Deeper govt-business tie-up vital globally to face next pandemic: Tharman

The world needs to develop its research, manufacturing and distribution capabilities in preparation for the next pandemic, and this will require much deeper collaboration between governments and businesses, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam said yesterday.

He noted that the private sector will not be able to deliver what is needed on its own because there is no way to predict which pathogen may cause the next pandemic.

That is why public funds are needed for "sharing risks" so that research and manufacturing fa-cilities can be developed ahead of time.

He cited the United States Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or Barda, which partnered private companies to develop Covid-19 vaccines, and said the world needs a "global Barda".

"The cost of preparing in advance is infinitesimal compared to the cost of not preparing. That is the lesson of Covid-19," he said.

"And it requires international collaboration, and the cost of collaboration is infinitesimal compared to the cost of not collaborating."

Mr Tharman was speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum as part of a panel on Two-Speed Global Recovery: The Dangers of a Widening Rich-Poor Gap.

Fellow panellist, Tanzanian Vice-President Philip Isdor Mpango, said he hoped to see more collaboration between developed countries and developing countries. He noted that recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic has been sluggish and uneven for countries such as Tanzania, and a big reason is the uneven access to vaccines.

"The key here is that we ask the advanced world not to forget Sub-Saharan Africa," he said.

"The challenge that we see is that while the advanced economies are recovering relatively faster because they have the vaccines, we don't have the vaccines. The facilities that have been availed to us, they are just too little."

Acknowledging that there is a sharp divergence in vaccine access, Mr Tharman said that underpinning that is a gulf in trust between the developing and developed world. He added that trust in multilateral and plurilateral groupings is at an all-time low, particularly pertaining to issues to do with the common good.

The way to address this trust deficit is through more concrete, collaborative ventures to scale up vaccine production and, beyond Covid-19, to tackle pressing problems such as climate change and the growing divide in learning opportunities, Mr Tharman suggested.

PayPal president and chief ex-ecutive officer Dan Schulman and AZA Finance founder and chief executive officer Elizabeth Rossiello, who were also on the panel, spoke about how technology can help narrow inequalities by improving access to affordable financial services.

Mr Schulman noted that many activities and services have moved onto the mobile phone, and this has opened up opportunities for companies to develop payment services that make it easier and less expensive to manage and move money.

"By doing that, (we can) hopefully drive some incremental fi-nancial health, which I think is the bedrock of so many things," he added.