Singapore is to allocate S$724 million (US$534 million) under a plan to transform its economy into one that relies more on fields such as research and on companies that create new markets and jobs.
The additional investment includes S$500 million for digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, super-computing and robotics under the five-year plan ending in 2020, a government advisory panel on research and innovation said in a statement on Wednesday.
The amount includes S$300 million announced by Singaporean Minister for Communications and Information S. Iswaran on March 4.
The Southeast Asian city-state, a densely packed financial hub with a population of about 5.7 million, is seeking to attract more businesses and investors through the use of advanced technologies.
The city-state plans to roll out artificial intelligence and cloud-based solutions to every business sector by 2020, Iswaran said.
“We must continue to emphasize science and technology throughout our society,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍), who chairs the panel, said at a briefing on Wednesday. “We can’t afford to have people fearful and distrustful of science, and held captive by totally groundless anti-scientific beliefs.”
The government plans to invest S$80 million to develop cell-therapy manufacturing to build on its success in the biopharmaceutical sector, which contributed 4 percent to GDP last year and employs more than 7,700 highly skilled workers.
Cell therapy involves injecting living cells into a patient to derive a therapeutic effect, such as restoring tissue functions or fighting cancer.
Singapore is also to set aside as much as S$144 million for food-related innovations to help in sustainable urban production. These are to involve tropical aquaculture, urban agriculture and advanced biotech-based protein production.
The nation aims to produce 30 percent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.
The panel said that global demand for proteins is expected to increase significantly in the coming decades as the world population increases and income levels rise.
To capture the economic opportunities presented by this demand, the government is to focus its research on plant and microbial-based proteins, as well as cell-based cultured meat.
It plans to target investments to build on Singapore’s existing research capabilities in bioengineering, nutrition, bioprocessing and agri-food science to grow this new industry.
The figures announced on Wednesday fall under a S$19 billion budget for research, innovation and enterprise for a five-year period through next year.
The number of private-sector scientists and engineers in Singapore increased from about 14,000 to 19,000 in the 10 years leading up to 2016.
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