SINGAPORE: The Government has set up teams to look into how 20 economic sectors in Singapore, from logistics to tourism, can be transformed and made future-ready.
Finance Minister Heng Sweet Keat revealed this on Monday on the sidelines of a visit to precision engineering company Feinmetall in Marsiling.
The move aims to align the efforts of different parties – government agencies, trade associations, business Chambers and companies – in order to better implement the Industry Transformation Programme that was unveiled in the Budget last Thursday, he said.
“We will systematically go through sector by sector all the different plans. We need to bring everyone together. We have elements for all those plans already because we’ve had different efforts on organising the training of staff, we have technology plans, we have plans on raising productivity,” Mr Heng said.
“What we need to do is to integrate this plan into a coherent one where the different parts can work together and what we need to do is to bring industry associations as well as companies whether big or small together. And then we’ll have a much better alignment of effort.”
The teams comprise officers from agencies such as the Singapore Economic Development Board, Spring Singapore, International Enterprise Singapore and the Workforce Development Agency.
They will develop “Industry Transformation Maps” for each of the sectors, which together cover 80 per cent of Singapore’s economy.
These officers, known as “cluster champions”, will map out how companies in each sector can raise productivity, harness training and technology and venture abroad to grow and transform.
Mr Heng declined to say when the road maps will be revealed but added: “The (discussions) that are on a far more advanced stage are the logistics and precision engineering. I mentioned the food sector the other day. At the same time let me emphasize that this industry transformation plan covers many different sectors not just in manufacturing but also services and in services we would include tourism, retail, food and beverage and so on.”
