Zhi Yuan Chor’s Post

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Procter & Gamble Finance / Independent Director @ Char Yong (Dabu) Foundation

Former growth economies like Canada, Chile and Germany shed light on what Singapore has done well to achieve its prosperity. More importantly, it offers critical lessons for Singapore in its search for the next phase of growth. Lesson 1: Being at the forefront of technology: Singapore’s economic growth is premised on attracting high tech manufacturing investments and building an ecosystem around it. With the advent of AI, Big Data and Sustainability, along with challenges arising from an ageing population and climate change, Singapore needs to continue leveraging new technologies to address these challenges. Singapore should achieve this not only with foreign investments, but with more focus on grooming local tech giants that will take the lead on driving solutions, in partnership with foreign tech companies and educational institutions. Lesson 2: Diversify trade partners With trade amounting to 300% of its GDP, Singapore is heavily dependent on trade. To build resilience on this front, it has built diversified trade links with more than 200 trade partners on both the import and export fronts. However, as microchips and clean energy become critical resources in an age of digitisation and climate change, securing diversified access to these resources is challenging due to: 1. TSMC/Nvidia’s near monopoly on AI microchip supply; and 2. China’s dominance in rare mineral supply essential for clean energy. These problems are compounded by protectionism trending large in an age of “deglobalisation”. In view of these challenges, maintaining healthy trade relations with partners is more critical than before. Moreover, Singapore needs to get creative in diversifying access to advanced chips and rare minerals via strategic investments. Such investments would involve placing bets on initiatives such as: 1. Prospecting for a rare earth mine outside China 2. The UXL Foundation, a project aimed at reducing AI developers reliance on Nvidia designed AI chips Lesson 3: Reducing income inequality Singapore has been focused on enhancing income equality through distributive policies, resulting in an improving Gini coefficient over the past 10 years. However, with the acceleration of technological disruption and higher risk of layoffs, managing income equality is set to become an uphill task. The government needs to address this challenge through these 3 areas: 1. Accelerate capacity building within WSG and SkillsFuture to ensure sufficient bandwidth to handle increasing demand for reskilling of workers, especially the laid off 2. Implement a system of unemployment benefits that strikes a balance between creating a social safety net for the retrenched, while incentivising them to return to gainful employment 3. Realize the vision of multiple pathways to success via diverse meritocracy, enabled by driving tech-enabled economic growth and fostering a culture of openness to tweak the education system in response to tech advances.

Commentary: Former model economies carry lessons for today’s success stories

Commentary: Former model economies carry lessons for today’s success stories

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