience as a core national capability.

This includes improving energy security, taking a pragmatic approach to decarbonisation, and working with key industries to identify and mitigate supply-chain vulnerabilities.

Eugene Tan, associate law professor at Singapore Management University, noted that with the full ESR report now released, the real test will be whether the “relatively open-ended recommendations” can provide sufficient guidance and momentum for Singapore’s economic restructuring and transformation.

“If Singapore can achieve the three imperatives, the economy will be on a revitalised trajectory,” he said.

DBS senior economist Chua Han Teng, in a May 25 report, said the successful execution of the ESR’s strategies could give the Singapore economy a “decent chance of achieving average growth at the upper end of the 2 to 3 per cent range over the next decade”.

However, Prof Tan warned that the report “runs the risk of being the curve”, given that AI, other emerging technologies and evolving geopolitical challenges are “upsetting the status quo”.

“Solidarity among the tripartite partners is essential,” he added. “The economy is as much social as it is economic. It is an integral part of (Singapore’s) social compact, and the ESR recommendations must ensure shared economic growth with enhanced social safety nets.”