An Economy of the Future That Works For All

On 5 August 2026 I moved a Motion in Parliament, with my colleague A/P Jamus Lim on the structure of Singapore's economy, and closed the debate on it that evening. Below are both speeches as delivered

I. Opening the Motion

Delivered 12.02pm, 5 August 2026.

Why this Motion? Why now?

Singaporeans face a uniquely challenging set of circumstances. The major model of Singaporeans getting on the economic ladder has been jobs. Without a job, you’re not able to afford renting a place or buying a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat.

Without your own place, it is difficult to think about having children. And for these children, few dream of being entrepreneurs, with nine in ten working here becoming someone’s employee. For almost all of us, the jobs ladder is the main route up, with not many Singaporeans becoming entrepreneurs.

The reasons given are variously these: that the market is small and the cost of business daunting, that they lack social safety nets for risk taking, that not enough true growth capital exists for all the private wealth attracted here [1], that the biggest competitor to Singaporean startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the Singaporean Government-linked Companies (GLCs). [2] These we have the power to influence.

Property has been a lottery ticket to many Singaporeans, but with asset prices as high as they are, it is highly questionable if a new generation can follow this model without parental support, given initial conditions of wages lagging asset prices and declining employment prospects [3].

The persistence of property as a wealth vehicle breeds a rentier mindset. One generation’s ideology hardens into the next generation’s psychology. As inter-generational transfers come to dominate socio-economic status, they threaten to entrench inequity [4].

Let me recap why our job structure is threatened, though I suspect this is not news to many. Our job structure rests on being the best place in the region for foreign companies to base themselves. We host many large companies but build few of them.

Singapore has three companies in the Fortune Global 500. All three are commodity traders. Two were founded elsewhere and moved here. Korea has 13. Taiwan has six. Theirs make semiconductors and ships [5]. Theirs were built by their own people. Ours came here, and can as easily go.

At the high value end, tariffs are pulling production home and to friendly countries, reducing the supply of marginal new investment available to Singapore. And less of what moves can be won on tax competition. For an increasing number of research and development (R&D) and manufacturing jobs, speed of iteration, equipping and supplying are decisive factors.

At the cost sensitive end, high business costs and slow manpower approvals [6] accelerate offshoring to regional centres based in countries like Malaysia and Vietnam. [7] The examples are not unfamiliar to this house. H&M moved its Southeast Asia Regional headquarters (HQ) from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Tiger Beer has been brewed here since 1932. By the end of next year, it will not be. Heineken is winding down brewing at Tuas and moving production to Malaysia and Vietnam, and about 130 jobs go with it. [8]

For a younger generation, they face a changed playbook. The high paying entry level tech jobs that many aspired to have largely dried up. Many entry level roles have been offshored due to the high cost of business. And capable artificial intelligence (AI) agents and models are set to reduce the need for entry level hiring [9]. But whatever the cause, it is undeniably hard for young Singaporeans to find a job today.

What follows is adaptation. Entrepreneurship by necessity, rather than by choice, second and third jobs, structural underemployment [10].

In a high-cost economy, the work most likely to stay is work that cannot be done more cheaply somewhere else.

The standard answer for advanced economies has been R&D. Build what others cannot easily copy so that firms come here in spite of our costs. But after decades and tens of billions, not one local R&D champion has emerged worth more than a billion dollars [11].

Of course, we should continue to invest, but the upshot is that our R&D complex is sadly not ready to be our growth engine. And as individual Chinese provinces and groups thereof become increasingly fiercely competitive ecosystems, every economy will need to reckon with the necessary scale, energy availability, and the cost required to compete.

Alone, it is difficult. That is why I believe we must have greater industrial coordination between Southeast Asian countries and engage in transnational industrial policy, as I elaborated in both my maiden speech last September and my Adjournment Motion this July.

These are structural challenges to the industrial underpinning of jobs. I acknowledge the Government continues to try to do its best under these circumstances. [12] Investment into Singapore is holding up. The Economic Development Board (EDB) committed $14.2 billion of fixed asset investment last year, up from $13.5 billion the year before, and $12.7 billion the year before that, so three years rising.

But for it, we get the opposite trend in jobs. In 2023, 20,000 jobs; in 2024, 18,700 jobs; and last year 15,700 jobs. The value added expected went from $26.7 billion to $23.5 billion to $18 billion. So, even on official statistics, the engine of investment to jobs is faltering. Faced with such a panoply of problems, what can and should we hope for?

First, we need an updated growth model that cares not only about the headline gross domestic product (GDP) growth figure, but the structure of growth. If we truly believe this is a changed world, then our policies must change with it [13]. The structure of growth matters, and growth and distribution are not two things to be done in sequence.

It is acceptable as an exigency to grow first and then redistribute by vouchers and rebates. But over the medium and long term, we should be building an economy where a fair distribution is produced by the growth itself, rather than repaired afterwards out of the proceeds. Pre-distribution over redistribution.

And that is why we need an economic engine driven by dynamic local companies, healthy domestic demand, and Singaporeans and Singaporean capital venturing abroad. Only when Singaporeans thrive and believe the ladders of opportunity are fair to all, can this country be open.

Second, we need honest measurement and prioritisation of what matters from growth. Let me offer three North Stars for the distributional aspect of growth.

One, the indigenous share of national income, which captures the contribution to national income of Singaporeans as workers, owners and entrepreneurs. Its internationally comparable cousin is the labour share -how much of what stays in Singapore goes to the people who work here. [14] Ours, at about 40%, lags most advanced economies. We should resurrect the indigenous income series and measure the whole of what Singaporeans contribute [15].

Two, real income growth that keeps pace with productivity, not lag it. Overall, labour productivity has grown by 2.5% per year [16] from 2016 to 2024. But over the same period, real mean income only grew at 1.3% per year.

Singaporeans have always been model workers. From 2016 to 2024, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Singapore’s output per worker grew 2.3% per year, outstripping major economies, such as the United States (US) at 1. [17]6%, Israel at 1.6%, Hong Kong at 1.3%, Korea at 1.3% and Switzerland at 1.1%.

We need to repair this lag. Singaporean workers have kept their end of the bargain. Their compensation has not kept up with it.

Three, whether Singaporeans can still afford the city they built, not how much we produce, but how much variety ordinary Singaporeans on an ordinary wage can enjoy. The diversity of services available, how much they can afford, and the leisure they can afford to take.

The independent kitchen, the second-hand bookstore. We cannot in one breath lose our heritage businesses and our art spaces, and in the next tell Singaporeans that the city is thriving. Cities compete on the variety of things there are to consume, not only on what they produce, and high-amenity cities grow faster [18].

So, we should measure it. How varied the choices are and how many choices an ordinary wage can afford [19].

These three North Stars point us towards a more equal and inclusive economy, with opportunities for entrepreneurs to experiment, households and businesses to succeed, workers to thrive, and ideas and innovation to flourish.

Mr Speaker, the various Members of Parliament of the Workers’ Party (WP) will touch on eight questions to answer the challenges I have laid out.

First, I will discuss innovation under constraint. How do we foster a dynamic enterprise and innovation system that maximises value regardless of the high business cost and physical constraints?

Second, my colleague, Jamus Lim, will discuss dynamic local firms. How can we create a business climate in which dynamic local firms emerge as drivers of innovation and become future cornerstones of the economy?

Third, my colleague, Louis Chua, will discuss land and the roof over the household. How do we ensure that attractive affordable housing is available for every Singaporean household?

Fourth, my colleague, Andre Low, will discuss the start of a working life and ask how we ensure our tertiary students and young workers find meaningful opportunities and good jobs in a challenging economy.

Fifth, my colleague, Gerald Giam, will discuss pathways to a middle-class livelihood. Taking tradespersons as his exemplar, he will ask how we create accessible pathways for them to earn a middle-class livelihood.

Six, my colleague, Fadli Fawzi, will discuss replacement and re-entry and ask whether our system of continuing education actually works. The journey, the destination and the proof.

We close the WP contributions with our two most expansive views of the economic model.

Seventh, my colleague, He Ting Ru, will discuss the lesser measured parts of the economy, in the domestically oriented sectors, and ask what parts of this economy our national statistics fail to capture?

And eighth, my colleague, Eileen Chong, will discuss venturing abroad. How do we empower Singaporeans to seize opportunities in the region and beyond?

Mr Speaker, beyond these questions, there really is one question. What does it mean to take a changed world seriously?

If we mean to rebuild the ladder of opportunity in this generation, the answers to these problems must be the centre-piece of our evolved economic model. In these speeches, my colleague will lay out in eight steps, structural solutions to structural problems.

Today, the problem I will tackle is enterprise and innovation under constraint.

For two generations, we have been good at bringing other people’s companies here. We have been slow to put the same land that we own behind our people building their own. Why do we take a high land price as a law like gravity? Universal land pricing is a coherent and convenient accounting ideology, but in the last accounting, the people of Singapore need to decide if this ideology still serves them.

Families already know this. Tuition is expensive, and no tutor can promise a good job 20 years out. We pay anyway. Investments require outlays. We do not ask a child for an immediate pay-off.

So, the proposition: Singapore should stop treating market land value as a natural price for every socially productive use of land. And the test – a university-centred special zone where state land is priced at development cost rather than market scarcity value.

What is our offer to the young? We should remake the system with the young as the first consideration rather than the last adjustment.

Today, we tweak – a discount on a co-living room, a grant, a priority band in a ballot. Adjustments at the edge of a system designed around somebody else in a different decade. Treating the young as a first order principle means the opposite. We design for the 20-something year old foremost.

This is a supply side problem of policy.

Before we can remake society to be young, we must remake society for the young. The bargain has four parts: a place to live, near where the work and the research happen; at a price a starting salary can carry, in service of something the country needs – more local enterprise and R&D; with upside staying with the risk-takers; and a say in the rules.

What we should create: a special zone surrounding Nanyang Technological University [20] (NTU), where the state land is charged as cost recovery rather than market scarcity value, and takes its returns in the companies that grow there, rather than rent. This experiment will span land-rates for both residential and commercial space, spanning co-living, local enterprise and R&D.

It must be centred around an existing core, a university – because one cannot rustle up a cluster from nothing. But one can take one that exists and play to its strengths [21]. It will be zoned for organic messiness, a district that is pro-worker and pro-business, built around the needs of young people and young companies.

And this experiment is reversible. If it does not work, we can simply revert to the Master Plan. But surely, today’s Singaporeans should have as much say over scarce land as the master planners of decades ago.

So, let me take the argument in this order: land, our tertiary institutions, then governance and money.

First, land. Thirty years, tens of billions in R&D and more again on fostering entrepreneurship. Both R&D and the ladder of growing local giants have underperformed. We are worldclass at marshalling inputs but commercial outcomes, in terms of Singaporean-grown companies, have not appeared at the rate the spending implies [22].

On talent, we want to attract the very best to work alongside a strong local core.

On capital, we disagree about design but perhaps not ideology. But there is a serious methodological point. The state runs on taxpayers’ money. Prudence is its duty. Innovation requires the opposite: calibrated risk-taking. Which is why risk capital belongs in a policy investment bank rather than inside Government, as the Prime Minister proposes. A prudent-first posture is difficult to unlearn [23].

Where we do have an ideological disagreement is the price of land. My colleague, Mr Louis Chua will also speak about this later.

The Economic Strategy Review (ESR) organises itself around inputs to production: capital, labour, productivity. But land is an input distinct from capital. It is discussed as revenue and not as a cost – a constraint to live within and not as a lever to change. And it is not a small cost.

In December 2022, the Government put the development cost of that year’s 13,506 completed flats at $396,000 each – $234,000 of land against $154,000 of construction. [24] Land was 59% of the cost of a flat.

But of course, we can test and change this cost. We have been here before. The Centre for Livable Cities, the Government’s own urban research arm, records what happens when One-North was planned: “The idea of providing residential uses in the form of affordable housing was put forth. However, it was difficult for HDB to change its public housing policies for a single project like One-North. [25] Therefore, the JTC approached the private sector.”

National policy then could not bend for One-North. But it should have. What we need for R&D and entrepreneurship matters more than dogmatic inflexibility.

A high price homogenises. It prices out the independent kitchen and the lab with no revenue yet, and leaves whoever can pay the rent – chains and franchises [26].

It also programmes space. A market scarcity rate, selects for what can be proven in advance – and nothing new can be proven in advance.

By definition, the novel has no track record. Thus, the experimental messiness of life is competed out.

A zone of lower commercial pressure is a zone for messiness, a zone where land is cheap enough for the young to make their own places and their own future organically – the first variable and not an accommodation.

If land pricing is an unnecessary drag on the young, on enterprise, on an R&D cluster, how do we test it? There is a formidable constraint: Singaporeans need land prices low - to start something, to live somewhere - and we need them high, because many of our savings sit in HDB flats and the state leans on land revenue.

To have both high land pricing and low land pricing simultaneously, we must do away with the constraint of universal land pricing. There are at least three ways to vary a price. First, across time, the island-wide price itself. Second, across a policy targeted group, as the Build-To-Order (BTO) does for young parents. Third, across a geographic boundary – fence one area and change the pricing function inside, in service of agglomeration and enterprise, people and firms packed close enough to make each other more productive.

I believe that the third is the least disruptive theory of change if one believes that our land pricing assumptions need to be tested. And the question becomes where to test such a zone. For the young, for the R&D economy and for an entrepreneurial spirit. It belongs around our tertiary institutions. And looking at the map, I believe NTU is the obvious candidate.

Why NTU? The research cluster is already there. A large number of labs are sited on campus. And unlike the National University of Singapore (NUS), whose Kent Ridge and One-North districts have little room left, NTU can still expand [27]. And yet, what is planned for Bahar and CleanTech Park, with 116 hectares adjoining NTU, is another industrial park – the same answer the Party opposite has given again and again [28].

If we are to clear scarce greenery, the use case must be distinctive enough to be worth the sacrifice. I believe ours is, and another industrial park is not. That is something priceless and irreversible, traded for something cookie cutter [29].

Take Punggol Digital District. It is 50 hectares, JTC developed and anchored on Singapore Institute of Technology’s (SIT’s) campus. It proves that the Government will build a district around a university. But it is more of the same we have done – a business park with a campus in it, on market terms [30].

If one accepts the first-principle case for a special zone, then two empirical facts must be dealt with.

First, the Jurong Region Line is being dug into NTU, with campus stations arriving at the end of the decade [31]. Tengah’s flats are rising beside it. Kept as separate plans, they make one more park that people commute into. The Jurong Innovation District, 620 hectares, holds in Bahar the next greenfield precinct, already zoned, with the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) underway. The better bargain is a district for living, working and playing, and for enterprise, and this new district around NTU would be our last chance to run this sort of experiment. Whatever we settle on this parcel becomes how we price the ground beside every campus after it.

Second, the Johor Zone Agreement was signed in January 2025. It is an experiment we must try to make succeed. But for all our hopes on foreign economic policy, it sits in another country and carries the risk that comes with that. We can and should run these experiments for ourselves, by ourselves, if we can – and we can [32].

If we want to re-orient our culture towards the spirit of independent living, towards the spirit of risk taking, towards the spirit of collaboration, then we must provide the conditions for the spirit to flourish. We should not be distracted by procedural arguments that Bahar and Jurong are already zoned in a Master Plan. The experiment can be run as things stand. The question is whether we will.

So, NTU as a centre of a live, work, build district, distinguished by charging land for housing at cost recovery. By cost, I mean cost in the ordinary sense, with all scarcity value excluded – the actual cost of constructing, financing, servicing, maintaining and renewing the buildings, not the hypothetical market value of the ground beneath them.

What would that come to? We have a few indications. At NTU this academic year, a non-air-conditioned double room costs about $412 a month, and an air-conditioned single room about $657. At NUS, a double in hall runs about $494 [33]. Under the co-living scheme announced in late July this year, under the SG Youth plan [34], a room starts at $1,800 a month at 1925 Quarters; $1,950 at Coliwoo Boon Lay and $2,000 at Coliwoo Lutheran, before utilities and deposits – roughly 30% below the usual rate, with operators absorbing the difference.

The one at Boon Lay is about four kilometres from NTU and cost roughly five times what the university charges its own students [35]. Is it affordable? I do not think it is. The median fresh graduate from our six autonomous universities earns $4,500 a month last year. After Central Provident Fund (CPF), about $3,600 in hand. The Boon Lay rate, plus its fixed utility charge, takes about 60% of it after the discount [36].

This is not treating our young as a first order consideration. Our young want space of their own and financial autonomy as a precondition for life, not as a byproduct of marriage.

And 30% below market is measured against the scarcity market. Before the discount, the same room took more than three quarters of a graduate’s take-home pay. Affordability must be benchmarked against what a young Singaporean actually has to spend rather than market rate discounts.

So, what can we offer with a different basis?

On a cost recovery basis, a room comes to well under the half the going rate, closer to a third. Take one calculation that owes nothing to a university subsidy. A 500 square foot unit at $200 a square foot - above the construction cost implied by the Government’s own 2022 figures, so, it is a conservative assumption and not a hopeful one - if you put three people in it and amortise over 10 years at 5%, it comes out to about $1,061 a month, or $2.12 per square foot, roughly $380 a head, with a sinking fund in. Stretch amortisation to 20 years and it is $1.32 per square foot. Other calculations land in the same place. The university’s own rate, annualised over 12 months rather than the 35 weeks a term actually runs, comes out to about $478 to $549 a room.

The universities are already housing people at close to cost. So, we can arrive at a figure between $350 and $550 a month a room. [37]

I know the reply this will draw. All state lands form part of the reserves. Land must be sold at fair market value. Otherwise, the reserves are depleted [38]. So, let us look at practice and not just theory. Start with an instrument we have already written.

The Land Betterment Charge (Concessionary Relief) Order 2022, waives the betterment charge on state-leased university land, put to education and institutional use, and defines “university” as NUS and NTU. So, concessions already exist for the universities.

Nor is that the only place the state prices by decision. Land for a place of worship or a civic and community institution is already valued at half of full land value. On the Land Betterment Charge Table effective this March, this is about a tenth of what residential land in the same sector is assessed at [39].

That rate line is not only for rates of places of worship. Educational and institutional use sits in the same group, and is charged at three rates across the whole island, while every residential and commercial rate moves across 118 sectors.

For one class of use, the state already sets a price by decision rather than location. [40] And in 2023, the Government moved places of worship from competitive tender to fixed price ballot, precisely because bidding had driven prices to levels that distracted religious bodies into fundraising. Prices fell. Apparently, nobody raided the reserves.

What can we surmise?

For the Party opposite, fair market value is already a function of the interest granted. It is not a single number attached to a plot. Once you change the use class, the fair market value changes with it lawfully, with the Chief Valuer still doing the valuing. The Government identified that a market mechanism was pricing a use out of its own purpose, replaced it with an administered price, got a lower number, and the Chief Valuer still called it fair market value [41]. So, let us use the rules as they are. Let us create a use category for non-tradable restricted-tenure, mixed housing and enterprise land, and let the Chief Valuer value that restricted interest.

A clear valuation to build productive capacity for the next generation is not a raid on the reserves. It is the outlay side of an investment. It is what every family who pays for tuition for better economic prospects for their kids already knows: it is long-term economic foresight over short-term economic thinking.

How would the zone work if demand exceeds supply? We could ballot. Once in, the rent stays low once you are part of the zone, studying, working, building or serving it. A firm gets a fixed term and an option to renew and graduates out upon success. And a person who loses a job or whose startup dies, gets a year’s grace before the rent resets. [42] And if the housing is rented, never sold, it does not become an asset to be traded.

Mr Speaker, the price of land matters greatly. But it is not sufficient on its own. You must get the other conditions right too.

On governance, an innovation district is a place where things are tried and most of them fail. That requires us to tolerate some untidiness. Most of what I am asking requires no new legislation. JTC let its land on contracts it writes itself – rent formulas, renewal test, quotas, carve outs, occupancy covenants. [43] These are lease terms and not statutes, with already existing latitude.

We should lift the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA’s) planning circular, capping non-academic use of a campus at 5% of floor area or 30,000 square metres. We can hasten visa decisions for deep-tech researchers and for the people the enterprises need, and aim to have every major decision in such a zone made within two weeks [44].

We should aim to devolve operational decisions to the zone’s own board, small and nimble, with the anchor university on it, able to make the bundled decisions on space, pilots, housing allocation, visas and procurements. And the board should be responsive to the people living in the zone who should have a say in how it is run [45].

On money, we should give this zone the ability to back its founders and enterprises. Lower rent is part of a draw. The bigger draw should be growth capital – the zone taking a stake in the enterprises that grow inside it.

Singapore and China established Suzhou Industrial Park in 1994. The zone grew its own investment arm, Oriza Holdings – state-owned, controlled by the Park’s Administration Committee, incorporated in 2001, with about US$14 billion under management today [46].

So, while we are not involved in Oriza Holdings, a zone-based financing body is not unknown to us. Many financial innovations have come from zones. China’s New Third Board, its national over-the-counter equity market for unlisted small companies, began in 2006 as a Zhongguancun Science Park Share Transfer pilot and went nationwide in 2013 [47].

So, we should capitalise a zone authority that can invest while providing optimal conditions for its startups and enterprises to succeed, taking a capped equity or revenue stake [48], and allow it to appropriate a portion of the funds it generates to further develop the zone. A zone of lower immediate commercial pressure for these enterprises is a place where experimentation and diversity can flourish.

Speaker, the zone is one bounded, reversible way to try on available land at a price that takes nothing from the reserves, with land prices outside the zone exactly the way they were – a way to make more Singaporeans involved in enterprise and R&D, and not only employees.

So, the ask is threefold: a zone around NTU; a new use category for restricted tenure, non-tradable, mixed housing and enterprise land, valued as the restricted interest it is; and a zone authority that runs its own operations and takes stakes in the enterprises it grows.

It is a controlled experiment in whether Singapore’s land pricing regime is suppressing agglomeration, entrepreneurship and indigenous capital formation. If there is a Singaporean secret sauce that inheres beyond the cost pressures of land and wages, then a zone here, alongside the one in Johor, will tell us. It is a test we should run for our younger generation.

We have spent 30 years making this country a good place for other people’s companies to succeed. I am asking that we spend the next 30 making it a place where our own can – not just a better deal for the young, a country which is built categorically for the young.

Speaker, in closing, there has been much talk that the world has changed and it is not changing back. [49] We can all feel it. So, here is the test of whether we are serious. We must reform significant parts of our present economic structure to deal with a changed world, to pursue growth that distributes more fairly, and to measure what makes that growth worth having – a fair share of national income, real income growth in line with productivity and a widening range of what an ordinary wage can afford.

Many of these changes must come at the national level, but some are assumptions, long in the tooth, that must be tested. Universal market land pricing is one. And a policy laboratory at real scale is how we test it. The zone is one part. In this Motion, each of my honourable friends will bring another - structural solutions to structural problems. Singaporeans deserve serious answers; and serious answers are what the Workers’ Party will provide. That is why we have moved this Motion to create an economy of the future that works for all. Sir, I seek to move.

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II. Closing the debate

Delivered that evening, at the end of the debate.

Speaker, I thank every Member who spoke on both sides of this House.

We filed this Motion to provide answers to the economic worries top-of-mind for every Singaporean: whether there is a job and whether it lasts; whether the young person who has done everything asked of them can find work that goes somewhere; whether a flat is within reach; whether a small shop can survive its rent; whether the course a worker is sent on leads to a job; whether the growth we announced is felt in a wage; whether a Singaporean who wants to build something can afford to do it in spite of the high cost structure here.

This is our structured view across the factors of production, land, labour, capital, productivity. In this Motion, we have addressed nine of those questions and answered them systematically. I will recap them again.

First, how do we foster a dynamic innovation ecosystem that can overcome and maximise value in spite of high business cost and physical constraints?

I proposed a special zone around NTU, where state land is charged at development cost rather than market scarcity value. To take a different tack from the lack of flexibility, once shown to NUS and the One-North area. A zone authority that is able to make fast decisions on visas, space and procurement within weeks, with its own investment body to provide growth capital and take equity stakes in emerging enterprises.

It is an investment in our young and Singapore’s future.

I thank Mr Azhar Othman, who asked for wider R&D tax incentives and industry academia co-funding pools.

I thank Dr Neo Kok Beng for his observation of how A*STAR and our universities are still not adequately integrated with our SMEs, and his suggestion to encourage lab sharing during off hours. While we agree with his call for high-failure, high-impact state funding, we believe such public R&D spending must be paired with sovereign return mechanisms.

And I thank Mr Ng Shi Xuan for his relaying of the five C’s approach to the startup lifecycle.

I thank the Minister Jeffrey Siow for making my point on land pricing. Fair market value is already a function of the interest granted and not a number attached to a plot.

So, our state land and our rental policies should exercise maximum flexibility for our young and our young companies. Wherever land is priced, market scarcity value remains the default benchmark. We propose one zone where the benchmark is developmental cost and not scarcity, and welcome what we perceive to be the Minister’s posture of being more flexible.

Second, dynamic local firms. How can we create a business climate where dynamic local firms can emerge as drivers of innovation and become future cornerstones of the economy?

Assoc Prof Jamus Lim, proposed turning the machinery from push to pull. Support offered to firms automatically – grants paid upfront, rather than on reimbursement, because small firms’ binding constraint is cash and time, and not the existence of a scheme. He proposed widening qualifying research spending and seconding experts into SMEs, because domestic enterprises carry one dollar in five of this economy’s business research spending, and that gap does not close by a company deciding to try harder. And he proposed tying Catalist listing to State co-investment because the capital that is missing is pre-IPO.

I thank Mr Mark Lee, who mentioned his belief that the bridge between headline growth and lived business reality is a tripartite process. We appreciate his support for our core aspirations of a more inclusive economy.

I thank Mr Edward Chia, who advanced his belief that the existing toolkit was the answer. Progressive wages, Workfare, SkillsFuture, Forward Singapore. We agree at least on the vital goal of building a vibrant local ecosystem.

I thank Mr Azhar Othman for his speech. We share his concern for the ground pressures facing micro-businesses, particularly rising rents and labour costs that mid-career workers face today.

I thank Mr Saktiandi Supaat, who asked us to move beyond identifying these challenges to naming concrete policy choices. We gently note that we have already laid out these specific choices, including our positions on labour, rent and structural support throughout our speeches on this debate. Indeed, Mr Saktiandi Supaat asked whether our transmission mechanisms are strong enough to reach smaller firms and did not really answer his own question. So, if I may just ask him, what policy choices of transmission mechanisms to create upward convergence of smaller firms should we make?

Third, the roof over the household. How do we shed our rentier mindset by assuring that attractive affordable housing is available for every Singaporean household?

Mr Louis Chua proposed that land revenue maximisation stops being the primary aim of land policy. Because rent is not just one cost, it is already inside all of the others. He proposed concept and price tenders as the default for strategic sites, because a system where the highest bidder wins, the reserve price is unpublished, and unawarded sites simply wait, can only ratchet upward. And he proposed a HDB model for compute, because we take some $20 billion a year in land sales and set aside only about $150 million for a one-year compute programme.

Fourth, the start of a working life. How do we ensure our tertiary students and young workers find meaningful opportunities and good jobs in a challenging economy?

Mr Andre Low proposed a Fair Start Promise, a national commitment to work towards a simple goal: that young Singaporeans under 30, making the transition from education or National Service into working life, will get a fair start, through stable employment or a proper paid career-building pathway. He proposed to make entry-level hiring genuinely skills-based using verified skills evidence and practical assessments to match capable beginners to existing labour market demand.

He also advocated expanding the supply of properly paid apprenticeships, creating a national market, coordinating employers and shared training capacity, especially for SMEs, with paid employment, CPF, structured learning and portable competence. He proposed creating genuinely net new job opportunities via the use of targeted temporary risk-sharing arrangements and giving appropriate credit in suitable Government tenders for additional employee jobs and apprenticeships.

Minister of State Dinesh broadly agreed with Mr Andre Low’s proposals and acknowledged that he shared our aspiration of giving every young Singaporean a fair start. In particular, he agreed on the importance of expanding and strengthening work-based pathways, including apprenticeships.

Assoc Prof Kenneth Goh suggested a one-time course correction allowance,so a first-year university course transfer does not depend on family means. He suggested one or two subsidised semesters could be disregarded. I thank him for championing the very inclusivity our Motion seeks to entrench for all Singaporeans.

Fifth, pathways to a middle-class livelihood. How can we create accessible pathways for tradespersons to earn a decent middle-class livelihood?

Mr Gerald Giam proposed a practitioner-led guild, with chambers grown out of the trade societies we already have, because an employer federation cannot impartially certify a worker’s competence against his own members’ interest in keeping him. He proposed task-specific endorsements on a digital skills ledger, verified by practical assessment and he proposed licensing built into ITE curricula with an independent panel, an apprentice can appeal to.

We thank Assoc Prof Terence Ho for his valuable insights on the Career and Skills Passport and the importance of valuing workplace learning, acknowledging the gaps requiring enhancement to truly promote skills-first hiring, as my colleague Mr Andre Low pointed out.

Sixth, displacement and re-entry. Does our system of continuing education actually work? The journey, the destination and the proof.

Mr Fadli Fawzi proposed a universal redundancy insurance scheme, employer and employee together combining one-tenth of 1% of monthly salary, paying 40% of last drawn pay, capped at 40% of median, up to six months, with no application to make, because a worker who must apply and may be refused cannot plan.

We thank Minister of State Dinesh for mentioning that our positions are not very far. We hope this means that we will soon have universal redundancy support for all workers, rather than just the Jobseeker Support Scheme for the 60%.

Mr Fadli also proposed mandatory retrenchment benefits because they are discretionary today and can lawfully be zero, and a worker who has given years of service should not depend on goodwill. He proposed interest free postgraduate loans, CPF for Master’s programmes and outcomes published by course and by provider because deep reskilling is where the money runs out and we need to know which courses work.

Mr Azhar Othman asked for stronger monthly income support during retraining. We agree with the principle. We also could not agree more with Dr Wan Rizal when he says that effort without direction builds frustration. We need to give more direction to our people.

Seventh, the worker who is let go. What does the Singaporean worker actually receive when the retrenchment comes?

Our Party Leader Mr Pritam Singh asked what a retrenched worker in Singapore is entitled to and answered it. As a matter of law, currently, there is nothing. He proposed legislating a statutory floor for retrenchment benefits at a tripartite norm of two weeks’ salary for each year of service. He also proposed subsidiary legislation directing higher payouts for larger firms, up to the union norm of a month’s salary a year, and he proposed doing it now because the Courts have confirmed a gap.

This year, the Employment Claims Tribunals held that section 45 of the Employment Act creates no entitlement, and the tripartite guidelines create no legal basis for one. Every developed economy around us – China, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines – legislates for this, but we do not.

We thank Mr Patrick Tay for his valuable contribution to the debate. We find shared ground in our conviction that workers must never be treated as collateral damage during economic transitions and that we must proactively protect our PMEs from the displacement risk of AI. However, we respectfully frame our Motion as providing some of the legal force for the very protections NTUC has long lobbied for. So, we invite the Labour Movement to support legislative mandates for retrenchment benefits.

Eighth, what our accounts do not count. What parts of our economy do our national statistics fail to capture.

Ms He Ting Ru proposed a formalised wage ladder for care work, because a registered nurse, a social worker and a preschool teacher all earn below the national median in the very sectors that the ESR calls resilient. A wage floor was not built currently to reach them. She proposed compensation for family caregivers, expanded respite care and regular official time-use studies, because informal caregiving for seniors was valued at $1.28 billion a year and appears in no national account. We have not measured what it costs to the people who provide it. She proposed an environmental dashboard tracking the environmental outcomes of our policies.

Ninth, venturing abroad. How do we empower Singaporeans to seize the opportunities in the region and abroad?

Ms Eileen Chong proposed funding the OMIP to the person rather than through the employer, on the French model, where a state agency holds the contract, because tying a placement to a sponsoring employer’s growth plan caps it at that employer’s ambition. [50] She proposed scaling the places rather than only widening the gate, because the SG Youth Plan drops the two-year eligibility rule without committing to send anyone more. [51]

And she proposed publishing outcomes at two years and at five, because the 2018 scheme came with targets and no published outcome, and we still do not know whether going out pays you when you come home. She proposed tearing down the walls on coming home, around BTO queues, CPF and schooling re-entry for children.

We thank Mr Azhar Othman, who made policy suggestions for warehousing abroad, deal-making officers and tax incentives for reinvesting overseas profits back into R&D and capacity building.

I would like to address some points raised in relation to the Workers’ Party’s policies.

Ms Mariam Jaafar said, create before you capture. The sentiment is real but the diagnosis is wrong. Capability is what makes ownership possible, rather than the other way around. If we make rebalancing the organising principle of our strategy, we may not end up with more of these companies, we may end up with fewer. Target ownership without capability and competitiveness and we do not own more of the pie, we own more of a smaller one.

Of course, we have to have capability. We do not disagree. But let us use the PSA example from her speech. PSA did not acquire terminals because it had a data advantage. It got the data advantage because it owned the terminals. Ownership came first and capability compounded from it. Ownership without capability is a dead end, but capability without ownership does not build resilience in a fracturing world. Our position is that both are necessary.

While we agree on the goal of building globally competitive Singaporean companies, we see ownership not as a premature target, but an essential next chapter. After 60 years of successfully creating value through MNCs, our Motion seeks to ensure that Singaporeans move through value creation to capturing and owning more of that value today.

I believe Minister of State Dinesh was making some suggestions that some people were saying that Singapore’s economic model is failing. May I gently suggest that he may have misheard because I did not hear anyone making this point.

Minister Jeffrey Siow, I believe, mischaracterised our policies as saying we want to rely on the domestic market as a primary source. That is of course a non-starter to anyone who spends more than two seconds thinking about it. What we are saying is that domestic demand is necessary. We are not saying that domestic demand is sufficient.

I thank Minister Tan See Leng for making our point, about the domestic market being the platform for Parkway to enter foreign markets.

Onto the amendments. The hon Member Edward Chia moved four amendments.

AN ECONOMY OF THE FUTURE THAT WORKS FOR ALL:

That this House, notwithstanding the suggestions in the Economic Strategy Review on the future Singapore economy, believes: [line 1]

(a) in a more equal and inclusive economy, with opportunities for entrepreneurs to experiment, households and businesses to succeed, workers to thrive, and ideas and innovation to flourish; and [line 3]

(b) in an economic engine driven by dynamic local companies, healthy domestic demand, and Singaporeans and Singaporean capital venturing abroad. [line 5]

(1) In line 1, to delete “notwithstanding” and insert “in line with”;

(2) In line 5, to delete “economic engine driven” and insert “economy powered”;

(3) In line 5, after the words “local companies,” to insert “global enterprises,”; and

(4) In line 5, after the words “healthy domestic” to insert “and external”.

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[Motion as amended]

AN ECONOMY OF THE FUTURE THAT WORKS FOR ALL

That this House, notwithstanding in line with the suggestions in the Economic Strategy Review on the future Singapore economy, believes:

(a) in a more equal and inclusive economy, with opportunities for entrepreneurs to experiment, households and businesses to succeed, workers to thrive, and ideas and innovation to flourish; and

(b) in an economic engine driven economy powered by dynamic local companies, global enterprises, healthy domestic and external demand, and Singaporean capital venturing abroad.

On Amendment No 1, to delete “notwithstanding” and insert “in line with”, the Workers’ Party cannot accept this amendment. This amendment does not simply remove a word. It turns the sentence around. Our Motion says this House believes in these things. The amendment says these things will follow from adopting the review. Ours commits the House to ends, but this amendment commits it to a document. A standard that is stated separately can test any plan, the Government and ours.

Let me be clear what the word is set against – “notwithstanding”. It is not the Review’s recommendations. Many of the diagnoses we shared are set against the risks that one Government document comes to be treated as the whole of the House’s thinking on the economy. “Notwithstanding” says only that our commitments are neither exhausted by that document nor derived from it.

That is how the word “notwithstanding” is used in our Constitution. Article 148A of the Constitution allows the President to assent to a Supply Bill, notwithstanding his opinion that it is likely to draw on past reserves. [52] If he does, that opinion must be stated in writing to the Speaker and published in the Gazette.

So, the word “notwithstanding” does not overrule the President, it does not say his opinion is wrong, it just requires that the opinion be genuinely held, that it stands on the record and it does not settle the outcome. And that is three things at once. That is our use precisely. The ESR proceeds, our belief stands on the record, and neither one decides the other.

We have no issues accepting Amendment Nos 2 and No 4. We had some reservations accepting Amendment No 3. The reason is because it is not a matter of simply including “global enterprises” into the text of the Motion. Had the amendment been “an economy powered by dynamic local enterprises supported by global enterprises”, we would have less of an issue with the change.

We are not choosing between being global and local. That is a false dichotomy.

The Workers’ Party believes categorically in an open economy. As my hon friend Jamus Lim has said, we are “not calling for a wholesale overhaul of our GLC-heavy, MNC-led and foreign capital-reliant model.”

We must acknowledge the long history of how our domestic firms have not felt sufficiently supported by the state in their effort to grow their companies and compete in their home economy and beyond. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If this model has succeeded historically in delivering for so many domestic firms, then why and wherefore the history of these concerns? I ask all Members and especially Members opposite to honestly reflect upon these questions.

At this point, it is worth underscoring, as my honourable friend Jamus Lim pointed out at the end of his speech, that we are not seeking to undermine the contribution of MNCs to our economy, nor to stem access to foreign capital. Rather, we are calling for an evolution of how dominant MNCs and GLCs have been in our economy and to re-orient it towards the younger local companies and SMEs as they are more inherently rooted and can be a source of disruptive innovation.

To be clear, we are not pitting foreign versus local. Both are necessary. Suggesting otherwise is a false binary and it is a convenient strawman, but it is not an argument that we are making.

However, we will not nitpick on the semantics of Amendment No 3 and hence, will accept this amendment.

Back to Amendment No 1. Can the ESR carry the standing that is placed on it?

There is much to like about the ESR. It is diligently put together, has consulted widely and it outlines real challenges. But it is incremental and it sits within a tradition of reports that say the same thing.

This is not about the ESR in itself, this is about the whole continuity of reports since 2010.

The ESR is the fourth national economic blueprint since 2010. The 2010 Economic Strategies Committee, the 2017 Committee on the Future Economy, the 2021 Emerging Stronger Taskforce, and now this 2026 Review, with the same ambitions recurring in near identical language across all four: move up the value chain; grow home-grown champions; internationalise; reskill [53].

What is new in this report is AI. But that is a new exogenous factor that all countries must react to. Adding new chapters and footnotes to an existing playbook does not make a new playbook.

Have we arrived at those past reports’ medium- to long-term targets or not? It is hard to tell with the decreasing level of tracking with each report.

The 2010 Economic Strategies Committee set two targets.

One on productivity - to “achieve productivity growth of 2% to 3% per year over the next 10 years.” This goal was met [54].

One on enterprises. “We can raise this number significantly to reach 1,000 such enterprises over the next 10 years. [55]” Local companies with revenue over $100 million. This goal of 1,000 local companies with revenue over $100 million was not tracked after 2017, when the report recorded about 800 such companies. So, we do not know whether it was met [56].

The 2017 Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) set two targets.

One on growth – 2% to 3% per year – which was met. Again, a topline figure, necessary but insufficient by itself as a goal.

One on manufacturing. “The CFE recommends building a globally competitive manufacturing sector at about 20% of GDP over the medium term”. [57] This was not met. Manufacturing was 17.4% of GDP in 2016 and remains 17.4% in 2025.

From the 2021 Emerging Stronger Taskforce, I could find no macroeconomic targets at all. A pivot away from target setting altogether.

And in this 2026 ESR, the only target-shaped sentence, appearing twice, reads – “we should set an ambitious target to significantly increase the number of Singapore headquartered companies with more than one billion in revenue. [58]”

In 2010, the target was 1,000 local companies by 2020. In 2026, it is a recommendation that a target be set, and the companies counted have shifted from local to Singapore headquartered.

This strikes me as a government that maybe has become a little bit averse to being measured.

In May 2017, MTI wrote that every Industry Transformation Map has “tangible indicators and targets to measure the effectiveness of its strategies”. In July 2024, its own retrospective told readers that sector outcomes “should not be compared against these initial projections [59]”.

Targets are be watered down to projections, goals into aspirations. We are getting a bit familiar with this. The food policy “30 by 30” was dropped last November for narrower targets, five years later. An unambiguous goal became a bit more of a challenging aspiration [60].

I have not understood from this Government what is the next level of economic target detailed beyond topline growth targets, such as the type of growth or its distribution, that it will hold itself to. The Government wants us to know it will react swiftly once the monitoring alarms are triggered. The Review says so itself: on AI and workers, it recommends monitoring the impact closely and adjusting policies when needed. [61]

Mr Speaker, reacting swiftly is the basic expectation of any government. What matters far more is which structural and falsifiable targets it will set itself between now and 2030. After all, what is the vision and what would tell us whether we had reached it? Here is what we would hold ourselves accountable to beyond top-line growth: the indigenous share of national income rising, real wages in line with productivity growth, and a widening range of what an ordinary wage can afford. [62]

I have read the Review and, in my view, it is short of report cards and targets. Nor has a consolidated report card for any of the four blueprints been published. Our party leader, Mr Pritam Singh, asked for one in February. Separate the rhetoric about promises kept, from measurable outcomes. Untracked, consistency is indistinguishable from repetition. Surely, in spite of the uncertainties, there are macroeconomic targets beyond top-line growth that we can commit to.

So, let me put the question plainly. A Member who supports the Review because he wants a more equal and inclusive economy, and an engine driven by dynamic local companies already believes (a) and (b). These are the ends the Review is meant to serve. Voting for the Motion says that and nothing more. It does not criticise the Review and binds no one to our proposals.

Our Motion asks this House to commit to principles, the amendments ask it to commit to one set of operational plans.

So, I would like to ask Members of the House, especially Members opposite, to let the word stand and accept the Motion as originally worded.

Sir, in closing, we want to show Singaporeans a future, in which they see themselves thriving in a global environment that is increasingly challenging. Singaporeans deserve a country that is prepared to try what is necessary to give them that strongest shot of success.

Our Motion is thus written: opportunities for entrepreneurs to experiment because the ground and the capital to try are priced for incumbents; households and businesses to succeed because high land prices working their way through the economy make it structurally challenging; workers to thrive because the ladder above the wage floor must work; and for the wider swath of society, workers need room to experiment, pathways to succeed and a financial cushion to recover or pivot if retrenched; ideas and innovation to flourish because we need our R&D spending to lead to meaningful commercial outcomes; and an economic engine driven by dynamic local companies, healthy domestic demand and Singaporeans and Singaporean capital venturing abroad because Singaporeans need to understand that there is a system that encourages their economic flourishing and their dreams of tomorrow. [63]

Singaporeans do not lack drive, ambition or imagination. What we need is to be further empowered and supported to achieve our next successes in a different global context. We will leave no stone unturned in trying to better secure Singaporeans in uncertain times.

Mr Speaker, I thank this House for debating the future structural direction of our economy and I commend the Motion as originally worded to this House. Thank you.

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Notes and sources

1. Singapore’s single-family-office count passed 2,000 in 2025 with combined assets under management of about US$66.8bn, up 43% year on year. Over the same period, Southeast Asia-focused venture funds recorded four final closes in all of 2025, against 33 two years earlier. On the debt side, venture debt accounts for under 5% of Singapore startup funding, against roughly 25% in the United States — EY-Parthenon, Singapore Venture Funding Landscape Report 2025, p32, a figure placed on the record by a member of the Economic Strategy Review’s Committee on Entrepreneurship.

2. This concern has been before the House before. On 27–28 August 2002 Parliament debated the Motion “New Charter of Government-Linked Companies”, moved by Mr Leong Horn Kee and standing also in the name of Mr Inderjit Singh, and agreed to it: “That this House… in view of the concerns of the private sector regarding GLCs, urges the Government to implement the recommendations of the EISC which define the new roles and positioning of the Government and GLCs in business and, in so doing, support the growth of private enterprise and entrepreneurship in Singapore.” The mover set out three concerns — “(1) Unlevel playing field; (2) Crowding out of the private sector; and (3) Transparency and trust” — following consultation with the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, the Singapore Confederation of Industries and the Chambers of Commerce. He told the House that a Department of Statistics occasional paper of March 2001 found government-linked companies accounted for 12.9% of GDP in 1998, about a third of the locally controlled economy, and that Temasek’s own release put seven listed GLCs at 21% of Stock Exchange market capitalisation, or S$72 billion. Hansard: 27 August 2002 · 28 August 2002. Later independent work put GLCs at 37% of stock market value on 2008–2013 data: Sim et al., NUS Business School Centre for Governance, Institutions and Organisations (2014), cited in NUS Law Working Paper 2015/003. Replying to that Motion on 28 August 2002, DPM Lee Hsien Loong stated that “GLCs enjoy no protectionist measures from the Government”, while accepting the EISC’s “Yellow Pages rule” in principle: “If you can look it up in the book, why do you want to start a company to go and compete with the private sector?” An IMF working paper testing the question found no evidence that GLCs enjoy easier access to credit, but did find that GLC status carries a positive valuation premium beyond what the usual determinants of Tobin’s q explain — Ramirez and Tan, IMF Working Paper 03/156.

3. HDB Resale Price Index (SingStat M212161, 1Q2009 = 100): 131.0 in 1Q2019 to 203.4 in 1Q2026, a rise of 55% in seven years. Median monthly household employment income including employer CPF, resident employed households (SingStat 17870): $9,442 in 2019 to $12,027 in 2025, a rise of 27%.

4. Singapore levies no inheritance tax, and household wealth is concentrated in property: of $3,756,110m in household assets at 2026 Q1, residential property accounted for 42.9% and listed shares and securities for 4.4% (SingStat M700981). A 2025 industry survey found 53% of Singaporeans have received or expect to receive an inheritance, rising to 62% among those under 24. Children of parents who rented inherit nothing. On the income side over the same period, the Gini coefficient based on household income from work per household member was 0.470 in 2013 and 0.435 in 2025 before taxes and transfers, against 0.364 after. The pre-transfer figure is the one that has moved least, which is the distinction this Motion draws: the market distribution has barely improved, and the correction is applied afterwards out of the proceeds.

5. Fortune Global 500, 2026 list, published 28 July 2026. Singapore has three entrants — Trafigura (25), Wilmar International (195) and Olam Group (302) — all commodity traders; Trafigura was established in Lucerne in 1993 and Olam founded in Nigeria in 1989. South Korea has thirteen: Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK, Kia, SK Hynix, Korea Electric Power, LG Electronics, Hanwha, HD Hyundai, POSCO Holdings, Hyundai Mobis, KB Financial and LG Chem. Taiwan has six: Hon Hai Precision, TSMC, Wistron, Quanta Computer, WT Microelectronics and Pegatron. Semiconductors (Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC) and shipbuilding (HD Hyundai, Hanwha) are both represented.

6. The Complementarity Assessment Framework was announced in March 2022, applied to new Employment Pass applications from 1 September 2023, to renewals from 1 September 2024, and extended to the S Pass from 1 September 2025, with a minimum of 40 points required; S Pass sub-quotas stand at 10% of the workforce in services and 15% elsewhere, at a harmonised levy of S$650 a month. Three changes to the qualifying rule in three years is a planning cost for any firm deciding where to site a cost-sensitive regional function, distinct from any question of headcount policy, and it is one within the Government’s control. The terms of entry need to be stable enough to plan against.

7. H&M informed staff on 11 May 2026 that its South-east Asia head office would move from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, with about 30% of regional support headcount removed — 78 of 256 positions in the former East Asia region, the majority of them in Singapore. Malay Mail, 13 May 2026 · Mothership. The same restructure created a new Asia-Pacific “continent” headquartered in Shanghai, with the North-east Asia market moving to Tokyo, India to Bangalore and Australia and New Zealand to Sydney.

8. Heineken announced in March 2026 that large-scale brewing at the Tuas plant would be progressively phased out by 2027, with output shifting to breweries in Malaysia and Vietnam. Asia Pacific Breweries Singapore moves to an import-led supply model, and about 130 roles are affected in phases, with severance and reskilling support. The company states that Tuas will become a regional logistics hub and product-development brewery, and that Singapore remains the global home of the Tiger brand. Mothership, March 2026 · Heineken newsroom · Bloomberg, 25 March 2026

9. Brynjolfsson, Chandar and Chen, Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence, Stanford Digital Economy Lab, revised November 2025, use payroll microdata from ADP covering millions of United States workers and report a relative decline of about 13% in employment for workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed occupations since late 2022 — 16% in specifications controlling for firm-level shocks — persisting after those controls and concentrated in occupations where the technology automates rather than augments. The mechanism matters for the argument here: the adjustment runs through reduced hiring of new entrants rather than through separations of incumbents, so the burden falls on those trying to enter rather than on those already employed. Stanford Digital Economy Lab. The data is American; no equivalent payroll study has been published for Singapore, which is itself a gap worth closing.

10. Graduate Employment Survey 2025, published March 2026: overall employment 88.9%, down from 91.2%; full-time permanent employment down from 79.4% to 74.4%; median gross monthly salary unchanged at $4,500. MOE

11. Where research-origin companies have reached that scale, the listing has tended to happen elsewhere. Mirxes, an A*STAR spin-off founded in 2014, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 23 May 2025, raising HK$1.09bn and closing above a US$1bn valuation — South-east Asia’s first biotech unicorn, listed offshore. On the research base beneath this: local enterprises, government-linked companies included, perform about S$1.7bn of Singapore’s roughly S$9bn of business R&D, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry gave no separate figure for government-linked companies when asked in a written reply of 7 April 2026.

12. EDB Year 2025 in Review, published 9 February 2026. Prior years: EDB Year 2024 in Review, 6 February 2025 — fixed asset investment S$13.5bn, 18,700 jobs, S$23.5bn value-added; and EDB Year 2023 in Review — S$12.7bn, 20,045 jobs, S$26.7bn value-added. All three releases describe the jobs and value-added figures as expected, when the commitments are realised over the following five years; the investment figures are commitments made in the year.

13. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, May Day Rally, 1 May 2025: “the world has changed — and it is not changing back anytime soon.” PMO. See also his video message on the United States tariffs of 4 April 2025 — “the era of rules-based globalisation and free trade is over”, and we are entering a phase “more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous” PMO — and the Ministerial Statement of 8 April 2025: “the new era will be more volatile, with more frequent and unpredictable shocks.” PMO

14. On the International Labour Organization’s series for SDG indicator 10.4.1 — compensation of employees plus imputed labour income of the self-employed, over gross domestic product, a definition that already grants the largest measurement objection available — Singapore’s 2020–24 five-year average is 43.8%, the second-lowest of twenty-five advanced economies, ahead only of Ireland. Five-year blocks are used because the ratio rises mechanically in downturns. The comparators on the same basis: Switzerland 69.8%, Belgium 62.8%, Germany 61.4%, France 60.2%, Korea 58.4%, the United States 56.8%, Japan 55.6%, Hong Kong 54.0%, Taiwan 52.1%, Norway 45.1%, Ireland 31.7%. Singapore’s own published compensation-of-employees share of GDP, on the narrower national definition, was 37.8% in 2025, and the 2021–25 block is the lowest five-year reading in the forty-five-year series; “around forty per cent” spans the two. Three common explanations do not survive the panel. Advanced East Asia clusters between 52.1% and 58.4%, and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea all rose between the 2005–09 and 2020–24 blocks while Singapore fell 2.5 points. Hong Kong, the closest city-state comparator — no hinterland, entrepôt and finance-led, a very large migrant workforce, a higher Gini, no minimum wage until 2011 — reads ten points higher and has stayed between 51.8% and 55.7% in every year since 2004. And a multinational-denominator distortion of the Irish kind shows up as a break: Ireland moved from 54.4% to 31.7%, concentrated in 2015 on intellectual-property onshoring, whereas Singapore’s series contains no such break and its low share is a level present throughout. The honest qualification is that small economies with large non-labour income streams do run lower shares for real reasons — Norway on resource rents — but Norway answered that by building the Government Pension Fund Global and Ireland by constructing GNI*, while Singapore built indigenous GNI and discontinued it after reference year 2016, which is what the text asks be reversed. The ILO series is modelled for every country, which supports ranking and comparison rather than a precise level claim for any one of them.

15. The indigenous GDP and GNI series are no longer compiled. In a written reply of 12 January 2022, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said the series had ceased for “a lack of public demand”, and that they are “not national accounts concepts nor are they compiled by other countries.” MTI. A resident-share breakdown of GDP growth was subsequently said to be “not available” in a further written reply of 9 September 2024.

16. National Wages Council 2025/2026 Guidelines, 11 November 2025, paragraphs 2 and 3: “Over a longer period from 2016 to 2024, overall labour productivity grew by 2.5% per annum”, and “Over a longer period from 2016 to 2024, real income (mean) grew by 1.3% per annum” — followed by the Council’s own conclusion that “Productivity growth exceeded wage growth over the longer term, even though the productivity-wage gap narrowed in the first half of 2025.” MOM. Three specifications, because the pairing can be contested on each. The income figure is the mean, defined at the Council’s note 4 as gross monthly income including employer CPF and excluding bonuses, for full-time employed residents excluding full-time national servicemen; computed on the median instead, from Department of Statistics Table M182981 deflated by the all-items Consumer Price Index (M213801), real income grew 1.73% a year over the same window — the lag narrows on a median basis but does not close. The productivity figure of 2.5% is real value-added per actual hour worked; per worker, which is the closer match to a per-worker income series, the Council’s note 3 gives 2.0% a year. And the direction reversed in the most recent half-year the Council reports: real mean income grew 3.2% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 against productivity growth of 2.9%.

17. International Labour Organization, annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person — the ILO series for SDG indicator 8.2.1, DF_SDG_0821_NOC_RT — retrieved from the ILO SDMX endpoint in August 2026. The rate is the geometric mean of the eight annual growth observations for 2017 to 2024, which is the change from 2016 to 2024; compounding is used rather than a single year because single years are volatile, Singapore’s own running from −1.6% in 2020 to +8.7% in 2021. On that basis Singapore grew 2.26% a year, third of the twenty-five advanced economies in the panel, against a median of 0.47%. Two economies grew faster and are not among those listed above: Taiwan at 3.33%, and Ireland at 3.67%, whose reading is an artefact of the multinational profit booking that inflates its GDP denominator. The measure is output per employed person rather than per hour; average hours in Singapore are long by advanced-economy standards, so a per-hour panel would be more favourable to Singapore rather than less, which makes this the conservative basis. It agrees with the domestic figure: 2.26% a year here against the National Wages Council’s 2.0% a year per worker on the identical window.

18. Glaeser, Kolko and Saiz, “Consumer City”, Journal of Economic Geography 1(1), 2001 (NBER Working Paper 7790). High-amenity cities grew faster than low-amenity cities, and urban rents rose faster than urban wages, indicating that demand for city living rose for reasons beyond wages; continued agglomeration is sustained by a preference for variety in urban services and amenities, and as firms become more mobile the success of cities depends increasingly on their role as centres of consumption. NBER · Harvard

19. No official services diversity index is published, and no chain-versus-independent split is published by the Department of Statistics, the Urban Redevelopment Authority or the Singapore Land Authority. The underlying data is already collected: establishments by five-digit SSIC in services, numbering 320,595 in 2024 (SingStat M601481); the licensed food-establishment register (M890531); and the ACRA register of companies with addresses and activity codes. A standard construction would be a Shannon entropy index over SSIC-class shares by planning area, together with the single-outlet share of food-and-beverage and retail establishments. On the underlying pattern, the Competition and Consumer Commission’s Market Inquiry into the Leasing of Private Retail Spaces of 1 August 2023 found that chain operators “tend to form the bulk of the tenants at centrally managed non-strata-titled retail developments.”

20. A concession of this kind already exists in law. The Land Betterment Charge (Concessionary Relief) Order 2022, paragraph 12, provides that the charge is not payable on land under a State lease granted to a university for “Educational Institution or educational and institutional related uses”, with relief capped by a formula using a deemed plot ratio of 1.4; paragraph 12(3) defines “university” as the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University. AGC. The relief is limited in two respects: the deemed plot ratio of 1.4, and the restriction to educational use.

21. Greenfield sites have a much higher risk profile.

22. Global Innovation Index 2025 (WIPO): Singapore ranks first in the world on innovation inputs, for the fifteenth consecutive year, and ninth on innovation outputs, which the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore reported as its strongest output showing in a decade. WIPO · IPOS

23. Singapore has run such an institution before. The Development Bank of Singapore was incorporated on 16 July 1968 to take over the industrial financing responsibilities of the Economic Development Board, beginning operations on 1 September 1968 under Hon Sui Sen, who was the Board’s chairman until that December. It made medium- and long-term loans, took equity participation, and guaranteed loans raised by entrepreneurs from other sources — described as “the first development bank to fully involve the private sector in financing manufacturing and other industrial projects in Singapore.” It rebranded as DBS Bank Ltd in 2003. NLB Infopedia. Singapore’s current instruments are of a different kind: a Growth Capital Workgroup was convened at Budget 2026 under Mr Chee Hong Tat, Minister for National Development and Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS); Anchor Fund @ 65 stands at S$3bn following a second tranche; and S$1bn was added to Startup SG Equity. Each is an equity co-investment or market-development vehicle rather than a lending institution. The pattern is not confined to DBS. Temasek Holdings was incorporated on 25 June 1974 to hold and manage the Government’s investments in local companies, beginning with 35 companies transferred from the Minister for Finance, and began diversifying abroad from March 2002; its net portfolio value stood at S$518 billion at 31 March 2026, with about 52% of the portfolio in Singapore-headquartered companies and 27% of underlying exposure to Singapore. The observation is narrower: Singapore has twice built an instrument for financing local industrial development and twice allowed the function to lapse without a successor, so that what is proposed here is a restoration rather than an invention.

24. MND and HDB media statement, 7 December 2022. For FY2021/22 and 13,506 completed flats, total development cost was S$5.346bn — S$3.167bn of land, S$2.077bn of building and S$102m of acquisition from former owners — giving $396,000 per flat, of which $234,000 was land and $154,000 construction, land representing 59% of the total. The arithmetic is internally consistent: S$5.346bn divided by 13,506 is $395,824. Land cost alone in prior years was about $224,000 (FY2020/21) and $202,000 (FY2019/20). The disclosure has not been repeated: HDB’s FY2024/25 audited financial statements contain no per-flat split between land and construction. As an illustration of what would be forgone, letting a thousand homes at cost rather than at that assessed land value would forgo about $234 million in 2022 prices; alternatively, on the Land Betterment Charge table effective 1 March 2026 the gap between the non-landed residential rate and the educational and institutional rate in an outer sector is roughly $6,500 per square metre of gross floor area, which on a 46 square metre unit is about $300,000, or $300 million per thousand homes. Both are order-of-magnitude figures on stated assumptions rather than a costing.

25. Centre for Liveable Cities, one-north, Urban Systems Study, 2018. CLC

26. The Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Economic Survey of Singapore 2025, on 2024 data, puts rental at 22.5–32.2% in retail, 16.6–17.1% in food and beverage and 16.3% in accommodation. JTC’s posted land rent is likewise a small fraction of built-space rent: International Business Park at plot ratio 2.5 is $97.09 per square metre a year, about $0.69 per square foot a month, against market business-park asking rents of $4.00–6.50. Land cost therefore bears most heavily on housing, where it is the dominant share, and on the consumer floorspace that carries the diversity of services.

27. The characterisation of Kent Ridge and one-north having no allocatable land remaining is based on the built-out condition of both districts. On commercialisation output, the National University of Singapore’s GRIP 2.0 programme, launched in 2018, has produced around 100 spin-offs from some 170 teams, raising close to S$65 million in external funding; Nanyang Technological University’s LLP 2.0, launched in 2017, has produced about 60 spin-offs from over 250 teams, raising more than S$23 million. NUS Enterprise and NRF joint release. The case for siting the experiment at NTU turns on the availability of land whose price can still be set.

28. The Jurong Innovation District spans 620 hectares, covering Nanyang Technological University, JTC’s CleanTech Park and the Bulim, Bahar and Tengah areas. The current expansion phase covers the CleanTech Park and Bahar precincts, a 116-hectare site along Jalan Bahar near the Pan Island Expressway intersection, adjacent to NTU. JTC’s stated rationale for selecting these precincts is their adjacency to existing industrial zones such as Bulim and the upcoming Tengah Industrial Estate, with proximity to NTU intended to strengthen collaboration between academia and industry. Non-invasive site preparation, including soil investigation and surveys, was planned to commence in the first quarter of 2026. JTC — Jurong Innovation District · JTC — public feedback on the CleanTech Park and Bahar Environmental Impact Assessment

29. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong defended the clearance of 52 hectares of forest for the Jurong Innovation District expansion on 3 February 2026. The Environmental Impact Assessment was commissioned by JTC as lead developer, and mitigation measures include retaining 14.5 hectares of greenery together with wildlife management plans. Report of 3 February 2026

30. Punggol Digital District covers approximately 50 hectares at full completion, developed by JTC and anchored by JTC’s own campus and the Singapore Institute of Technology’s Punggol campus. It opened progressively from the third quarter of 2024, initially covering 21 hectares, with Teck Lee LRT station opening on 15 August 2024 and Punggol Coast MRT station on 10 December 2024. SIT began relocating in September 2024 and its campus opened officially a year later. The district is expected to create 28,000 jobs. JTC · EDB

31. Three Jurong Region Line stations serve the campus: Nanyang Gateway (JW3), which sits within NTU, Nanyang Crescent (JW4) and Peng Kang Hill (JW5), all in Phase 3. Sources differ on whether Phase 3 opens in 2028 or 2029; the line’s full completion is now given as 2029, moved from 2028 following pandemic delays. NTU — MRT construction on campus · Land Transport Guru · Nanyang Gateway MRT station

32. The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone Agreement was signed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong and Malaysia’s Minister of Economy Rafizi Ramli and exchanged on 7 January 2025 at the 11th Malaysia-Singapore Leaders’ Retreat, witnessed by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The zone spans more than 3,500 square kilometres, over four times the area of Singapore, across nine flagship areas and eleven sectors. EDB

33. Rates for academic year 2026/27, following an increase of about 8.1% at NTU: non-air-conditioned double en-suite (Hall 2) $412 a month, air-conditioned single (Hall 5) $657. At NUS: double non-air-conditioned $114 a week and single non-air-conditioned $165 a week, about $494 and $715 a month as billed. NUS rate card, 25 March 2026; NTU rates reported by Mothership, 10 July 2026, NTU not publishing its rate table publicly. These are term-basis rates: NUS bills 35 weeks of 52, so the headline embeds roughly a third of vacancy that a year-round building does not carry. Annualised over twelve months, the NUS single is about $481 and the NTU air-conditioned single about $548.

34. SG Youth Plan Report. The rooms are reported at roughly 30% below usual market rates, with the operators absorbing the discount; no concession on the price of state land is involved.

35. The ratio depends on which room and which basis. Against NTU’s non-air-conditioned double at $412, $1,950 at Coliwoo Boon Lay is 4.7 times; against NTU’s air-conditioned single at $657 it is 3.0 times; and against that same single annualised over twelve months at $548 it is 3.6 times. The last is the like-for-like comparison — a private room against a private room, both on a twelve-month basis.

36. Graduate Employment Survey 2025: median gross monthly salary for fresh graduates of the six autonomous universities, $4,500, unchanged from the previous year. MOE. After the 20% employee CPF contribution that is $3,600 in hand. The room rate of $1,950 alone is 54% of that; the figure of sixty per cent includes the scheme’s fixed utility charge. Before the 30% discount, the same room at about $2,786 would take 77% of take-home pay. The single-income denominator is the one this proposal is designed around: spatial and financial autonomy is sought before partnership rather than after it, so a room that becomes affordable only once two incomes are pooled is priced for couples. Fresh-graduate income also understates earnings a few years into a career, which is why the design contemplates a defined window of eligibility rather than indefinite tenure.

37. The figure quoted in the speech. A 500 square foot unit at $200 per square foot is $100,000 of construction; amortised over ten years at 5% the payment is $1,060.80 a month, or $2.12 per square foot, and about $354 a head across three occupants before a sinking fund. Over twenty years it is $1.32 per square foot. The $200 rate is conservative against the Government’s own disclosure: $154,000 of construction on a flat of about 90 square metres implies roughly $159 per square foot, so the rate used here sits about a quarter above it. This route depends on no university subsidy and no concessionary land. The corroborating model. The build-up, with each assumption stated. Monthly cost equals construction floor area multiplied by build cost and by the capital recovery factor, divided by twelve, plus renewal, maintenance and utilities, all divided by one minus vacancy — where the capital recovery factor is r/(1−(1+r)^−n). Assumptions: net-to-construction-floor-area gross-up of 1.30–1.55; all-in build cost of $2,300–$3,650 per square metre including about 13% for fees and contingency and excluding land; discount rate 2.5–4.0%; asset lives of 30 and 50 years; renewal at 0.6–1.5% of capital a year; maintenance $80–250 and utilities $40–70 per room per month; vacancy 5–10%. GST is excluded, residential rent being exempt so that input GST is unrecoverable; about 9% should be added to capital for a complete figure. For a dorm-style private room of 12–20 square metres net this yields $256 to $1,119 a month, with a central case of $478 over fifty years and $549 over thirty. Two independent cross-checks support the band. First, the published university rates annualised: the NUS single at $481 against $478 modelled, and the NTU air-conditioned single at $548 against $549 modelled — the convergence of the bands, $478–549 modelled against $481–548 observed, is independently derived, though agreement to the dollar should not be read as precision. Second, a completed building: NESST Tukang, owned by the Ministry of Manpower and opened in January 2026, cost S$58 million for 2,400 residents, or S$24,167 per bed (written parliamentary answer, 2 March 2026), which grosses up to $211–319 per bed per month on a cost-recovery basis. For scale, the islandwide average dormitory bed rent was S$485 a month in the second half of 2025, up 79.6% from S$270 in the first half of 2019 (DASL H2 2025 Dormitory Report); the 2019 rate sat inside the cost-recovery band. Two further reference points: HDB builds at roughly half the private medium-quality condominium rate, so a model built on private costs is conservative against what the State can deliver; and HDB’s own Public Rental Scheme lets flats at $26–275 a month, between 10 and 50% of cost recovery, so the State already prices space well below cost as well as below market.

38. The doctrine as stated by the Government. Indranee Rajah, oral reply of 7 November 2022 to Leong Mun Wai and Pritam Singh: “Under the Constitution, all state land forms part of the reserves”, and if fair market value is not paid “the past reserves will be depleted.” MOF. Lawrence Wong, FY2023 Budget round-up of 24 February 2023, described below-market land as “a raid on the reserves” carrying a risk of “destabilising the entire property market”. The Government’s correction of 14 October 2022 adds that pricing below fair market value “would constitute a draw on Past Reserves”, which requires the President’s concurrence rather than being prohibited. Factually

39. The Singapore Land Authority states: “For Place of Worship and Civic and Community Institution use, the lands will be valued for sale based on 50% of the full land value, determined by applying the factor of 5/7 to the applicable LBC rate”, against a factor of 10/7 for other uses. SLA — Sale of Remnant Land. On the rate table effective 1 March 2026, Sector 1 carries Use Group E (place of worship, civic and community institution) at $1,022 per square metre against Use Group B2 (non-landed residential) at $11,340 — 9.0%; Sector 106 carries E at $812 against B2 at $7,350 — 11.0%. The 50% factor names place of worship and civic and community institution use, and does not name educational use, which shares the rate line but not necessarily the sale-valuation treatment. Civic and community institution use is secular: it covers such facilities as childcare centres, eldercare homes and community sports halls.

40. Land Betterment Charge Use Group E comprises “place of worship, community building, community sports and fitness building, educational and institutional uses, government building” (Annex F — Use Groups Table), so educational use does sit in the same group. Group E is not charged at a single island-wide rate: on the table effective 1 March 2026 it takes three values — $1,022 across sectors 1 to 91, $812 across 92 to 115 and $427 across 116 to 118 — while Use Groups A, B, C and D vary across all 118 sectors. Annex A — LBC Rates March 2026

41. “Revised Land and Pricing Allocation Framework for Place of Worship Land”, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, 28 May 2023. The Government’s stated reasons were that “land prices for places of worship (PW) have risen sharply over the years, as a result of competitive bidding”, and that religious organisations “have to spend more time and effort to do fundraising, which may sometimes distract them from the core work to serve society and promote religion.” The framework moved allocation “from a competitive price tender to a fixed price ballot”; the price is published upfront and “determined by the Chief Valuer based on fair market value”; and prices “are generally lower than the prices of similar sites that were recently tendered out”, because the Chief Valuer references “the price of PW land which had not been tendered before.” MCCY

42. The oldest precedent for renting rather than selling. Leland Stanford’s founding grant prohibited the sale of Stanford University’s land but permitted it to be leased. In 1951 Frederick Terman, dean of engineering, established what became the world’s first university research park on that basis; the first tenant, Varian Associates, took a 99-year lease on a ten-acre site in October 1951, and the lease income has supported the university since. Stanford Research Park · Stanford Office of Technology Licensing Eligibility could be tied to a window measured from graduation — of the order of one to five years — rather than to participation alone. A window fixes the population the zone is designed for, which is what makes a graduate-income affordability benchmark the correct one; it suits those willing to trade space and comfort for low cost and proximity to others doing the same; and it turns the population over by construction, which answers what happens if demand permanently exceeds supply.

43. JTC already conditions tenure on outcomes by contract. Its lease-renewal handbook states that renewal “is not guaranteed, and is subject to our assessment”, and is assessed on “the economic contribution and productivity of the project, creation of good jobs, synergistic linkages to other sectors of our economy, as well as the optimisation of land use”. Applicants file projected worker numbers, occupations and remuneration supported by audited financial statements, and “should there be a shortfall between the committed and actual figures, the lease term will be pro-rated accordingly.” JTC What is proposed is nonetheless distinct from the instruments now in use. On the business park estate, the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s position is that “JTC Corporation (JTC) does not provide incentives for the spaces at business parks, which are rented out based on market rates”, and the incentives that do exist — the start-up tax exemption, the Pioneer Certificate, the Development and Expansion Incentive — are national and firm-level, available anywhere in Singapore. None is a property of a district. The devolved board, the two-week decision clock, the lifting of the campus commercial-quantum cap and the resident voice would together constitute a rulebook attached to a boundary rather than to a company, which no existing industrial estate has.

44. Urban Redevelopment Authority Circular URA/PB/2003/08-DCD of 7 April 2003 caps non-academic use on a campus at 5% of gross floor area or 30,000 square metres, whichever is lower. URA. It is a planning guideline issued by the planning authority, not a statutory provision.

45. There is a domestic precedent for devolved authority in an innovation district. The Centre for Liveable Cities records that one-north functioned as a testbed because agencies were given leeway to depart from usual planning rules, and that a Steering Committee acted as a dispute-resolution body to settle cross-agency conflicts. CLC

46. Oriza Holdings (元禾控股), the investment arm of Suzhou Industrial Park, is a state-owned enterprise controlled by the Park’s Administration Committee. It was incorporated on 28 November 2001 as China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park Ventures, tracing its origins to the establishment of the Park by Singapore and China in 1994. It runs venture capital, private equity, private credit and fund-of-funds operations with assets under management of approximately US$14 billion as of 2023, and its fund-of-funds arm was China’s first professional, market-oriented fund-of-funds management team. Oriza Holdings · Oriza — About Us

47. China’s New Third Board — the National Equities Exchange and Quotations, its over-the-counter market for the shares of unlisted small companies — was launched in 2006 as the Zhongguancun Science Park Non-listed Share Transfer Pilot and extended nationwide in 2013. AllBright Law Offices · Zhongguancun. Land reform followed a similar sequence: China’s Constitution was amended in 1988 to permit transactions in land-use rights after the Shenzhen experiment had been run. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

48. Three working models exist for a zone or state authority that finances the firms within it, and each prices its own exit. In Taiwan, TSMC’s seed capital came from the National Development Fund, which held 48% — deliberately kept below half so that the company would not be regarded as state-owned — and was diluted out through the 1993 Taiwan Stock Exchange and 1997 New York listings. In Israel, the Yozma programme of 1993 deployed US$100 million, US$20m directly and US$80m matching private capital at 40% across ten venture funds, with the Government retaining 40% of each fund and the private managers holding a five-year call option to buy that stake out if the fund succeeded; all but one exercised it, and Israeli venture capital was almost entirely private by 2000. In the United States, MIT anchored The Engine’s first fund with US$25 million and its second with US$35 million, alongside about 200,000 square feet of purpose-built space in an MIT-owned building beside the campus, so that space and capital come from one balance sheet. Yozma · OECD · MIT News. The China Quarterly, 2023

49. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, May Day Rally, 1 May 2025: “the world has changed — and it is not changing back anytime soon.” PMO. See also his video message on the United States tariffs of 4 April 2025 — “the era of rules-based globalisation and free trade is over”, and we are entering a phase “more arbitrary, protectionist, and dangerous” PMO — and the Ministerial Statement of 8 April 2025: “the new era will be more volatile, with more frequent and unpredictable shocks.” PMO

50. OMIP: launched 15 Nov 2024, employer-tied by design (SWDA; MOM to Gerald Giam, 4 Feb 2025); “more than 70 local employees” against 250 places/$16m — MOM to Muhaimin, 15 Oct 2025 (MOM); “more than 120 local professionals” supported since launch — Tan See Leng, MOM Committee of Supply speech, 3 Mar 2026 (MOM) — the same speech claims “over 430” across all agencies’ overseas programmes and announces OMIP’s expansion to younger professionals; crowd-in doctrine — PM Wong, Budget 2026 (Budget); “We do not pick winners” — Iswaran, 2017 (ST).

51. Gan Kim Yong, 4 April 2022 — all electrical works are carried out by licensed electrical workers meeting industry technical and safety requirements (MTI); Gan, 4 November 2025 — new ITE diploma and mid-career pathways to the Licensed Electrical Worker qualification (MTI). The Specialists Trade Alliance of Singapore is an employer federation; the two-year post-qualification experience requirement and the employer sign-off are the operative bottleneck.

52. Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (2020 Reprint), Article 148A(1): the President may withhold assent to a Supply Bill if in his opinion the estimates are likely to draw on past reserves, “except that if the President assents to any such Bill notwithstanding his opinion that the estimates, supplementary estimates or statement of excess are likely to lead to a drawing on those reserves, the President shall state his opinion in writing addressed to the Speaker and shall cause his opinion to be published in the Gazette.” Article 22B(2), on the budget of a statutory board, and Article 22D(2), on the budget of a Government company, carry the same construction: “except that if he approves any such budget notwithstanding his opinion that the budget is likely to so draw on those reserves, the President shall cause his opinion to be published in the Gazette.” A separate and ordinary use of the word appears at Article 86, “Validity of proceedings notwithstanding vacancy in membership”, where it preserves the effect of a provision against a competing fact rather than against an opinion.

53. The four blueprints: Economic Strategies Committee, 2010 — quantified targets: productivity (”2 to 3 percent per year over the next 10 years… raise our productivity by one-third”, p.5) and enterprises (”reach 1,000 such enterprises over the next ten years”, revenue above S$100m, p.21); no “+30% median income” target exists in the report. Committee on the Future Economy, 2017 — the growth ambition, in the report’s own words in the executive summary and again at paragraph 71: “Over the next decade, our collective efforts should enable us to grow by 2-3% per year on average, exceeding the performance of most advanced economies.” Real GDP growth averaged 3.45% a year over 2017–2025, or 3.39% compounded, so the range has been exceeded, with the decade not yet run (SingStat M015721, computed 3 Aug 2026). The manufacturing ambition, at printed page 34: “the CFE recommends building a globally competitive manufacturing sector, at around 20% of GDP, over the medium term.” On the current series manufacturing was 17.4% of GDP in 2016, reached 20.6% in the 2021 semiconductor year, fell to 16.3% in 2024 and stood at 17.4% in 2025 — no durable movement toward 20% (SingStat M015731, current prices, SSIC 2020). Two measurement notes: manufacturing’s 2024 low of 16.3% recovered to 17.4% in 2025; and the CFE’s own text puts 2016 at “around 20% of GDP” on the older classification, so a baseline drawn across the two series is not comparable. Emerging Stronger Taskforce, 17 May 2021 — no macro-economic targets located in the report (the sole dated numeric targets are the Built Environment AfA’s, p.71, never accounted). The ESR — launched 4 Aug 2025, final report June 2026 (gov.sg). Continuity conceded: Budget 2026’s “Advance Our Refreshed Economic Strategy” (Budget 2026); the Review “build[s] on past economic reviews” (MDDI, 4 Aug 2025). Report-card demand: Pritam Singh, Budget 2026 debate (wp.sg).

54. Productivity grew 2.8% a year per actual hour worked from 2009 to 2019, “achieving the target set by the ESC” — MTI, Economic Survey of Singapore 3Q2020 (MTI PDF). Real median income from work rose 32.4% over 2010–2020, which compounds to about 2.85% a year (MOM, archived) The National Wages Council records overall labour productivity growth of 2.5% a year from 2016 to 2024 against real mean income growth of 1.3% a year (MOM). On a median basis over the same window the gap narrows to 1.73% a year but does not close.

55. Economic Strategies Committee, 2010 — productivity target at p.5, enterprise target at p.21. The 2017 restatement of the enterprise target (”around 800 such companies, up from 560 in 2009”) is at printed p.79 of the CFE report PDF.

56. Productivity: +2.8% p.a. per actual hour worked 2009–2019, “achieving the target set by the ESC” — MTI, ESS 3Q2020 (MTI PDF); real median income +32.4% 2010–2020 (MOM, archived). Enterprises: 530 (2007) → “around 800… up from 560 in 2009. Singapore should build on this progress” (CFE 2017, printed p.79) → ~800 as of 2016, “we remain on track… track the number… and review the indicators regularly” (written answer, sitting 5 Feb 2018 — Hansard PDF); no official count published since (absent from every MTI COS 2017–2025, Budget 2021, and MTI’s Jul 2024 retrospective — full texts searched). For comparison, the ESR’s Table 1 figure of 4,300 enterprises above S$100m (2024) counts ALL enterprises including foreign entities — a different universe from “local companies”. Indigenous GDP/GNI series discontinued for “a lack of public demand” — to Mr Louis Chua, 12 Jan 2022 (MTI). Mirxes: HK$1.09bn HKEX IPO, 23 May 2025, A*STAR spin-off (global offering; debut); Chinese cornerstones incl. a Fosun subsidiary.

57. The Committee on the Future Economy stated its growth ambition twice, in the executive summary and again at paragraph 71: “Over the next decade, our collective efforts should enable us to grow by 2-3% per year on average, exceeding the performance of most advanced economies.” Real GDP growth averaged 3.45% a year over 2017–2025, or 3.39% compounded, so the range has been exceeded, with the decade not yet run (SingStat M015721, computed 3 August 2026). The manufacturing ambition is at printed page 34: “the CFE recommends building a globally competitive manufacturing sector, at around 20% of GDP, over the medium term.” On the current series manufacturing was 17.4% of GDP in 2016, reached 20.6% in the 2021 semiconductor year, fell to 16.3% in 2024 and stood at 17.4% in 2025 (SingStat M015731, current prices, SSIC 2020). Two measurement notes: the 2024 low of 16.3% recovered to 17.4% in 2025, so the 2024 figure taken alone overstates the decline; and the CFE’s own text puts 2016 at “around 20% of GDP” on the older classification, so a baseline drawn across the two series is not comparable.

58. Economic Strategy Review, final report, June 2026 (esr-finalreport.pdf) — “we should set an ambitious target to significantly increase the number of Singapore-headquartered companies with more than S$1 billion in revenue”, at printed pages 6 and 38 (the report’s own pagination runs two behind the PDF’s); “MTI has said that it expects GDP trend-growth of 2-3 per cent per annum over the next decade… we can achieve the higher end of this growth range” (p.13/15); NAIIP 10,000 SMEs / 100,000 workers.

59. The promise: “All the Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs) have tangible indicators and targets to measure the effectiveness of the ITM strategies” — MTI, 16 May 2017 (MTI). The recast: “some sector agencies set projections… the sector outcomes presented in Annex B should not be compared against these initial projections” — MTI, Transforming the Singapore Economy, Technical Annex, Jul 2024, Annex A para 4 (Technical Annex PDF).

60. The original goal, on SFA’s own page: “produce 30% of our nutritional needs locally by 2030” (announced Mar 2019 — archived SFA page). Dropped 4 Nov 2025: Minister Grace Fu called it “a challenging aspiration” and replaced it with 20%-of-fibre and 30%-of-protein targets by 2035 — with 2024 actuals already at 8% and 26% respectively (CNA, 4 Nov 2025); confirmed in Parliament as “balanc[ing] ambition and pragmatism” (CNA, 13 Jan 2026).

61. “Closely monitor the impact of AI on workers and adjust policies where needed” is recommendation (D) of the Review’s chapter on workers, at printed pages 8, 56 and 61: “the Government must continue to closely monitor AI developments and their impact on the labour market, and adapt its policies as conditions evolve”, with the Skills and Workforce Development Agency to “unify skills intelligence with labour market data to monitor, assess and provide businesses and workers with more actionable insights”. The Review also asks the Government to “monitor take-up” of the overseas postings scheme at page 66. All of these monitor the economy; none measures the Review. The Review’s two hard numbers, at printed pages 27 and 65, are the National AI Impact Programme’s 10,000 enterprises supported and 100,000 workers made AI-fluent; both count inputs, with no outcome attached (esr-finalreport.pdf).

62. The two hard numbers attached to the Review’s own programmes — 10,000 enterprises supported and 100,000 workers made AI-fluent, at printed pages 27 and 65 — count inputs rather than outcomes (esr-finalreport.pdf).

63. Global Innovation Index 2025 (WIPO): Singapore ranks first in the world on innovation inputs, for the fifteenth consecutive year, and ninth on innovation outputs. WIPO · IPOS