Singapore aims to grow its manufacturing sector by 50 percent over the next 10 years to maintain its competitiveness, with the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting its importance to the trade-reliant city-state’s economy, it said yesterday.
The goal is ambitious as it would become harder to rely on foreign labor to supplement the local workforce, Singaporean Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing (陳振聲) said.
To meet the aim, Singapore has to innovate and produce higher-value products rather than look to lower the cost of production or labor, he added.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The plan comes as the manufacturing industry emerged as one of Singapore’s bright spots, as it underwent its worst recession on record.
The pandemic has created a demand for products from sectors such as biomedical electronics and precision engineering subsectors, which in turn generated demand for supporting sectors such as logistics.
The city-state’s manufacturing sector contributes about 21 percent, or about S$106 billion (US$80 billion), of total GDP and accounts for about 450,000 workers, or about 12 percent of the workforce, according to the government figures.
“In the fight against COVID-19, securing essential supplies sometimes became a barter trade, and may continue to be so, as we see global supply chains continue to be disrupted,” Chan told local media on the sidelines of a visit to a precision engineering firm.
“So whether people will sell us things or not” often depends on whether “we have things that other people value that they want to obtain, beyond just an issue of whether people are willing to pay the price for it,” Chan said.
Given that it would reduce reliance on cheap foreign labor, more locals would have to work in the sector, he said.
Singapore would also try to attract the best global and local firms in niche areas that would ensure it remains a critical node in global value chains, he added.
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