Commentary

The struggle to recruit skilled workers is a recurring concern for manufacturing businesses in Singapore. A study by the Singapore Management University (SMU) and JP Morgan shows that the manufacturing sector currently faces a skills gap, which is set to widen with the move towards newer engineering fields like robotics and digital manufacturing.

The technological evolution unfolding before us is nothing short of extraordinary. Just on cognitive capabilities alone, what took living organisms more than two billion years of evolution to attain will only take advanced technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) mere decades.

Data privacy has become an increasingly pertinent issue in recent times. Currently hogging all the headlines is, of course, Facebook. It has been reported that hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica.

In October last year, the Singapore government passed the Infrastructure Protection Bill – laws to improve protection for iconic buildings providing essential services, with failure to do so resulting in fines of up to S$200,000 and jail of up to two years. 

Consumers’ right to choose among different brands and regulators’ intent to control our consumptions clash more often than would think. Singapore banning certain acronyms such as IQ and cartoon figures likes teddy bears from baby milk powder is just one of the latest threats to brand and labeling freedom.

New tax framework outlined in Singapore Budget 2018 next step in enhancing country’s position as a fund management and domiciliation hub.

Logistics is the latest industry to face a bold makeover in the Singapore government's $4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme. The initiative aims to achieve a value-add of S$8.3billion (US$6 billion) and 2000 jobs for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMET) by 2020 through leveraging on new technology such as big data and analytics.

I am a passionate Uber user. I have always used it in Singapore and when I travel in Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, Shanghai, London, anywhere I am on business. I am therefore very disappointed that Uber has called it a day and decided that 23% of Grab is better than competing. This is very bad news for consumers in Singapore. Here are five reasons why:

Today, investors are paying increasing attention on how companies are managing digital disruption. After all, no one wants to invest in the next Blockbuster or Kodak.

Many people ask how Singapore can prepare for, and lead in, the era of artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of talent and human capital. AI is bringing huge impact to all of our lives and so it is a natural question to ask.

It has been a year since Singapore took the landmark step of allowing legal finance for arbitration, bringing the country into line with the US, UK, Australia and numerous other leading centres of dispute resolution. Singapore took the prize for being the first Asian country to open up to legal finance. The Lion City is now in a highly competitive position to allow its users of arbitration to enjoy significantly lower legal costs to pursue meritorious cases, as well as improve their balance sheets and legal budgets. Following Singapore’s lead, countries and corporations across Asia are exploring how they too can enjoy the benefits of this innovative financial service.

With a high rate of mobile penetration and the proliferation of e-commerce sites in Singapore, more and more millennials are buying online. According to We Are Social, 59 percent of Singaporeans have made purchase online while 39 percent have purchased a product or service on their mobile devices in 2017.

Singapore’s mobile penetration hit a high of ~158% in the first quarter of 2014, but by the third quarter of 2017, it had fallen by 10% to reach ~148%. OCBC Investment Research in its 2017 telecom report predicts a “muted outlook as space gets crowded”. With penetration rates already this high, it appears that the Singapore app economy is nearing saturation.

Asia, the US and Europe, and in fact all global markets share the same trend towards: “Mobile Agility”. Mobile agility allows consumers access to information no matter where they are. Singapore is inherently unique in that the connectivity permeates across the island at both higher speeds and availability levels as it does in other places with more land mass. Either way, this technology makes it possible for consumers to go everywhere and do anything with the help of connected apps and IoT devices. From voice assistants like Alexa to Google to Connected Car Ecosystems, Mobile Agility technologies make every aspect of modern life easier.

In Singapore, with a changing workforce demographic comes a change in workplace preferences, attitudes and expectations.

Singapore’s hard-fought economic transformation is dependent on the ability of its enterprises and people, to learn, unlearn and relearn new capabilities and skillsets.