Budget 2023: Sustainability, displaced workers and geopolitics

SINGAPORE - From geopolitics to sustainability and jobs, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong took questions on Budget 2023 during

The Straits Times-The Business Times Budget 2023 Roundtable

sponsored by UOB on Monday.

Here are some of his answers:

Q: The theme of this year’s Budget is “Moving forward in a new era”. What is this new era? What has changed? And how will it impact Singapore?

A: We are seeing superpower rivalry taking place before us. It’s happening in the world, it’s taking place in the region, in Asia, and the whole model of globalisation that we have been used to for 30 years is also changing. Our multilateral trading system is changing, and all this will make life just that much more difficult, especially for a small and open economy like Singapore.

At the same time, while these external changes are happening, we still have to grow our economy in order to generate the resources we need to uplift the vulnerable segments of society, to take better care of our ageing population, and to make sure that our social compact remains relevant and strong.

Q: Why were sustainability issues not as prominent in Budget 2023 as they were in the previous Budget?

A: I’ve heard that feedback, but I’ve also tried to explain to people that one cannot just look at the Budget statement in isolation. It’s impossible for the Budget statement every year to be all-encompassing. You’ve got to select your priorities, and you’ve got to try to be as inclusive as possible, but you’ve got to select a few areas to highlight.

And the one reason why we didn’t specifically highlight sustainability measures in this year’s Budget statement was precisely because we’d

just covered it in great detail in last year’s statement

and many of these measures are still work in progress. But we will obviously give an update in due course once we see more results.

Q: What about workers who, despite all these best efforts to find suitable roles and training, cannot be placed? What do we do about them?

A: In any economy, there would be some underlying unemployment rate, it’s never zero. We are almost at full employment now. The issue is really trying to help workers identify where might be the next better opportunity, where might be a better fit, and then to also focus on helping workers who might become displaced or retrenched, because it’s not always optimal for the displaced and retrenched worker to immediately find the first job that becomes available to him or her. They may want to do that because they have bills to pay, and they really need to get the finances in order, but frankly, from a system point of view, it may not be the most optimal outcome.

We want to make sure that the worker gets time to identify what his abilities and strengths are, and get

matched to an opportunity which would be better suited for that person.

So how then can we have a system in place that would enable this better matching of the worker to opportunity, to have a better functioning labour market that will ensure better re-employment to higher-value jobs? That’s something that we are studying very carefully.