Redouble efforts to transform SMEs in Singapore, says Tharman

March 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Redouble efforts to transform SMEs in Singapore, says Tharman

POSTED: 05 Mar 2014 21:29
Efforts to transform small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have to be redoubled in the next decade, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam in Parliament on Wednesday.

SINGAPORE: Efforts to transform small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have to be redoubled in the next decade, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam in Parliament on Wednesday.

Mr Tharman acknowledged that SMEs are challenged by rising business costs, which is why government assistance schemes are already skewed towards SMEs.

About 80 per cent of the S$7.3 billion dollar transition support package will go to SMEs.

Mr Tharman said that the goal of a high productivity, high income society is unlikely to be achieved in a few years and could take a decade.

“We have to have a determined approach to the problems, put resources into it and make sure we move at a continuing clip,” said Mr Tharman.

“A decade from now, if we move at this clip, we’ll be in a different place where firms will be able to survive with good profit margins (and) workers will have higher incomes. And the reason why you can achieve both higher incomes (and) good profit margins is productivity would have been transformed.”

The productivity drive is made even more challenging because the government wants to raise productivity while maintaining a rising employment rate.

Mr Tharman said: “The easy way to raise productivity is go through some shock treatment, shed firms, shed jobs, but the ones who will suffer in our case are the lower-skilled and especially our older workers.

“But we’ve taken a more inclusive approach and we should retain this inclusive approach as we go forward, which makes it a special challenge.”

Mr Tharman added that the government also needs the entrepreneurial energy and leadership of the business owners in order for productivity initiatives to succeed.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment