Singapore will spare no time and effort to help its people and businesses build the capabilities that ensure they remain competitive in a more globalised and yet uncertain world, said Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing.
With a small domestic market, scarce land and labour resources, Singapore will always have to compete in global markets for trade and investment opportunities, and for that, it needs its workers and companies to have the right expertise and capabilities, said Mr Chan.
He told a summit organised by AmChams of Asia Pacific - an umbrella organisation of 28 American Chambers of Commerce in the region: "Unlike many other countries, we never believed that we can survive on the basis of a local market or domestic market.
"We will always have to compete on the basis of the global market, and our people will need the kind of skill sets necessary to operate in the global environment."
International trade accounts for a significant portion of Singapore's gross domestic product and drives its export-focused manufacturing and service sectors.
This underpins the country's view that workers and businesses do not need protecting from global trade and competition.
"We don't think that we can keep out the competition. And we don't think that it is the correct strategy to try to protect our people from the competition," Mr Chan said.
"The correct way for us to approach this challenge is to make sure that our businesses and our people are up to scratch with the relevant skills and networks so that they can compete at a glo-bal level."
Geopolitical tensions, including the United States-China trade war, worries about technological disruptions and the supply chain turmoil caused by the pandemic have further aggravated such protectionist tendencies.
"Of course, in politics, if we choose the easy way out, then it is easy for someone to jump up on the stage and say that, well, I will up the drawbridge, shut them out, and we will live happily ever after. Now, that can work for a while, but that is definitely not a sustainable strategy for the long term," Mr Chan noted.
He added that every country will need to invest in the continuing education of its people in order for them not to be displaced and become irrelevant.
Mr Chan said all countries would like their workers to have a higher quality of living and higher purchasing power, but that cannot be achieved by imposing artificial barriers to avoid the competition in an unrealistic and unsustainable way.
"The best way for us to protect ourselves from the competition is not by shutting out the competition, but by taking the bull by its horns and building up real capabilities for us to create new niche areas for ourselves."
To remain globally competitive as an economy, Singapore also plans to entrench its role as a high-quality business hub, connected with the global value chain by having niche capabilities.
Mr Chan said the traditional roles that hubs played in just congregating people together will be less relevant in a world where people can work from anywhere.
He said that many of the lower value-add functions of the previous business hubs will be outsourced and offshored. "There will still be a role for global business hubs. My sense is that they will be fewer, but of higher quality. And these business hubs will be really places where companies and businesses can mobilise capital, aggregate talent and protect intellectual property," said Mr Chan.
"We intend to be one of these global business hubs that offer such propositions to the business community," he added.
Singapore also needs to ensure that it remains entrenched in critical parts of the global value chain.
"We are not like bigger countries where we can compete on the basis of price, labour or land; we will need to compete on the basis of the quality of our ideas, the intellectual property that we can generate.
"And we need to be quite selective in the areas that we compete in, in the different value chains."
