Debate on Annual Budget Statement

Order read for Resumption of Debate on Question [18 February 2020] [2nd Allotted Day],

"That Parliament approves the financial policy of the Government for the financial year 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021." – [Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance].

Question again proposed.

12.18 pm

Ms Yip Pin Xiu (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the budget and I applaud what is being done for Singaporeans in this COVID-19 situation. I dedicate my speech today to two important issues close to my heart, care-giving and ending sexual violence. It is my hope in 2020 that we dedicate more attention to addressing these critical issues and make greater strides towards a more inclusive society and a safer society for all.

Today, my parents are 65. They lead active lives, but ten years down the road, their lives could possibly be very different as they enter their golden years. As a child to my ageing parents, the prospect of assuming some care-giving responsibilities sometime in the near future weighs on my mind. I am hardly alone in this. Around me, peers of my age share similar concerns. The old age dependency ratio in Singapore has been declining over the decades. In 1990, it was 10.5 younger person to an elderly person. In 2019, the ratio has halved to 4.5. As our loved ones grow older, there are fewer of us to share the labour and responsibilities of care-giving with.

How will we continue to lead the lives we have when we potentially also have to be care-givers? Would our work schedules allow us to juggle work and care? Would we be able to afford hiring professional help? What other options are there for our parents to age with dignity?

For women, the pressures are felt even more acutely as societal norms continue to promote care-giving as women's responsibility. A 2011 national survey on care-giving for elderly individuals, those above 75 years old, requiring help with at least one activity of daily living found that 97.9% of all informal care-givers in Singapore are immediate family members, with more of them being female and between 45 and 59 years old. The female care-givers are also usually wives or adult daughters of the care recipient.

The pressure on women to be care-givers has a great impact on their ability to engage in paid work. In 2018, over 280,000 women were outside the labour force primarily because of care-giving to relatives or family members apart from children. In comparison, just over 15,000 men cited the same reason for being outside the labour force. The compromises that women make to their work lives negatively impacts their financial security. According to CPF statistics, about four in 10 active CPF members who turned 55 in 2017 did not meet the Basic Retirement Sum (BRS) of $83,000 in their Retirement Accounts.

Among them, women have more difficulty meeting the BRS. Similarly, a recent study shows that female family care-givers to older persons experienced a change in work situation because of care-giving, suffering a 63% loss in income on average which translated into an average annual loss of more than $50,000.

Ask any care-giver around you and you will know that it demands a great deal of energy, time, resources and attention. You could find yourself waking up several times throughout the night to attend to your loved ones' needs, or having to spend hours persuading them to take their medication, or even straining your back trying to physically move them. For the hundreds of thousands of care-givers out there, stress, burnout and feelings of resentment may not be uncommon. Not only do they have to contend with the physical stress of care-giving, they are also struggling to balance the demands of paid work and dealing with care-related expenses which they are also now responsible for.

When you become a care-giver, it very often becomes the central identity and the focal point of your life, and you find that the other aspects of your life: your job, your friends, your hobbies, your leisure time, have to accommodate care-giving, not the other way around.

How can we better redistribute care-giving responsibilities between men and women, but also between the family, community and state? How can we as a society ensure that care-givers are not compromising on their own health and financial security as they carry out this often invisible and thankless work?

Over the years, the Government has introduced numerous policies to support family care-givers, including most recently the Caregiver Support Action Plan. Many of these initiatives, such as the subsidies for long-term care services and foreign domestic worker levy, have no doubt been of tremendous help to those who benefited from them. However, I believe that our efforts can still be strengthened and would call for even bolder moves.

To start, we need up-to-date and more robust data on care-givers in Singapore. The last national survey on informal care-giving was conducted almost a decade ago. There should be regular systematic tracking of the number of care-givers in order to understand the scale of challenges they are facing.

Next, I highlight two workplace policy suggestions that have been raised by various experts and civil society organisations like the Singapore Alliance of Women in Ageing.

Workplaces need to accommodate care, not the other way around when we recognise and accept the fact that all workers, including those who are employers, will likely find themselves with care-giving responsibilities at some point in their lives. Can we consider legislating the right for employees to request for Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA)? Such legislation has already been successfully introduced in the UK, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

Research shows that current utilisation of flexible work arrangements is low due to bias by middle management and requirements for "facetime" at the office for performance appraisal, bias against part-timers and reluctance to change the status quo. Without equal mandated access, those most in need, like care-givers, are likely to be denied access to FWA and will have no choice but to exit the workforce.

Second, childcare leave should be converted to family care leave so that all workers have the option to utilise it for their dependents. Those with children and other older dependents should be given a longer quantum of leave. Unpaid care-giving leave is not sufficient for care-givers as they must use up their own personal and medical leave, leading to care-giver burnout and health problems. Currently, family leave that allows for care-giving of relatives is voluntary, unlike childcare leave that is mandated at six days paid per parent for Singapore Citizens.

In 2018, only 20% of companies offered some type of paid family care leave. Finally, we need to continue expanding care options. Whether it is through hiring a professional homecare nurse, going to a daycare centre or living in a retirement home. We need to make these options affordable for families. According to a local study, they found that lower, middle-income households would spend between 23% and 59% of their household income on long-term care services after subsidies. The figures are 24% to 63% for upper middle income households. I hope the Government can review the subsidies system to ensure that the cost of these services are not prohibitively high to families, including middle income ones.

On to the next topic, having just graduated from SMU in the recent years, I am particularly concerned about the recent spate in campus sexual violence cases as well as how the use of technology has enabled new forms of sexual violence to be committed. This next part of my speech would focus on how we can better address these two forms of violence. But first, I would stress the importance that sex education plays in ending violence against women.

Efforts to address sexual violence are usually focused on legislation, punishment and remedying the effects for survivors. However, there is a crucial need to address social norms and attitudes which enable sexual violence. The prevalence of sexual violence, committed overwhelmingly by men against women, reveals an ugly truth about the way society views women: that women are not human. Sexual violence is fundamentally rooted in the idea that women are objects, devoid of agency, rights and feelings, that women exist for men's pleasure, that women are not equal to men.

Education on consent, sexual violence, gender equality, is therefore absolutely necessary to transform society's understanding and views for the better. In this vein, I believe that the sexuality education children and young persons receive in schools is a powerful tool to catalyse change from young.

Is the current sexuality education curriculum reflective of and relatable to young people's experiences with sex, sexuality and gender-based violence today? Are students themselves consulted to find what they need and want to learn from sexuality education? What needs and gaps in knowledge do they have that are not being met by the curriculum?

According to the United Nations, comprehensive sexuality education, apart from providing scientifically accurate information about sexual and reproductive health, also importantly includes discussion about gender roles, human rights, gender equality and threats such as discrimination and sexual violence. Our sexuality education syllabus should be inclusive and explicitly address these topics.

I now turn my attention to campus sexual violence. News headlines have recently been dominated by sexual offences committed within education institutions. From the Academic Year 2015/2016 to 2017/2018, 56 cases of sexual misconduct were reported to Autonomous Universities in Singapore and 37 of these cases were reported to the Police. Given the stigma around sexual violence, it is reasonable to assume that many more of such cases go unreported.

Students have a right to feel safe in schools. In 2016, it was asked if MOE would formulate guidelines and provide anti-harassment training to staff in tertiary institutions in Singapore, based on the recommendations of the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Workplace Harassment. Then, they responded that institution-specific codes of conduct were already in place to prevent harassment on campuses across the nation.

However, in the wake of Monica Baey's brave sharing last year, it has become apparent that relying on individual institutions to develop their own policies and protocols is often inadequate. There is an uneven level of protection across institutions, with differing definitions of what constitutes harassment, and varying complaint, investigation and disciplinary processes. This means that whether students get their case investigated, how it will be investigated and what the outcome may be, and what support they receive as victims would differ, depending on where they go to school. This should not be the case. Violence is violence, and should be dealt with in the same way, regardless of institution setting.

Therefore, I believe the way forward is for the development of a national code or guideline addressing campus sexual violence that all education institutions can adopt. This code should set out the duties of the schools to ensure zero tolerance of sexual harassment, provide adequate victim-care support and set out standards and principles for investigating and managing complaints.

Another worrying trend is the rise of sexual violence involving the use of technology, such as social media, spy-cameras and mobile recording devices. According to AWARE, the number of technology-facilitated sexual violence cases they have seen had increased threefold in the last three years. In 2018, they saw 124 cases, more than half of which involved sexual images of the survivors that were non-consensually shared, obtained or created.

The effects of technology-facilitated sexual violence on the survivor can be just as traumatic as other forms of sexual violence. Having one’s privacy being invaded and intimate images of themselves shared publicly without consent renders a distressing sense of helplessness. Even with the successful conviction of the perpetrator, the traumatic effects of having one’s intimate images and recordings still circulating in the public domain will still be felt by survivors. I hope that survivors of such offences can be better protected.

Perhaps mechanisms could be set up for the swift removal of non-consensually shared intimate materials, even before conviction. In Australia, complaints about one’s intimate recording being shared non-consensually can be made to the eSafety Commissioner online. The Commissioner is then empowered to issue removal notices for the end-user or service provider to remove the materials in question within 48 hours. We should consider having such a similar mechanism in place.

I hope that Deputy Prime Minister Heng and the team behind the Budget will take these suggestions into consideration.

12.33 pm

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): "Daddy, why don't I take the school bus so that you do not need to rush anymore?" Those words by my daughter Ella cut through my heart like a knife. My six-year-old daughter taught me an important lesson that morning when I was sending her to school last year, a very painful lesson. She made me realise that it was time to slow down and not rush all the time, especially in front of her, how my actions had made her feel bad and a reminder about how precious time is.

"Spend time with those you love, one of these days you will either say I wish I had or I'm glad I did". I used this quote in this House a few years ago and I am sharing it again not just because it is a beautiful quote to live by but also as a timely reminder to myself and to all of us.

I do enjoy sending Ella to school. I love singing all the Disney songs with her on the way to school, I love listening to her talk about her dreams, how she was at the ice palace and enchanted forest and met Elsa. I love listening to all the gossips and playground politics in her school and, my goodness, there is so much politics. But, most of all, I love just spending time with her, precious Daddy-Ella time. Time we can never get back.

Sir, we gave out a lot in this year's Budget, helping our workers, enterprises, parents and their children, seniors and our environment. Many are appreciative of Budget 2020 but if there is one thing we did not give out, it is time. Time, which is priceless and time which our Government can give out.

We need more precious time with our loved ones. We need more time with our children who desperately need us. I am glad we provide childcare leave, which "will provide sufficient time for working parents to care for and spend quality time with their children".

But it has been more than a decade since childcare leave provisions were increased and it is time to review this again. Are the current six days sufficient? We already know that the vast majority of childcare centres have six days of annual closure. This means that, for most parents, the entire six days of childcare leave could be used just for these annual closures. Let us not forget about the additional three half-day closures on the eve of any of the five stipulated public holidays. What happens when your child falls sick or for any other times when childcare leave is needed?

Sir, my first suggestion is that we have specific childcare sick leave. Applications for such leave must be supported by a medical certificate. This is much needed as parents should be there to look after their children when they are sick. Out of all the illnesses, including chicken pox, influenza, stomach flu and the list goes on, let me focus on the Hand Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) as an example of why we need more childcare leave.

In Singapore, 90% of children have had HFMD infection by 12 years of age. This is something almost all parents face and we should help them. We must help. It is extremely difficult for parents to find help to look after their children as the infection can last for up to two weeks. It is also hard to find someone to look after your child as the care-giver has a good chance of being infected. I was infected by my children when they had HFMD.

From the employers' standpoint, do they really want their employee who may also be infected to come to the office and possibly spread the disease or any other illness to other employees, resulting in everyone going on medical leave? Also, do we honestly think that the employee can concentrate at work and be productive? Would they not be worrying about their child who is sick? How is this beneficial to the company? Having childcare sick leave will help the children, the parents and, ultimately, the employers.

Sir, my second suggestion is that we provide this childcare sick leave on a per-child basis. Our current childcare leave does not make sense. Surely, we can all agree here that if you need six days of childcare leave for one child, you cannot also only need six days of childcare leave for two, three or four children. It may make sense if you can make sure all your children fall sick at the same time, which is not quite possible.

Sir, having childcare sick leave and having it on a per-child basis is not something foreign to this Government. The Public Service, one of the largest employers in Singapore, already gives some officers childcare sick leave and it is on a per-child basis. For example, officers with two children, one of whom is below age seven is eligible for four days of childcare leave per year with MC. An officer with three or more children, has nine days of childcare leave per year with MC. This is on top of the six days of childcare leave per year.

The Government clearly feels that childcare leave is important for people who work for the Government, why then would it not be important for the people we serve? Let us level the playing field.

There may be an argument that giving more childcare leave can inadvertently affect the employment prospects of parents with more children. But this is not the case for the Public Service and, surely, this cannot be a reason for us to not do what is right for our people. Surely, the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices can be used to address this concern.

If we want Singaporeans to have kids and have more kids, then we need to give them more time to look after and be with their children. It is not just about making pre-school more affordable. That is important. But many I spoke to feel that if they are going to have kids but just leave them at childcare centres most of the time, then what is the point of having kids? We are trying hard to increase our TFR and beyond looking at the dollars and cents, we also need to look into providing parents with more time to spend with their children.

The reply to my suggestions might be that we rather focus on flexible work arrangements. But this is not a zero-sum game. We can work on providing more flexible working arrangements for our people but also legislate more childcare leave.

Sir, Deputy Speaker Charles Chong gave me one of the best advices just before the last General Elections. I used to help out at his Meet-the-People Session (MPS) and he always made sure I go home as early as possible once MPS ended. He said to me, "Louis, make sure you don’t go home one day and your daughter calls you uncle!". That advice is not just for me but for everyone and a timely reminder that while we work hard, we should also spend quality time with our loved ones. And it is not just about spending time with our children but also with our parents.

Sir, I am glad that all civil servants are eligible for up to two days of parent-care leave per year and that a growing number of civil servants are using both days of leave. The Government has stated, "With a rapidly ageing population and smaller family units, officers with elderly parents will need time to take care of them. The new parent-care leave reflects our position as a family-friendly employer."

It is encouraging that an increasing number of private companies are providing this. In 2018, 20% of private sector companies offered such leave benefits, up from 15% in 2012. But 20% is still really a small percentage.

Our parents are the reason we are here today. They worked hard to bring us up and looked after us when we were young. We should be there for them when they are aging and now need us to look after them.

Sir, I lost my Dad five years ago. On 11 May 2015, I was getting ready to go to work and I told my wife I was going to inform the ACRES team that I needed to take some time off to spend with my Dad who was in hospital. I was already visiting him every day but I decided I should spend more time with him. As I was about to leave my house, my sister called and told me that Daddy had lost consciousness. He passed away that day. I really wish I can turn back time. I made a mistake and I regret it till today. I wish I had spent more time with Daddy and I miss him dearly.

Perhaps, through sharing this with everyone, this wound might finally heal and, through sharing, I hope that others will not make the same mistake I made. Spend time with those you love and remember that life is a one-way ticket.

Sir, this Government recognises that we need to spend time to look after our parents. It has been eight years since we introduced parent-care leave in the Civil Service and it is now time for everyone else to have this. It is time to legislate it.

The Government's statement: "With a rapidly ageing population and smaller family units, officers with elderly parents will need time to take care of them", holds true for all of us and not just civil servants. If the Government feels that it is important for civil servants to have parent-care leave, then why not others? We are a family-friendly employer and now we should be a family-friendly Government.

I understand that the tripartite partners have also encouraged more employers to adopt the Tripartite Standard on Unpaid Leave for Unexpected Care Needs, regardless of whether they already provide parent-care leave. But this is unpaid leave. Why do civil servants get paid parent-care leave and others have unpaid leave? Again, can we level this playing field?

I also understand that care-givers have given feedback that they prefer flexible work arrangements over parental leave as a more sustainable way to balance work and care-giving responsibilities. But the parent-care leave we provide to everyone can, again, be the same as those provided to civil servants where they have the flexibility to take this leave in full or half-day blocks. This will address the feedback we have received and, if we want to, we can take it a step further and offer parent-care leave in blocks of hours. It is, ultimately, a personal choice to take leave to spend time with those you love but this Government can help make things easier for employees and I hope we do so.

Sir, the Prime Minister said a few months ago that, "We will always stand with workers (and) ensure your well-being. We will always do our best to help you and your children progress with Singapore and have a better life". Let us also stand with our workers when it comes to childcare leave and parent-care leave.

Time is the most precious commodity. I hope this Budget is not just about the economy but also about giving our people precious time to rest and to spend with their loved ones.

In conclusion, I hope that we can (a) introduce a new childcare sick leave; (b) provide this childcare sick leave on a per-child basis; and (c) legislate the provision of parent-care leave.

Minister Vivian Balakrishnan once said, "Life is a one-way ticket. A baby will only remain a baby for a very short time. They will grow up before we even realise it. The thing about life is we cannot rewind time. So, my advice to young parents here is, your children need you, they need you desperately and they need you only for a very very transient time in their lives. If we miss it, we can never get it back."

Sir, I thought I should end by saying that I am still sending my daughter to school and picking her up. A few months ago, she made a card in school for me and gave it to me when I picked her up. This time, she melted my heart with her words. She said, "I love you, Daddy, because you always take me to school".

I am now a part-time school bus driver as I now have to send our twins, Katie and Poppy, to school as well. They, too, melt my heart with their words. I picked Poppy up the other day and she gave me a big hug and said, "Daddy, I really missed you". I look forward to more previous Daddy-Ella, Daddy-Katie and Daddy-Poppy time. I look forward to more hugs, more laughs and much more sweet words from them that give me that warm fuzzy feeling.

Sir, let us give our people more precious time to spend with their loved ones. Thank you and I support this Budget.

Mr Speaker: Mr Dennis Tan.

12.44 pm

Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong (Non-Constituency Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Regrettably, I had to turn down my daughter's request to bring her to school today because I was rushing out to work. [Laughter.]

Mr Speaker, Sir, during last year's Budget debates, I spoke of building resiliency in Singapore in economic and security matters. This year, I would like to devote my time to speak on environmental resiliency.

The world today is at a crossroads facing down the existential threat of human-induced climate change. Over 11,000 scientists worldwide now warn that the world "clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency". Singapore's vulnerability to climate change is also evident. Our island is now being heated up twice as fast compared to the world and maximum temperatures, we are told, could reach 35 to 37 degree Celsius by the year 2100.

Many countries seek to take concrete action. One in 10 people on the planet now live in a place that has declared a climate emergency and have effectively used it as a jumping point for real action. Inspired by young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, youths across the world are rising up and demanding immediate action to address the climate emergency we are facing. Singapore's recent SG Climate Rally is a cry for action from our youths, one that the leaders of today ought to heed.

My colleagues and I in the Workers' Party have heard it loud and clear. We agree with them and have sought actively to raise concerns about climate change and the policies that can be taken by the Government. We are glad that some policies have been looked into and taken up.

Yet, it would be prudent to recognise that there is a long way to go in building environmental resiliency in view of the lessons the world has learnt and is continuing to learn about our relationship with our environment. With the certainty of climate change, we, as a nation should be daring and set a bold Green Agenda to guide Singapore's trajectory of development. Please allow me to put forth some ideas to this House.

We need a holistic view on climate emergency. We need a holistic response to all issues of climate change. In other words, the success of efforts to combat climate change must not solely be measured by the effectiveness of any one policy narrowly. We must also invest in and track efforts to address the wide-ranging impacts of climate change and our policies on society at large, whether be it on urban drainage systems, food security, water security, waste management, urban liveability or public health, to cite but a few impact areas.

An example of this is coastal adaptation and flood protection. Thirty percent of Singapore's land area lies less than five metres above mean sea level. Even under an optimistic emissions scenario, there has been projected that sea level in Singapore could rise by about half a metre by 2100, posing a coastal flood risk. Therefore, the establishment of the new Coastal and Flood Protection Fund with an initial injection of $5 billion is a timely move.

As the Government commits to investing more in coastal adaptation and flood protection though, where will this money be spent on? Will the money be invested in the best science so that better projections of sea level rise can be made for Singapore? Will investments be made in the best social science, so that the prioritisation of coastal land uses can be better assessed? Will soft-engineering, nature-based approaches such as the restoration of intertidal eco-systems, which have the potential to protect our coastlines be considered for use under this fund, or will only hard-engineering approaches such as polders and land reclamation be chosen? It would be useful if the Government could give a sense of its spending priorities in this regard.

Preparing to adapt to climate change alone would be unwise. There must also be a move to mitigate climate change while we still can. Even as we have committed to the 36% cut on emissions intensity by 2030 in our first pledge, how have our efforts been to date? Perhaps the Government can provide an update.

The Workers' Party also welcomes both the announcement by Minister Masagos Zulkifli at the Madrid Climate Conference last December that Singapore will submit its long-term Low Emissions Development Strategy soon, and the announcement by the Deputy Prime Minister that Singapore's commitment to the Paris Agreement will be updated this year. We look forward to the Government's updates, and to understand how they represent progress beyond our current commitments and strategies.

Next, Greening out Transport Infrastructure. Climate change has also accelerated the need to calibrate Singapore's infrastructural development to meet environmental challenges. Transport is a major sector which requires such calibration. The Workers' Party therefore welcome the Government phasing out all ICE vehicles by 2040. However, many practical EV issues are to be hammered out in the interim and I will like to ask what actions the Government will take on them.

The biggest elephant in the room is on rebuilding an infrastructure currently tailored for ICE engines. The power grid in particular will be taxed. While Singapore is in a power glut now, electricity demand will only go up as Singapore moves on in its Smart Nation ambitions. One looks to Sweden with a ban on ICE vehicles slated for 2030, where demand for electricity is currently outgrowing capacity in local grids, forcing EV charging networks to compete with other infrastructure projects for electricity.

This is not to mention that Singapore currently generates upward to 95% of its energy via natural gas. While it is the least-polluting fossil fuel and has higher efficiency compared to ICE vehicles, there will continue to be a carbon footprint generated. While our current power generation mix will improve by 2030 due to more solar capacity, how are we moving to lowering the carbon footprint of our power generation in 2030 – 2040?

Also, with regard to charging points, the Government expects to have 28,000 charging points by 2030, but even assuming a 30% conversion from the current vehicle population to EVs, it still means about one charging point to 10 EVs by 2030. Should we even be contented with this ratio? Besides intelligent charging solutions, should the Government also consider the alternative of battery swap stations which have the advantage of speed, ensuring load on our power grid can be managed well, as well as providing a ready infrastructure for battery recycling? This has been tested in China and should be a key consideration here.

How soon can we electrify our public bus and private hire infrastructure to EVs will also be important as many Singaporeans rely on such services. Would the Ministry of Transport give a timeline on this happening separately from the 2040 overall target?

ASEAN cooperation is also needed if we are to successfully electrify our transport system. A key consideration here is Malaysia, where people and trade currently travel via the Causeway and the Tuas Second Link on ICE vehicles currently. If we do phase out ICE vehicles here, are we also implementing a ban on foreign ICE vehicles from entering Singapore? If there is no infrastructure in place in Malaysia to support commercial EVs, would that also impact our businesses with a top partner in trade?

This is important to get right as, on one hand, foreign ICE vehicles and how we handle the issue, may have a significant impact on our EV plans, and on the other hand, we should not be seen to export our green problems away with unilateral bans. Indeed, we can work with Malaysia's state and federal authorities to build a sustainable and inclusive eco-system for EVs. To go one step further, we can propose an ASEAN Autonomous Vehicle and Electric Vehicle project that holistically looks at all the challenges of EVs that my colleague, Mr Leon Perera had previously mooted in this House. This will help to focus minds towards a target and benefits interconnectivity across the region.

The effective solving of these issues I have highlighted in the adoption of EVs can turn us into the bellwether state in ASEAN for EV adoption, just as Norway is for both the Nordic region and the world.

Next, Green Housing Initiatives. Housing is another area where calibration is required. If urban planning is right, we can reduce the Urban Heat Island effect, increase energy-efficiency and promote better waste management in our towns.

We therefore welcome the HDB Green Towns Programme as it encourages sustainable living. However, will the benefits afforded by this concept be accessible only to new towns, or will our current HDB estates in places such as Hougang and Aljunied be retroactively upgraded to enjoy these benefits?

We should also not forget about private properties and improving green efforts there. Even as they make up around 21% of the total resident households in Singapore, they account for 41.4% of the total electricity consumed in 2018. Therefore, improved greening efforts there can help net bigger gains. Would the Government consider expanding the Estate Upgrading Programme to include greening items for private estates? This may include solar-friendly installations in common areas and greening up shelters or building community gardens that act as carbon sinks.

Also, could there be further incentives to push for solar installations across private households that allow excess power to be sold back to the power grid? Currently, payment is made by way of a credit adjustment based on the prevailing nodal prices. However, there does not seem to be incentives beyond that for private households. If private property owners can buy in to such plans, this can help us reach the 2 GWp capacity target sooner and give further sustainability and robustness to our power grid.

Let us next talk about Protecting our Green Areas and Redefining Development. In addition to gearing up our economy and infrastructure to prepare for the climate emergency, it is worthwhile to ask ourselves whether we are doing our best to reap the benefits of environmental sustainability for our society.

The Government often lauds its green accomplishments under the City in a Garden paradigm – on increasing accessibility to parks, on the upkeep of community gardens, and on projects like Gardens by the Bay, for example. Each of these efforts bear their own positive outcomes for environmental education, community involvement, ecotourism, and liveability. But, amidst the continual urban greening of Singapore, are we prepared to risk undermining the benefits provided by the relatively more natural and more sensitive green eco-systems in our country?

These eco-systems benefit us in a plethora of ways – from helping us store carbon and cool Singapore, thus aiding our response to climate change, to acting as havens for biodiversity with educational value. In addition to their potential as sites for low-impact, sustainable eco-tourism, they provide Singaporeans with recreational value and with relief from our stressful urban environment – a benefit that is much harder to quantify but is nonetheless important.

Already, an NParks study indicated that Singapore's land became a net carbon emitter in 2014. Over the past few years, we have seen the prioritisation of development projects over the benefits afforded by sensitive eco-systems due to such projects as the Cross Island Line, the Tengah HDB project and the Mandai Project. The latter two of these have been styled as a "forest town" project and a "nature destination", respectively.

Thankfully, environmental groups, academics and public agencies have come together seeking to reduce the negative impacts these projects will have on the environment, in particular on our local biodiversity and forest cover, even after mitigation measures. However, the question remains whether the Government will commit to securing the inviolability of our nature reserves and greater protection of the little that is left of our more natural, green eco-systems in the future, while finding better ways to plan land use for housing, transport and tourism. I will speak more on this in MEWR's Committee of Supply (COS) debate next week.

I will now move to Shifting Mindsets. Beyond good policy, Singaporeans also need to come together in buying in to this Green Agenda. Mindsets must shift in the way we consume, to only use what we need to use. Just to cite a common example: single-use plastic bags. Can we take or use what we really need? Can we pack more things into each plastic bag? Do we really need to double bag all our groceries at the checkouts? If we only need to use say, one or two plastic bags for refuse disposal a day, do we need to take 20 bags from the supermarket a week? We can also reduce the number of single use plastic bags we need to take for our refuse by concurrently using good quality re-usable shopping bags. We may end up using fewer single-use plastic bags and may still have enough bags for our refuse.

To encourage Singaporeans, we should ramp up our public education to reach out to Singaporeans of all ages and educational level and in different languages. We should even encourage easy accessibility to the latest research on climate change by the average citizen. Translating this research into readable, digestible commentaries for Singaporeans gives further buy-in and builds awareness.

As the lead Government agency on climate change, the National Climate Change Secretariat should consider working with public and private research agencies and researchers on this so that easy-to-access facts and evidence on climate change can be in the public domain to build further buy-in for green policies.

Mr Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, Singapore's environmental resiliency is being tested in ways unprecedented. We should spare no effort to lead the region and the world in this effort, not only as an honest broker but also as an innovator in the space. As such, a bold Green Agenda should be considered as Singapore moves to the next chapter of nation-building. We owe it to our future generations to do so.

Mr Speaker: Mr Cedric Foo.

1.00 pm

Mr Cedric Foo Chee Keng (Pioneer): Mr Speaker, Sir, Singapore's success is evident. Whether it is the PISA scores of our 15-year-olds, our economic competitiveness, our healthcare outcomes, our CPF system or our public housing, the world looks to us as a model of a highly-functioning and thriving country. To be sure, we are still a young nation and we too, look to other nations for examples of how to do better here.

Singapore's per capita income was about S$1,600 when we became independent in 1965 – just S$1,600. Today, our per capita income is about S$90,000 (in 2019). This is more than a 50-fold increase in a short span of 54 years. Put it another way, we have achieved a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of about 8% on average, each and every year over the last 54 years.

How did we manage to do this? I believe the pre-conditions of success are, firstly, the peace and stability afforded us by an effective MFA, our SAF and our Home Team. Beyond that, an effective and honest government, which is sometimes quite rare, and working hand-in-hand with our employers and workers.

These pre-conditions are necessary but not sufficient. I can think of two key principles that have served us well and have brought us here.

The first is fiscal prudence. Achieving fiscal prudence starts with having a balanced budget during every term of Government. Unlike in many other countries, Singapore has been building up its reserves, instead of running deficits. How we achieve this is to ensure that recurrent revenue – those that are built into our system and are not one-off in nature – equals to or exceeds recurrent expenditures – those that we expect to incur year after year after year and not one-off in nature. So, recurrent revenue must equal or exceed recurrent expenses. That is a formula for a balanced Budget and that is very important for fiscal prudence.

As pointed out in this House, Singapore is facing rising health care costs for two reasons – advances in medical technology and, specific to Singapore, a very rapidly ageing population. And also because we did so well in healthcare, our life expectancy is getting longer and that also mean that medical costs will go up.

Singapore’s healthcare expenditure is budgeted at S$13.4 billion for this year's Budget and that is an increase of 16% just from last year's Budget. This figure is expected to further increase over the next decade for the reasons I cited. This means that we have to address such increase in healthcare costs soon if we do not want to kick the can down the road for a future government to deal with, and to do so, in a way, by using recurring revenue because rising healthcare costs is a recurring expenditure.

Therefore, the Finance Minister has recommended a GST rate increase of two percentage points to take place between 2022 and 2025.

Now, the need for more recurring revenue becomes even clearer if we also consider two other risks to our fiscal revenues.

First, our Net Investment Returns Contribution (NIRC) and, secondly, the OECD's proposed Base Erosion and Profit Shifting's (BEPS) regime.

First, let me talk about the risk of a lower NIRC. Today, the Net Investment Returns Contribution from our reserves is the biggest component of our revenue. In fact, NIRC is expected to be S$17 billion in our 2020 Budget, but lower than the S$19 billion in FY2019. Going forward, it will be increasingly challenging to achieve similarly high NIRC due to the very low interest rate environment all around the world. In fact, last night's 10-year treasury is about 1.35%. So, 1.35% for 10 year's money. In some other countries like Germany, Switzerland, Japan and so forth, they are even experiencing negative interest rates.

GIC's mission is to beat inflation by investing in non-Singapore dollar assets and one of the instruments that they would use would be bonds. And if interest rates remain low, the risk of achieving high NIRC over the next decade or so, may become more challenging.

Secondly there is a proposed OECD Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) regime. What it means is that the OECD seeks to change the current corporate tax system from one which is based on the "residency of the company". So, if you are a company incorporated in Singapore, you pay taxes here. If this company has a subsidiary in the UK, it pays taxes in the UK. The proposal here is to change that concept of "residency of the company" to one where the "consumer is based". So, even if you are a company based in Singapore but if you sell digital services or other products or services to another country, say, in the United States, which has a large consumer base, then the US will be the country collecting the taxes.

Singapore is a small hub economy with a lower consumer base compared to larger economies with higher consumption. Should the OECD's BEPS proposal be adopted, we could end up with lower corporate tax revenues.

So, the two risks are our NIRC, facing challenges to generate high returns and, secondly, if the OECD's BEPS is adopted, then our corporate tax revenue will be negatively affected.

It is understandable that raising GST is very unpopular. But as an honest Government, we need to level with our people and we need to continue to abide by the principle of fiscal prudence, having recurring revenue matching or exceeding recurring expenses. And this is the formula which has secured Singapore's success so far and we should not throw that away. Of course, this Government can ignore it because I do not think we will run into deep problems any time soon. But this is like kicking the can down the road and letting future generations deal with the problems. I do not think this is the right way forward.

However, I hope that the Finance Minister, when raising GST, would design the Assurance Package in such a way that makes GST progressive. So, while we raise recurrent revenue, we also try to reduce the income inequality here in Singapore.

But some have argued forget about raising GST. After all, we have big reserves. So, why not dip into it to fund our expenditure. Again, our reserves is finite and if we have recurring expenses, we need to think about recurring revenue in the system and not dip into a finite savings pool.

But more important than that, we should not forget that Singapore is a country without natural resources. We have no oil, no natural gas, no minerals, no gold, no silver, the list goes on, we just have no natural resources, period! Our financial reserves is our only reserve. If we deplete it, Singapore has no fall-back. We have no back-stop facility to draw upon. We have no European Union equivalent to bail us out. And if we have to resort to the IMF as past examples have shown, we would have to go "hat-in-hand" and such rescue package will come with many, many onerous conditions that will bog us down for many, many years to come. This is not where we want to be.

It is indeed the fiduciary duty of the government, as stewards, to ensure the fiscal sustainability and not to squander away the reserves, which, strictly speaking, we did not earn in totality but our forefathers and past governments have earned it for us. We inherited it. Therefore, squandering it would be leaving future generations ill equipped and vulnerable to deal with future crisis and to continue to bring Singapore forward.

The second important principle other than fiscal prudence, is long-term planning. In fact, we should not look at Budget 2020 in isolation but we should look at all such government budgets across the years, you will see a theme emerging.

This Government has over many years built up our infrastructure. Today, our tree-lined roads, our air and sea ports and our skyline are the envy of many. We are continuing with such long-term planning and are putting aside S$5 billion now to address rising sea levels and climate change. This is a problem that would probably only happen maybe in 100 years, maybe in 50 years, but this Government now, today, is dealing with this, and this is what long-term planning is about.

The other sterling example is Marina Bay where we had to reclaim land, let it settle for 25 years, and then solving a water problem and also creating a beautiful skyline at the same time. And that would not have happened had we not adopted long-term planning.

But beyond physical infrastructure, we also invested in digitalisation, which is a very important aspect of transforming our economy. Again, looking into the future, looking forward.

Most importantly, for many years now, the second largest expenditure item in our Budget, after defence, has been education. Healthcare is catching up. This is testament to our commitment to develop Human Capital. In fact, many economists have said that investing in human capital is perhaps the best way forward. Because the more you invest in infrastructure, the more maintenance cost you will incur, and the risk of obsolescence is high. So, I am glad that we have put education right up there as the second biggest budget item in many, many budgets of the past.

Equipping the Singaporean worker with the ability to be more productive and employable will enable them to earn higher wages. This is the best way to becoming a more equal society. Education affords social mobility. It gives hope and it allows our citizens to have a higher quality of living.

In conclusion, I have talked about fiscal prudence and about why we should be careful – in fact, very, very careful – about dipping into our reserves. I have also talked about adopting a long-term planning horizon when it comes to government budgeting.

But beyond these issues, this year’s Budget has also set aside an additional $4 billion to address short-term immediate challenges like cushioning the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. And I applaud the Deputy Prime Minister and the Finance Minister for looking into this.

Although we do expect an overall Budget deficit of $10.9 billion for 2020, there is still a S$7.7 billion surplus for this term of Government commencing from 2015. Therefore, all the capital and operating expenditures as well as the government transfers including transfers into the Merdeka Generation (MG) package are all earned by the respective terms of government. And this is no mean feat. In fact, the total recurring cost of the Merdeka Generation package as well as the Pioneer Generation package are all paid for upfront and all earned by the respective terms of government.

Mr Speaker, this is a Budget I believe we can all support! Thank you.

Mr Speaker: Mr Darryl David.

1.13 pm

Mr Darryl David (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Speaker, Sir, it is not an exaggeration to say that we are living in somewhat unstable, uncertain times. The magnitude of global events have increased and the impact of these events are far-reaching. For example, just as the world saw a potential improvement in the global economic landscape last year with the inking of Phase 1 trade agreement between the United States and China, along came the COVID-19 virus to make an unforgettable impact on the international stage.

The true impact of COVID-19 on countries and economies is hard to estimate, and it is likely that the long-tail impact of the outbreak could be significant. I am thus heartened to know that the Singapore Government has put forth an expansionary Budget to cushion the impact of COVID-19 and help Singapore-based companies and our citizens emerge stronger from this episode.

The Government has come up with the Stability and Support Package to help key sectors of the economy – Tourism, Aviation, Retail, Food and Beverage, and Point-to-Point transport services – that are hit hardest by COVID-19. I am encouraged that the Budget will cater for tax and rental rebates to defray the cost of businesses, as well as wage-support schemes and training incentives to up-skill Singaporeans and keep Singaporeans employed during these difficult times.

Based on current medical knowledge, COVID-19 is more infectious than SARS and current epidemiology models seem to predict that the outbreak is likely to last longer than SARS. But even when the worst is over, it will take many more months before it is "business as usual". Would the Government cater more funds to support businesses and Singaporeans if the downturn period turns out to last longer than expected? Also, will the Government consider extending help to other industries besides the five already mentioned in the Budget, if the economic fallout spreads to other industries?

Moving on to the topic of supporting families, Mr Speaker, Sir, building on the momentum of the past few Budgets, the current Budget continues the trend of investing in our children and youth by enhancing the level of support for the pre-school and early childhood sector. In 2018, the Government committed $1 billion to the early childhood sector and I understand that it will invest almost twice this amount per year for the next few years to further support this sector.

Part of this investment will be used to enhance grants to ensure that quality pre-school remains accessible and affordable for young parents and that every young Singaporean child will be able to have a good head start in education to maximise their potential and human capital gains regardless of their family's socio-economic situation.

While we have raised the income eligibility for additional subsidiaries for the Kindergarten Fee Assistance Scheme (KiFAS) to $12,000 a month to benefit a larger number of families, would the Government consider putting in place more support and subsidy for after-school student care once the child graduates from pre-school and enters Primary school? I believe this will help support families especially by providing working parents alternative care arrangements for children while they are at work

It was announced in the Budget that over the next 10 years, the Government will also set up a Community Capability Trust of up to $350 million to support our Social Service Agencies (SSAs) to strengthen their organisational capabilities and enhance their levels of service provision. This is part of the overall effort to transform the social services sector so that the SSAs can better meet the complex needs of our evolving society, especially when Singapore is experiencing a rapidly ageing population. I believe that this is a step in the right direction towards building a more caring society.

We also need to constantly encourage and incentivise our companies to employ people who are differently-abled. An example of one such company is Foreword Coffee that employs people with special needs as their baristas and cashiers or fast food restaurants that hire differently-abled individuals as wait staff and service staff.

As announced in the Budget, the Enabling Employment Credit (EEC) will replace existing schemes to support the employment of differently-abled individuals by providing wage offsets for employers. Can we further incentivise companies to employ differently-abled individuals by providing more direct incentives to these companies, perhaps in the form of tax rebates? I believe these direct incentives will provide a strong impetus for companies to offer fair and equal employment opportunities to everyone.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the theme of a caring society is a significant and powerful one. Indeed, the COVID-19 situation, though challenging, has brought out and continues to bring out some of the best behaviour from Singaporeans from all walks of life as Singaporeans and local communities have come forward to support their fellow citizens.

Some have left masks and sanitisers at lift landings for their fellow residents. Others have come forward to organise food delivery and even social programmes for those who are under quarantine or those who have to stay at home. Many Singaporeans have also extended similar courtesies not only to their fellow countrymen, but also to the foreigners in our midst. NGOs have come forward to distribute masks and sanitisers to migrant workers, to educate them on proper hygiene to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among the migrant communities and some have even raised funds for those who need it.

These are examples of the indomitable spirit and resilience of our people. So, instead of sharing pictures of empty shelves at supermarkets or showing videos of residential storerooms that are stacked with hoarded goods, let us showcase more positive examples of how Singaporeans and Singaporean residents have rallied together to weather through this storm as one people.

Mr Speaker, in many ways, this is a Budget for everyone and every segment of the society. More importantly, this is a Budget to help Singapore get through the economic uncertainties during COVID-19 and to ensure that we emerge stronger from this entire episode.

The current Budget demonstrates the decisiveness of the Government and its commitment to Singapore and Singaporeans as it has acted quickly and decisively to come up with a budget to deal with the many challenges that have arisen due to COVID-19. I am thus confident that this Budget is well-designed for such extraordinary times and end my speech in support of the Budget.

Mr Speaker: Ms Rahayu Mahzam.

1.20 pm

Ms Rahayu Mahzam (Jurong): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Budget reflects the Government's priorities and directions for the country. It has to be visionary to prepare our economy and our people for the future, but yet also address immediate needs. To me, the Budget is also an opportunity to nudge behaviours and shape norms. The Government's schemes and policies send an important signal on key issues and should encourage efforts that make Singapore better as a nation.

For example, the support given to firms to train and redesign jobs for workers would hopefully translate to businesses and a workforce that is more productive and future-ready. Incentives for energy-efficient appliances or cleaner energy products should encourage better adoption of such products and in the long run create a greener Singapore. Support for employers to hire Singaporean persons with disabilities (PwDs) should encourage more to be inclusive and allow more space for PwDs to participate and contribute to the economy.

I am always keen to see the initiatives in the Budget that will help shape our values as a people. I am happy to note that the Government is building on the efforts from previous years to build a caring and inclusive society. This year, the Government introduced the Enabling Employment Credit (EEC) to provide stronger support for employers of PwDs. The intent is to provide help for PwDs to find employment and remain in the workforce. To me, this is important as it is a signal to be inclusive and normalise PwDs' participation in our society.

In recent years, I have had the great privilege of engaging with family members and care-givers of people with different abilities. There is a whole range of disabilities, including intellectual and physical disabilities, and PwDs come from a broad spectrum of age groups, from infants to the elderly. In my speech in 2018 on the Motion in support of inclusive education, I shared some of the challenges faced by parents of children with disabilities and called for more support for these families. Last year, as part of the PAP Women's Wing paper on supporting parenthood and families, my colleagues and I engaged many parents to hear their views on the support needed. Dr Intan Azura, Miss Cheryl Chan and I had carried out an online survey to get a sensing of the needs of these families and we also held a dialogue to hear their stories. We had to summarise much of the information we received to fit the paper, but we shared our insights with the relevant Ministries after the paper was finalised.

Through this experience, we have found that: firstly, there is still a lack of awareness of the different types of support available for families with children with different needs. Secondly, there are specific circumstances in each family and thus the support extended needs to be more customised to be more meaningful. Some families, for example, may have more than one child with special needs and may need more support. Thirdly, the infrastructure and services available need to be more pervasive and accessible to families. Facilities, like playgrounds, should ideally be equipped for children with different abilities. We may have a few of such inclusive playgrounds but only in certain parts of Singapore. We also have a hub at Enabling Village in Bukit Merah where parents and care-givers could get assistance with some services. There is also a Care-givers' Pod in the village meant for the care-givers' use. However, those living in the east or north of Singapore may find it to be too far from them and are not able to benefit from the support and facilities available.

Much have been done in the sector, through the Enabling Masterplans, various policies and schemes as well as through the formation of workgroups to review the support to address different aspects of disabilities. However, there is still some way to go in closing the gaps to better support PwDs and their families. More significantly, one theme that repeatedly comes up from the feedback from parents and family members is the need to build a culture of care and compassion towards PwDs. Parents especially, worry about the world they would be leaving their differently-abled children in when they pass away. Could their children be meaningfully integrated within the community and be given opportunities like others? Will the society be kind, patient and understanding of their child's needs? Will they be taken advantage of? Will someone stand up for their rights?

There is, therefore, a fervent hope that the Government continues to make effort to create awareness, build infrastructure and implement policies that would normalise inclusiveness and allow for people with different needs and abilities to be truly embraced as part of the community. This may sound like a lofty ideal to some, but not one which we should shy away from. We need to constantly and relentlessly participate in such efforts and seek partners from amongst the community.

In seeking for partners for causes that matter to humanity, I have found hope in the youths. I feel that the youth of today are very accepting of differences and have a strong sense of social fairness. Over the years, I have continued to be involved in the youth sector efforts especially through my engagements under M³, the collaboration between MESRA, MENDAKI and MUIS, and as a council member of National Youth Council. In my dialogues and discussions with young people, many of them have shown much desire for a more inclusive, more compassionate society. I am very heartened by their passion and I feel that it is so important to continue to engage them and seek their views as we build this nation.

In this regard, I laud the Government's efforts through MCCY and the National Youth Council, to meaningfully engage our young people. Now more than ever, young people are given opportunities and are empowered to make the change they want to see. There are many support mechanisms, for example, through, the National Youth Fund, the SG Youth Action Plan and NYC's Young Changemakers Programme, which not only provide monetary grants but connect youths with mentors and like-minded peers to help implement ground-up projects.

Aside from providing support to youths for their causes and to carry out their projects, it is also important to support them to achieve their aspirations. I note the provision in the Budget to ready our youths for various opportunities by providing more overseas exposure. This is very welcomed. I am hoping that many youths from different backgrounds can take up this opportunity. We should also continue to build on the efforts to support youth through empowerment and mentoring programmes.

I oversee the youth engagement efforts under M³ and one of the key initiatives is to create a culture of mentoring within the community so that the Malay/Muslim youths have somewhere to turn to for guidance as they navigate through challenges and choices in life. There are also resources like the MENDAKI Future-Ready Toolkit and the M³ Resource Directory which are available online for youths to refer to for information on various matters. Mr Speaker, at this juncture, allow me to continue my speech in Malay.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] It is very important for us to continue engaging and supporting our youths because they are the next generation who will inherit our nation. We must empower them and help them achieve their aspirations. I oversee the third workgroup under M³ related to youth matters, and one of the focus areas in our current projects is the development of a culture of mentoring within our community, so that our young can receive guidance and knowledge from those who are more experienced.

This will hopefully help our youths grow their confidence and seize any available opportunity so that they can continue to progress. At the same time, we also encourage our youths to get involved and give back to society, regardless of race, religion or background. I hope that our community will continue supporting this effort and we can achieve our objective to develop youths who are highly competent, competitive, confident and show concern towards the people around them.

(In English): Indeed, the efforts to empower, mentor and engage youths should continue. We should involve young people in discussion of key issues and policies and find opportunities to work with them to create positive social norms within the community. There should, therefore, be an appropriate budget allocated for these efforts as well as provision of the necessary platforms for them to implement their ideas and work with people from different ages and backgrounds. I believe that if we work together, we can harness our diverse strengths and bring Singapore to greater heights.

It is akin to what we see here in Parliament. The Budget season is one of the more exciting periods for the House. The House is abuzz with anecdotes, findings and information about a myriad of issues. Members of this House pour our hearts and souls to the issues we champion because they matter to us, to the people we represent. I have seen the views that we raise in Parliament make their way to the formation of policies and I trust this will continue to be how the Singapore Government improves and builds on its framework for the future.

This Budget is aptly named Our Unity Budget as we stand together, united by our desire to make Singapore stronger and better for generations to come. Mr Speaker, I stand in support of the Budget.

1.29 pm

Mr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Mr Speaker, I support the Budget statement by Finance Minister. The past year has been a challenging year for many Singaporeans. Many businessmen whom I had spoken to lament about the slowdown in their business due to the on-going trade war between China and USA. They worry whether their business will be able to sustain in the long term.

When the COVID-19 virus outbreak hit Singapore, it was an even greater blow to these businesses. MTI reduced its projected growth rate to a lower range of -0.5% to 1.5% for 2020. The drop in tourist figures, the fact that more Singaporeans are staying at home have affected the confidence of many.

Thus, the expansionary Budget announced by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister last week is a real confidence booster.

As stated by many in the media, the Budget was generous and provided for several measures to help affected Singaporeans and businesses cope with the economic slowdown. There were also many long-term measures to help affected Singaporeans prepare for the future.

Individually, many Singaporeans are happy with the Care and Support Package of $1.6 billion because it puts money directly into their pockets. This will help alleviate the cost of living pressures for the residents. I support the principle that those who are lower income should receive more.

I am also glad that the cash component of the Care and Support scheme is pegged to their income and not tied to the property type of the Singaporean. Last year, I had called on the Government to do away with distribution of Budget benefits based on home type alone. I believe this will benefit many retirees or seniors who are living in private properties but without any income. So, my appeal to the Government is to consider extending other benefits like the U-save vouchers and GST vouchers to retirees or seniors without income but staying in private properties. Again here I wish to stress to Minister – these retirees would not have income. The fact that they stay in private property does not in any way mean that they are rich or are able to sustain themselves. What they are looking for is also whether the Government can do more to recognise them for their contribution to nation building when they were younger.

Sir, I also support the measures to help keep our workers employed. For many Singaporeans whom I meet, their main concern is whether they can get a good job which pays them commensurate with their skills and experience. Most workers prefer not to be on any form of welfare. Hence, the Jobs Support Scheme, the Wage Credit Scheme, the corporate tax rebate and the rental waivers for some of the tenants would help businesses to survive the economic slowdown and allow them to retain their staff.

I am also pleased that the Finance Minister had remembered the hawkers in the food centres and markets. The majority of such stall licensees are small businesses and the rental waiver for them would go a long way to helping them sustain their small businesses during such trying times when the food centres are quieter and business has dropped drastically for them

However, in the long term, what is important is not just cash handouts to affected Singaporeans or tax rebates to help businesses tide over difficult times. These payments cannot be permanent and moneys will eventually run out some day. Thus, I support the Government's emphasis on helping business to transform and grow; to help our workers to upgrade and learn new skills; to help our students venture overseas so as to be better equipped to face challenges in the future.

This is akin to the old Chinese saying that if "you give a man one fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." We must not ease our efforts in pushing our local enterprises to change and grow into efficient and competitive businesses that can make Singapore proud. I long for the day when Singapore can boast of our own large corporations like Alibaba, Samsung, Apple and Google.

Sir, I have three points for the Government's consideration.

I support the provision of Enhanced Housing Grant (EHG) to first-time flat buyers. The purpose of the Enhanced Housing Grant is to allow Singaporeans to own their own home and this is important for nation building. However, the quantum of EHG given is currently based on the monthly income of the flat buyer. If the applicant’s income is higher, the EHG will be lower. This means there is less incentive to buy a resale flat because you will get a lower EHG if your income is higher. This may result in Singaporeans with higher income always applying for a BTO flat where the subsidy will not change based on their income level.

I urge the Government to review the tagging of the amount of EHG based on the income of the applicant. I also urge the Government to consider providing the EHG based on the per capital basis and not just based on gross income. Otherwise, a Singaporean who may have a higher income will get less EHG even though he may have more expenses and need to provide for more children or retired parents.

Next, I appreciate the intent of the Government to help Singaporeans stay employable and to use the SkillsFuture Credit to learn new skills. However, may I ask the Finance Minister how many Singaporeans have not used the 2016 SkillsFuture Credit of $500. Are the unutilised figures within the expectation of the Government?

Will the Government consider targeted useful courses that would help nudge Singaporeans to apply to use these funds to improve themselves to upgrade their skills? Otherwise, the 2016 and now the 2020 SkillsFuture Credit may remain untouched for a long period of time.

Finally, in this year’s Budget, the expenditure for Healthcare has jumped to $13.4 billion. It now accounts for the second largest expenditure of the Government's Budget, just before Defence. And it used to be Education when the Minister for Finance was Minister for Education. I acknowledge that healthcare costs have gone up and the recent COVID-19 outbreak has caused Singaporeans to be more aware of the need to ensure that our healthcare system works.

Although Minister has assured us that the GST hike will not take place next year, the reality is that healthcare costs will continue to rise. The Government needs to decide how to apportion the taxes which is collected and what resources to allocate into Healthcare as compared to Defence, Education, Housing and Transport.

Nobody likes a tax hike, but Singaporeans must understand that increased spending on healthcare must come from somewhere. I urge the Government to reach out to more Singaporeans to help them learn about the GST offset packages which is intended to help the lower income cope with the GST eventual increase.

Overall, I am of the view that this is a good Budget to take care of affected Singaporeans and to prepare the country for the future. It shows that the Government deeply cares for its citizens and the deferment of the GST increase is a clear signal that the Government is responsive to feedback from the citizens. Mr Speaker, I affirm my support for the Budget and wish to thank the Finance Minister for an excellent Budget that seeks to bring Singaporeans together.

1.37 pm

Mr Chong Kee Hiong (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Mr Speaker, Sir, I am heartened that the 2020 Budget has been carefully calibrated to cater to the COVID-19 situation which has had an unexpected but swift and severe impact on our economy and society. This is a big, bold Budget which comes at the price of a $10.9 billion deficit, responding to the need for help by Singaporean households and businesses. This crisis has shown the importance and relevance of our Government's tradition of prudence. With an accumulated surplus of $18.7 billion over this current term of office, there remains a war chest of $7.8 billion, which is very reassuring.

We should be prepared for a protracted outbreak as the situation is still evolving with growing cases reported globally. The solution does not lie in just successful containment in Singapore. It is a global effort by all countries to find a solution, as indicated by the World Health Organization.

Should the COVID-19 outbreak become more prolonged and have an even greater impact on households and companies than what is currently experienced, we believe that the Government would draw upon the surplus funds to finance further measures to help.

I would first like to touch on support measures. The Government's Care and Support Package will go some way to provide relief to individuals who have experienced income disruptions due to the impact of COVID-19 on businesses. The combination of cash, rebates and grocery vouchers will help households to manage their living expenses for a period of time.

For Singaporeans living in 1-room and 2-room HDB flats, the $100 Groceries Vouchers provided to assist them are limited for use at participating supermarkets. May I ask whether the Ministry would consider allowing them to be used at provision shops or even markets? This will also be a way of supporting small businesses in our housing estates.

I welcome the widening of qualifying criteria for the $100 cash support to citizens who earned more than $100,000 in 2019 or who live in private properties. This recognises that the COVID-19 situation is a challenge that all Singaporeans are facing and may be affected in one way or another regardless of their income level.

It would be good if the Ministry would share how it arrived at the various financial assistance figures. This will help to illustrate the intended impact of the financial assistance and also, the timeliness of the payouts.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng has said that the Government "…will be prepared to do more when the situation warrants it". Has the Ministry also set for itself some indicators internally to decide on when further assistance be rendered should the outbreak crisis deepen? In such a scenario, the cost of certain essential goods may increase as disruptions in supply chains may create shortages in supply. Singaporeans may then suffer the double whammy of lower or even loss of income, and a higher cost of living.

Under the Jobs Support Scheme, employers will receive the 8% cash grant on the wages of local employees for the months of October to December 2019. What about businesses that started operating this year which are also affected by COVID-19? Would the Government consider helping them as well? In addition, may I request for the grants to be given out earlier, especially for smaller businesses which operate on tight cashflows and are already severely impacted?

I would like to urge the Minister to review if the current reliefs are sufficient to prevent the loss of jobs, particularly in the retail and food and beverage sectors. With the decline in sales, operators will immediately look at cost cutting. Operating hours will be shortened, the number of part-timers hired will be reduced, full-time staff will be placed on part-time shifts and asked to clear their leave or take no-pay leave. In the event of a prolonged crisis, what can be done to support businesses so that job losses are kept to a minimum?

Feedback from various businesses indicated that the rent rebates of one month for NEA hawker centres and markets, and half month for commercial tenants in Government-managed properties are insufficient as they expect that the situation will take at least till second half of the year before it returns to normal. It is good for the Government to elaborate on the working assumption of the time frame for these rebates. If the rebates are meant to cover serious business earnings loss for February to April, one or half month rental rebates put in this context does seem reasonable. However, businesses seek the assurance that more help would be available if the situation prolongs or deteriorates further.

I would also like to request for more support to be given to companies embarking or expanding their sales via e-channels. This crisis provides the impetus to push SMEs which have been reluctant to consider this sales avenue. With the current cost structure and labour situation, it is inevitable that e-commerce would become the norm and form an essential part of any business.

Next, I would like to touch on positioning for the longer term. This Budget, like previous Budgets, have schemes to support the transformation of our local enterprises. Many of these incentives have a pre-set time period, for example, three years, or are subject to renewals or extensions. Companies change and transform at different paces, depending on the maturity of the industry and support available, especially for smaller ones. To encourage companies to plan ahead and remain continuously invested in the future, would the Government consider setting longer term horizons for selected incentives? For example, when Pioneer Tax Incentives were first introduced, longer durations, up to 15 years, were given.

As we continue on the digital transformation of our economy, more support would be needed to help smaller companies adopt new technology, not only with respect to the technical aspects but also with the costs. Perhaps tax incentives for the telecommunications or selected sectors can be provided so that they can lower the fees for the eco-system to promote adoption and switch-overs.

Closer cooperation between MOM and Institutes of Higher Learning will be necessary to ensure that the SkillsFuture courses are of high quality and relevant to industry to support our economy’s transformation. The course materials, modes of instruction, quality of instructors, just to name a few, should be constantly reviewed and audited to ensure that they are up to par. The courses could also be broken down into mobile modular sections for the workers to learn on the go and achieve accreditation over time.

Mr Speaker, Sir, while we are now facing an intimidating combination of challenges which include a global health concern, economic transformations and geopolitical tensions, I remain optimistic that we will be able to emerge from this victorious and become even more competitive and nimble. The trust among our people, our businesses and the Government is strong and that is the main reason for my belief. I would like to conclude with my hearty support for the Budget.

1.45 pm

Mr Alex Yam (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Speaker, this is is a responsive, responsible and remarkable Budget. Responsive because it addresses an immediate crisis. Responsible because it remains fiscally sound. Remarkable because it took all of a few weeks to prepare. This is a Budget for extraordinary times. That we are facing potential global financial instability is moot. What we face is not just an invisible enemy but also the real visible damage it causes to the economy.

Last Sunday, I stopped by Marina Square at about 1.20 pm between my events. I wanted to pick up some things from a maternity shop. I was somewhat apprehensive because I knew how crowded Marina Square can be at the weekends. Yet, I entered a carpark that was sparse. From the carpark to the shop, I consciously counted a total of only 38 shoppers. At one of the empty children's playgrounds in the shopping centre, I saw the counter staff staring blankly into space because there was never one shadow of a child within the space. At Jewel, outlets famous for their long queues were momentarily famous for non-existent queues. Although the crowds and confidence has returned in the last week, the damage has been done. Heartland malls have fared better a little bit better but still report lower numbers than usual. People are taking precautions. Food and grocery delivery services perhaps have benefited most from this crisis, But tourism and service sectors hit directly will take time to recover. This is also no longer a regional problem. It is not a regional illness anymore. It has global reach.

A responsive expansionary Budget is a needed assurance The $5.6 billion Stabilisation and Support Package, even if adjusted for inflation, far outstrips the $230 million SARS package in 2003. This is not just for business but for Singaporean.

The $1.6 billion Care and Support Package not only provides a leg up but also goes towards, hopefully, stimulating the economy through spending There are not many governments that can do this and do this quickly, and be so detailed in its response to a crisis.

Yet questions remain: one, is it enough? Two, can we do more? And three, when will we do more?

The MTI has downgraded the 2020 economic growth forecast, projected between -0.5% and 1.5% on the impact of COVID-19, just slightly better than Hong Kong’s projected -1.5% to 0.5%. According to the S&P Dow Jones, the S&P 500 has wiped out $2.138 trillion since last Wednesday with $1.737 trillion or 63% loss in two days of trade since the start of the week. And this is just on fear of COVID-19 impacting the Amercian economy. We need therefore to buffer ourselves against a potential recession.

The two packages are significant, but how much will the needle move? How much does the Government expect the worst downside to be? Are we able and prepared to do more? Can we still as responsive as we are currently? People are worried for their livelihoods. They have taken to heart with what this Budget has provided. But it may take more than care, support and stabilisation to shore up, if this drags on.

During the Ministerial Statement on COVID-19, I asked if more can be done quicker. I am heartened by the Budget announcements but urge more haste and more heart for those who are affected. And I hope Deputy Prime Minister can provide further reassurance on this.

While we need to be responsive, we also need to be responsible. We expect to run an overall Budget deficit of $10.95 billion. This is about 2.1% of our GDP. Yet our fiscal prudence means we will not be drawing on past reserves. This is a hallmark of stability and a responsible Government. There are not many governments that can do this. We only need to look around us and observe how things can go wrong. Getting our politics right is key. Looking north in the last few days, we are lucky to be spared the intrigue and drama in our system. Perhaps we should be thankful to the late Tengku Abdul Rahman that we are no longer party to this. We wish our northern neighbour well but we also wish that such distractions may never plague us.

In fact, despite the major interruption posed by COVID-19, we have not allowed ourselves to be distracted.

While responding to the crisis decisively, this Government has also not shifted focus With an eye on the future, SkillsFuture prepares us as a people for future challenges, gives us both the resource and also encourages personal responsibility. However, we also need to be mindful of how we implement the schemes. I heard feedback from SkillsFuture WSQ course providers of the challenges they face in claims, especially when participants do not complete or fail their course. Many end up not being able to pay and providers cannot claim. Some providers have also been told that if a trainee does not complete, they should factor the trainees as part of attrition or bad debts to be written off. We are all in this together. Honest course providers commit resources to develop and maintain these courses, and hope to be reimbursed in a timely manner. I hope that while we care for our workers and help them upgrade that course providers, been mostly SMEs, are also aptly protected for playing their part and not to be left with a recourse or assistance.

Beyond the short to mid term, the Budget also looks far ahead to an existential threat brought about by global warming. The problem is not immediate, but committing an initial $5 billion to Coastal Protection does show our commitment.

Mr Speaker, being responsible also means telling the hard truth, even if sometimes unpalatable. Yesterday, it was said in this House that, "If you have nothing good to say, then best to keep quiet." That is easy, Mr Speaker, is the easy thing to do. It is easy to only say nice things. It is easy not to have to make hard decisions. It is easy to be popular and likeable. But being a good and effective leader is not easy. The difficult task is to tell it like it is. The difficult task is sacrificing personal standing to say the needful. And the difficult task is calling out bad behaviour when required.

This Government knows that hard truths hurt but does not shy away from it. Without these hard truths and hard decisions, Singapore would not be where it is today. That to me is the mark of true leadership and wisdom. When someone takes his or her duty seriously to make hard decisions, that is true responsibility.

Credit is due to the Deputy Prime Minister and the MOF team as well as the other Ministries for being able to respond to this crisis so rapidly. This Budget would have been a long process but to turn it around in face of a crisis takes mettle. It is therefore remarkable because it is responsive. It is also remarkable because it remains responsible. A government that can respond to trouble and not fall to the temptation of being populist in the process, all this because we also have a remarkable people and a remarkable country.

Our common response to COVID-19 is mirrored in the Budget. When DORSCON Orange was declared, many banded together to do something for the community. We have heard many examples over the course of the many speeches in this House. My own volunteers in my constituency asked what we could do to encourage our frontline heroes. In three days, we managed to pull together a programme which we called "Cookies for SG Heroes". We started off wanting to bake cookies and progressed to preparing care packs for the staff of Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Ng Teng Fong General Hospital. Within hours of putting the word out, the Girl Guides responded donating their famous biscuit tins, Hock Hua Tonic responded offering their herbal tea at cost, the Singapore Kindness Movement responded providing encouragement decals, Gain City came on board offering the use of their show kitchens, residents, Singaporeans responded. By the morning we had so much that we needed bigger bags to pack the care bags. A total of 136 residents came together and we baked close to 11,000 cookies that day. The feeling was moving. One of our baking coordinators Pey Yng was interviewed for a video. She had moved out of our constituency a few years earlier but responded immediately when we asked for help. When asked why she wanted to help and stepped forward, she said, almost tearing, "Instead of discriminating, we should be encouraging them."

Mr Speaker, these frontline heroes include our medical staff, allied healthcare workers, cleaners, conservancy workers, security personnel, back office staff and many many others. These are our fellow Singaporeans, our brothers and sisters. We are battling a stealthy enemy that does not discriminate. Yet a small minority do.

Yesterday, a former colleague of mine shared his wife’s experience. She works in the frontline and she was helping with contact tracing and temperature taking. Yet, someone felt that even amidst the heightened alert that he was entitled to take it out on her and her colleagues. Throwing the pen at her and shouting at her colleagues. Because? Actually, there is no need for a because.

Another resident confided in me sending me a Facebook message. I asked for her permission to share this with everyone. She wrote: "Sir, I do not know why people treat us like this. Why is my uniform, which I aspired to and was inspired by others to don, now deemed as a mark of shame? Why do people stand away from me even when I am on the way to work, and not the other way round. Why do people look at me with a glint of horror? Have I committed a crime? It hurts. But I will keep doing what I love. I will keep on saving lives because many Singaporeans are not like them. And when those who shun us arrive in my hospital, I will care for them just the same as the others. With love, with respect and to the best of my ability because just like the Nurse's Pledge I took, I will uphold my integrity.”

Mr Speaker, when this crisis comes to pass, when we get back to normalcy, I ask that we commit ourselves to do something meaningful to recognise our frontline workers. Let us do right by them. Give them back the dignity they deserve and in the process earn on behalf of all Singaporeans the forgiveness we all need for shunning them. We salute you, our brothers and sisters.

Mr Speaker, I apologise for the lengthiness of my speech because there is a lot of good to say about this Budget. I therefore add my voice in support of this Budget.

1.57 pm

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Mr Speaker, Sir, I congratulate our Finance Minister for presenting this very caring and heart-warming Budget which will take us through the difficult circumstances caused by COVID-19. It is like a very much needed vaccine to support our economy, especially the badly affected sectors, and also to protect jobs for our people. Having said that I would like to raise a few pointers for the Minister to consider. In Chinese, please.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Currently, many people are concerned about the impact on the economy brought about by COVID-19. Employers are worried that they are unable to carry on with their businesses. Employees are worried about their job security.

I would like to thank the Government for providing a half to one month’s of rental rebate to hawker centres and Government-managed commercial tenants. If the outbreak continues, is this enough? Will the Government introduce more measures?

For example, will the Government reduce the rental until the DORSCON level returns to green? JTC or HDB, for example, can take the lead to reduce rentals of their commercial tenants and office spaces. I believe this will be able to reduce the impact brought about by the outbreak.

Of the $4 billion assistance, how much will be used to help SMEs? How can we make sure that landlords will share the savings with the SMEs?

Besides tourism-related sectors, many other industries such as manufacturing, maritime and construction, are also affected severely due to various extra expenditures and the fact that China's manufacturing industry has come to a standstill. They asked if the foreign workers' levy could be temporarily waived.

Why is everybody looking to the Government for help in times like these? The outbreak has no mercy, but there is warmth in the world. Have faith in our Government, which is a caring Government.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] I have also received feedback from several Grab and Gojek drivers who said that they are not eligible for the support package for full-time drivers, because they do not meet the minimum number of trips made due to reduced demand within that period, Will the Minister be able to take a look at this group?

I would also like to urge taxi companies to consider reducing the taxi rental rates until the DORSCON level returns to green. Many taxi drivers have shared with me that their income have dipped by 50%. A reduction of the monthly taxi rental rate by 50% will help them get through this difficult period.

(In English): Mr Speaker, I will now move on to climate change. Are we exploring our full potential for photovoltaic (PV) systems? A PV system employs solar modules, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. Are we ready to allow Town Councils to install PV panels on roofs and vertical areas such as lift shafts?

A case in point is MPC@Khatib, our covered multi-purpose court that can accommodate four basketball courts. During its design, we enquired if PV panels could be installed to harvest the solar energy. As usual, I always explore ways to make Nee Soon South cleaner and greener. Unfortunately, the answer from HDB then was no. Maybe at that time, they were not ready. So, I would like to urge them to review this.

Many residents welcome the SkillsFuture top up which is very useful. I urge the Government to monitor if course providers raise their prices as a response.

I note there is a reduction in S Pass sub-dependency ratio ceilings (DRCs) for the Construction, Shipyards and Process sectors. It is good that the Government has a long-term view to reduce Singapore’s reliance on foreign labour. But if we do not have a pipeline of Singaporean labour for construction and shipyards, then cutting the DRCs might be an additional burden on companies. This could leave the companies no choice but to relocate out of Singapore, especially the shipyards.

May I ask what are the plans to ensure that we continue to create good jobs for locals and have a steady pipeline of local PMETs for the Construction, Shipyards and Process sectors?

In facing the COVID-19 difficulties, it is important to have the entire industry, that is, developers, contractors, consultants, subcontractors, suppliers and all stakeholders tackle the challenges cohesively as a whole. In the same way as how the relief measures are rolled out for the hospitality and retail sectors, the same should be done for the Property and Construction sector. This sector also holds a lot of jobs and should not be neglected.

Many local contractors also told me that they feel discriminated in recent few contract awards. In the LTA Jurong Regional Line Projects, for example, four out of seven contracts were awarded to foreign contractors. Another example, LTA awarded contract N112 tender to a foreign contractor though our local contractor submitted the lowest tender. The lowest tenderer is an established home-grown contractor. Why pay $6 million more to a foreign contractor? I know there is such thing as PQM (Price Quality Method) scoring. But if there is a gap in the capabilities of our local contractors, then we should handhold them and nurture them. We need our home-grown contractors to grow, to build up their experience, their portfolio so that they can venture overseas.

If we do not even support our own contractors, who will support them? Can we consistently apply the policy of Buy Singapore First?

New Budget measures aimed at boosting the retirement incomes and employability of seniors are a step in the right direction, but I feel we need to understand residents need better and get the priority right. I had seen cases where residents do not have enough money to service their mortgage loan or no roof over their heads, but they have money in the retirement accounts. To many residents, having a roof is more immediate and more important need than providing for retirement. How can we help them?

And I feel financial incentives alone may not be enough to encourage businesses to hire and retain older workers. This requires more in-depth study.

I move on to issues that residents are facing. Noise pollution from vehicle engines is a common occurrence faced by Nee Soon South residents and I am sure in many other parts of Singapore too.

If I may refer to a Swedish report published in 2009, which found people who were regularly exposed to traffic noise in excess of 50 decibels were 40% more likely to suffer a heart attack than those who lived in quieter neighbourhoods. So, the implication is besides the noise nuisance, they also create health issues and a cost to society. There are technologies used in other countries. The UK use Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) tech to dish out fines to drivers over excessive noise. Calgary, a city in Canada, is using Sound Camera and fine motorists with excessively loud vehicles. Similarly, Abu Dhabi Police have invented a noise-measuring camera, which will help officers take action against abnormally loud cars. There are also intelligent speed bumps that flatten when you are driving within speed limit. Is Singapore exploring some of these new technologies? Any Budget allocated for these? And will there be more stringent action against car workshops which do illegal modification to the motorcycles and cars?

Town Councils are essential in improving the environment of HDB residents. But often, Town Councils are hampered by regulations. For example, Nee Soon Town Council has been flying drones for its estate inspection but due to the regulations, our drone inspection could only be carried out during weekends. Can these regulations be relaxed? Another example, some Town Councils have been asking the HDB since Jan 2018 to allow Town Councils to procure our goods and services online. Currently, Government is on GeBIZ but Town Councils are not allowed to make use of GeBIZ for procurement.

There are e-procurement platforms that we could adopt but HDB has not come back to us on our request. Can we get some timeline for this? Also, can I ask MND to consider providing additional grants to Town Councils for older flats or flats built for the silver generation for the maintenance of silver-friendly facilities such as the Alarm Alert System. Such systems and others are expensive to maintain.

I am happy to hear that HIP II is being implemented. And on this note, I would like to request for flats in Nee Soon South those which were built in 1987, be among the first few batches? My residents have been waiting for the programme for a long, long time.

Mr Speaker, Sir, despite the issues I have raised, I want to put my speech within the right context. I fully appreciate Deputy Prime Minister's thoughtfulness and insightfulness to swiftly get into the thick of things, given that this COVID-19 only came to attention in January. He was able to adroitly dribble his way and roll out so many measures across so many fronts. He was able to assess the impact on our economy and the ramifications globally, and work out the packages, without forgetting the packages for our seniors and for families. And while doing all these, the coronavirus was still evolving.

No one knows how severe it would pan out. Even as we gather here today to debate, the virus is rearing its ugly head in many places worldwide. I think it is very fitting that we assure Deputy Prime Minister that we stand behind him and he is not alone. Perhaps my thoughts would be best expressed by quoting the lyrics from the Liverpool FC song: "When you are walking through a storm, hold your head up high. Don't be afraid of the dark because at the end of the storm, there's a golden sky."

Mr Speaker, I would not sing, I cannot and I do not want!

Mr Speaker: Thank you very much.

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah: And I do not want to empty this House. But I will say this to the Deputy Prime Minister:

"Walk on, walk on

With hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone."

Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Budget. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: I was about to say that the HIP II flats should come to Kembangan-Chai Chee first, before Nee Soon. But because you quoted that song, I will let you go first. Mr Terence Ho.

2.13 pm

Mr Terence Ho Wee San (Nominated Member): Speaker, Sir, the arts have always played an important role in defining our nation's cultural identity in Singapore. The arts bring diverse communities together. For the arts to remain sustainable and accessible for all in Singapore, Giving plays a vital role to allow arts to live strong, develop and grow.

Amid the evolving coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, the arts community brings people together, spreads love and positivity. My colleague in Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO), the CEO of SSO, Chng Hak-Peng shared "three reasons why the arts in general, and classical music concerts in particular are essential even during times of crisis for a modern and complex society like Singapore", in The Straits Times on 25 February 2020.

The arts is an essential part of life. As shared by Hak-Peng, firstly, it is important to maintain an environment of normalcy as life goes on. Secondly, music feeds the soul. And it re-energises, and allows audiences to breathe. Lastly, the arts help you to cope with uncertainty. Allow me to quote him in his article, "For me, this is like building our psychological resilience. The arts help you to surrender yourself to the unknown, and the beauty of a piece of art or music reinvigorates your belief that, as human beings, we have the ability to transcend today’s problems and attain greatness."

The current measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 have led to a number of shows and performances being cancelled or postponed. This has spurred arts groups to consider creative alternatives, such as digital performances, to bring some comfort during this trying time. Ding Yi Music Company held a very first digital concert Together We Stand, with local artistes and our Minister for Community, Youth and Sports Grace Fu sang in the finale piece. It was a touching and inspiring piece to battle COVID-19.

Prime Minister Lee also shared a special music video of "Home", performed by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in tribute to our healthcare and frontline workers, on both his Facebook and Instagram. In his post, he mentioned that he was glad the arts community is doing its part to rally Singaporeans during the outbreak, including National Arts Council. They produced a very interesting and inspiring video called "#StayStrong and #DontKancheong" video, which involved many local artists and they shared what they have been up to and what they have to say to Singapore.

Other than tapping on online platforms and social media, some arts groups and individuals continue to perform and bring the audiences some encouragement and positivity. When a group of people see others appear calm and able to appreciate the arts, it reinforces a sense of peace and chill in the community. This is more positive and encouraging than seeing each other rush to buy daily necessities, like rice and toilet paper and develop a sense of panic.

Just over the weekend, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) organised two full house concerts at The Esplanade. Just last evening, two young gentlemen – Wong Qin Kai and Goh Shunta – held a recital, "The Erhu Works" which I had the honour of attendingl; I was there at the performance. This is the flyer. And it was almost full house, even during this trying period. I hope such examples will inspire more to come forward, to build a more caring, cohesive and confident society, together.

Giving to the arts and culture has been significant in the past few years. For instance, Deputy Prime Minister Heng shared that the Government will set aside $250 million to boost efforts to partner with the community in projects, during the recent Budget announcement. This includes a $20 million that will be used to top up the Our Singapore Fund, which supports projects in the social and community domains initiated by citizens. The Fund will also be extended for five more years from this year.

I am heartened by the news and I thank the Government for putting aside this sum of money to boost community partnership and efforts, to bring forth more opportunities for all and to empower the arts.

Since Our Singapore Fund was announced in Budget 2016, I understand that it has committed nearly $4.3 million to more than 240 ground-up projects in areas ranging from heritage to sports. This Fund continues to help create access and opportunities to arts of different forms and engage Singaporeans of all ages. The arts build a more cohesive society and I wonder how this Fund can be further be extended to help arts and culture companies and enterprises to bring more Singaporeans together, groom and grow attendance and participation for the arts.

The COVID-19 outbreak has also an impact on the worldwide economy. Economists believe that the growth of the economy has slowed down and in the case of a downturn, it would have an impact on the arts giving and sponsorship.

I believe that a more targeted and well-defined Cultural Matching Fund (CMF) policy can help small, medium arts groups in Singapore to enjoy the benefits. To battle the economy downturn, I propose to review and reconsider the CMF. This could be a long-term measure, instead of a short-term or mid-term measure. Perhaps, the Ministry can consider to match not only for funds raised, but also for earned income such as the ticket proceeds. This would help many of the smaller scale arts groups with less fund-raising power to be able to tap on the matching fund. I will share more, during the Committee of Supply. Mr Speaker, Sir, in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Arts have always played an important role in defining Singaporeans' cultural identity. With the increasing number of artists and people involved in arts groups in Singapore and a vibrant arts sector, every Singaporean is able to enjoy the arts.

The COVID-19 outbreak has sparked worldwide concern and impacted public life. With the DORSCON outbreak alert level raised to orange, many Singaporeans inevitably felt anxious. Quite a number of arts performances were also cancelled or postponed.

In an attempt to uplift public spirit amidst the outbreak, local chamber music group Ding Yi Music Company held a digital concert on Valentine's Day to spread positivity to frontline healthcare workers and members of the public who are feeling uneasy. In fact, online platforms have become a channel for many arts groups which seek to be heard. National Arts Council also launched a video with the theme "Stay Strong, Don't Kancheong" on the 20th of February, with many local artists joining in the video to boost the morale of Singaporeans. The video has been well-received.

In addition, the Singapore Chinese Orchestra produced a heartwarming music video in a tribute to healthcare workers battling the COVID-19 virus at the frontlines. The music video, featuring one of Singapore’s national songs "Home", was brimming with emotions. Although everybody is feeling anxious amidst the outbreak, healthcare workers braving the storm deserve special support and care from the community. The music video by SCO received a "like" from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who said he was glad the arts community is doing its part to rally Singaporeans to fight the outbreak, and is able to continue performing for the public by going online.

The value of arts in the daily lives of Singaporeans have also been recognized. During this extraordinary period, arts groups have sought to encourage and unite the nation, as well as pay tribute to healthcare workers, through arts and music. In times of crisis, arts and culture can uplift spirits. For example, last weekend, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performed two sold-out concerts; two young Erhu musicians Wang Qin Kai and Wu Fu Jun also performed to a full house audience last night. I personally attended this concert and I am heartened to see the huge turnout. The music does not stop, and life must go on!

In the budget statement announced recently, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat shared that the government will set aside $20 million to top up the Our Singapore Fund (OSF) and extend the fund to 2025. This is to encourage Singaporeans from a wider range of domains to initiate and launch more meaningful community projects. The Government will set aside $250 million to boost efforts involving community partnerships, with $20 million earmarked for OSF top ups to encourage more ground-up community initiatives.

The sustained development of arts groups is not only dependent on strong government support, but also the support of companies and foundations that identify with them, as well as the active participation, sponsorship and donation of our people. I hope that the Government will consider exercising greater flexibility and adopt a more targeted approach in the administration of the Culture Matching Fund. For example, besides providing matching funds for donations, the Government could perhaps consider providing matching funds based on proceeds from performances and ticket sales. I believe that this would help many small to medium-sized arts groups such as Siong Leng Musical Association, Nam Hwa Opera and Singapore Traditional Arts Centre, so that they can benefit from the Culture Matching Fund despite limited fundraising resources.

Arts knows no boundaries in terms of age and background, everyone can enjoy the arts. Arts helps to build confidence, enhance one’s image and attractiveness. Looking ahead, I hope that culture and the arts will continue to bring diverse communities together and contribute to a more cohesive society.

(In English): I am in support of Budget 2020.

Mr Speaker: Mr Mohamad Irshad.

2.25 pm

Mr Mohamed Irshad (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, allow me to begin with a moment of self-reflection.

Mr Speaker: Sorry. My apologies. Mr Vikram Nair.

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): Sorry to interrupt the self-reflection. Mr Speaker, I rise in support of this Budget. A government has many competing needs for expenditure and it is always a difficult exercise to allocate scarce resources to these competing needs. Singapore has, for many years faced structural challenges that each Budget has had to address, including an ageing population, ever increasing demands for social spending, particularly in healthcare and a risk of falling revenues as the workforce shrinks.

This year, we had an added spanner thrown into the works as the COVID-19 virus threatening lives, but which has also had a withering impact on our economy. Against this backdrop, this Budget does an excellent job of both addressing our short-term needs in relation to cushioning the economic impact of COVID-19 while continuing to invest in our people and meeting our country's long-term structural needs.

I will focus on the implications of COVID-19 for us in this speech, as I believe it is an important area in which the Government can send the right signals and messages, but ultimately, the entire population needs to come together with the right mindset to weather the storm.

The situation in relation to COVID-19 is rapidly evolving. Singapore has dealt with pandemics before in recent memory. This includes the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. COVID-19 appears to be less deadly than SARS, but more infectious but less infectious than H1N1. And while it has killed many people in Wuhan and China, the overall death rate appears to go down as more cases are diagnosed and we have evidence of more people making recoveries.

Singapore had taken very firm measures to try and contain this, led by the 4G team of leaders, and its efforts have won praise from many quarters. We had to develop a strategy for dealing with the virus in very short order, including developing protocols for confining those at risk, treating those who were diagnosed and, at the same time, trying to keep the economy going.

Businesses were encouraged to test out Business Continuity Plans and many businesses are now experimenting with teams working remotely, and this includes banks, financial institutions, law firms, including mine and even the Courts. I have to admit, I was a little sceptical at first about the need for trying out such plans, but having tried the working from home, I have actually found it is quite workable and, in some respects, even more productive as you have less distractions and do not have to spend so much time travelling to and from the office. All in all, I think we can come out stronger.

However, this does not detract from the very real harm that COVID-19 has done to many sectors of the economy. Air travel and tourism, in particular, has been very badly hit. Changi Airport, one of the busiest airports in the world, has been relatively quiet, including the Jewel, where I understand you can now get an A&W meal without much queuing. F&B places are not getting their usual crowds, particularly those in town and employers and workers in these sectors are clearly worried.

In this respect, I think the Government's measures to assist businesses are timely and send the right message. Rental is a big concern for many businesses and the provision of rental rebates as well as property tax rebates to property owners send a strong message that the Government is helping to buffer some of this pain. I am also heartened that many of the bigger landlords have also taken the cue and have confirmed they will be passing on these rebates on to their tenants. The Wage Support Scheme helps to cushion employers from wage costs, and I hope they take the message to try and keep their employees as long as possible. Ultimately, I hope we can come through this episode building stronger relationships with each other, whether it is with landlord, employee or customer and do not just see these relationships as transactional ones.

The Budget sends the right signal, but we need everyone to work together to make it work. Mr Speaker, with your permission, I will speak in Tamil.

(In Tamil): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] COVID-19 has created slowdowns throughout the economy. Food and beverage, retail, transport and events related businesses are all suffering. Workers in these businesses also face uncertainty.

This Budget plays an important role in helping businesses and workers tide through this difficult period. It is important though for us to look out for one another during this time. For property owners getting tax rebates, please pass this down to your tenants. For businesses that get rental rebates and wage support, please keep your workers. If business is down, this will be a good time to go for training.

For older workers, please use the additional SkillsFuture grants wisely, and go for training that may help you pick up the skills that will be helpful at work or to transition to new work. The Government can create opportunities, but you need to come forward and use them.

It is my hope that we will come out of this adverse time stronger than before, like we have done during our previous challenges in 2008 during the global financial crisis and in 2002 with SARS.

(In English): In Singapore, we have had some good news over the last week. While in the early days, we were getting more and more news of people infected and some in critical condition, now we get more news of people being discharged. According to a CNA report yesterday, we now have 58 cases of people who have made full recovery. Of the 33 confirmed cases who are still in hospital, most are stable or improving although seven remain in critical condition and in intensive care.

However, COVID-19 is now spreading rapidly outside our borders. Cases are now emerging all around the world, including in Europe, South America, Middle East and the USA. China’s economy has already been hit hard by the virus, with its growth forecast revised down to 4.5% in the last quarter, the lowest since the Global Financial Crisis.

If this becomes a global pandemic and different countries take different measures, the economic impact could have longer term implications for Singapore. As it is, the drop in business from China has hurt our economy and many others in the world as China is the world’s second largest economy. If other countries start closing borders or restricting business activities in response, there could be serious economic repercussions. If large numbers of businesses fail or close during this period, the implications on growth could be significant and Singapore will not be cushioned.

In this respect, I think it will be important for our companies to be braced and prepared for the implications of significant disruptions in global trade and supply chains. In the short term, for companies that need to pay wages, bills and rentals on a monthly basis may appear existential, but in the long term, most analysts believe this will be a bump on the road. For workers who may lose their job during this period, please understand it is a difficult economy, but please make use of the wide range of measures available, including the SkillsFuture top-ups to retrain and try and pick up new skills. I believe if we ride the storm together, we can come out stronger. And this Budget is a big help in that process.

Mr Speaker: Mr Mohamed Irshad.

2.34 pm

Mr Mohamed Irshad (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, allow me to begin with a moment of self-reflection. Over the current term of Government, this House has accumulated a Budget surplus of over $17.4 billion. In the preceding years, many Singaporeans have expressed concerns over the size of this surplus. They have always wondered whether we could invest more in our people. Sir, Budget 2020, partly influenced by COVID-19, provides a timely answer to this perennial question.

Mr Speaker, I will be focusing on three areas from this year's Budget. First, our ability to quickly respond to crisis; second, creating a future-ready city; and third, continued investments in our fellow Singaporeans.

Sir, I begin by speaking about our nation's ability to quickly respond to crisis. As Members are aware, COVID-19 spread like a wildfire. Without doubt, COVID-19 is one of the biggest crises Singapore has faced in over a decade. As the impact of COVID-19 continues to unfold, Budget 2020 addresses several of our immediate macro-economic concerns and with such a forward-looking budget, I am confident that together we will overcome this crisis and emerge stronger.

However, Mr Speaker, in my conversations with our fellow Singaporeans, many have expressed the views that the crisis management aspect of the Budget will only last a few months. Sir, I understand their concerns. Those of us who experienced SARS keenly remember its impact. Given the uncertainty behind the long-term progression of COVID-19, I wish to ask the hon Minister what further measures can we expect in a Supplementary Budget.

In the event that the war against the virus becomes protracted, how will this House respond? I am sure that a positive response will allay the anxieties of many.

Next, I wish to speak about the individuals fighting on the frontlines. As we continue to manage the outbreak, we are witnessing many companies tightening their belt. Reports of companies freezing staff salaries, implementing pay and bonus cuts are increasingly surfacing in the media.

To my understanding, our healthcare system is not immune to these financial pressures. Our hospitals have understandably been forced to shelve their revenue-generating cases to deal with this outbreak. It is understood that this decrease in revenue will have an impact on the bonuses that our healthcare workers will receive.

Sir, given the extraordinary circumstances, I hope the Finance Minister will consider extending financial support or even bonuses to our nurses and doctors who are in the frontlines. In this regard, I echo the suggestions made by Member Murali Pillai yesterday. Ultimately, Sir, they not only had to work longer hours, but literally put their lives on the line.

Sir, I turn to focus on our economy as a whole. I am keenly aware of the Government’s announcement that GST will remain at 7% for 2021; and the $6 billion dollar Assurance Package for Singaporeans to cushion the projected increase in GST.

While I understand that we cannot put off the increase indefinitely, can the Minister give an indication of when the eventual hike will be implemented? Additionally, would the Minister consider increasing GST in stages; from 7% to 8% and eventually from 8% to 9%.

Lastly, turning away from GST, I also note that Deputy Prime Minister has announced a Corporate Income Tax Rebate of 25% for 2020. In view of the economic crunch that we are facing, I wonder if the Government would consider granting a similar tax rebate for Personal Income Tax to help Singaporean with their cashflow.

Sir let me close this segment on our response to COVID-19. The rationale behind our Budget surplus has always been twofold. First, to ensure that Singapore has room to maneuver in times of crisis; second, to ensure that future generations can have a share in the fruits of our growth.

We are facing a clear and present crisis with COVID-19. It is imperative that we do not lose sight of the big picture, avoid knee-jerk reactions, and respond swiftly for the well-being of fellow Singaporeans.

Next, I turn to speak about creating a future-ready Singapore. As the COVID-19 crisis shows us, Mr Speaker, our nation's success is not something which occurred in a vacuum. We are successful because we have continually planned ahead. Given our time constraints, I will focus on our national efforts in preparing for climate change. Today, I aim to spark a deeper conversation about whether Singapore has the infrastructure to survive.

I begin by speaking about our nation’s food resilience. In particular, I will speak on our investments in future technologies.

Sir, it is fair to say that the changing climate will have a serious impact on our food supply. The rising temperatures and concurrent decline in global fish stocks are an existential threat to Singapore. I remind this House that over 90% of the food consumed in Singapore is imported.

In this vein, Singapore must ensure that we are food resilient. As the recent panic buying episode reminds us, we have the capacity to withstand sudden shocks in our supply chain. However, what happens if we face a long-term disruption?

Mr Speaker, I note that the Government has announced that MEWR will adopt a "row Local" strategy. The Budget commits to setting aside a portion of the $300 million under the Startup SG Equity in supporting agri-food related deep-tech start-ups. I support these measures. However, I have three questions.

First, what success did previous programmes aiming to encourage the production of local produce have? If those successes were limited, what changes are we making to ensure that our "Grow Local" strategy will be successful?

Second, do we have a local pool of agri-tech start-ups which will benefit from the increasing funding set aside for them?

And third, does the Government intend to support and encourage deeper integration of research and development processes between business and our tertiary education institutions in this regard? If so, what funds are being allocated to this in order to catalyse the process?

Sir, the point of these questions is simple. As we continue to invest in creating a food resilient Singapore, simply setting money aside is insufficient. We must create an innovative eco-system with positive feedback loops. It is my vision for future generations of Singaporeans to be able to consume local produce daily.

Looking closer to our immediate future, Sir, I speak about our transition to electric vehicles. First, I state for the record my support for our efforts in encouraging cleaner modes of transport. After years of investment, the electric future is almost upon us.

However, I have some concerns about the overall impact of the scheme. I raise them in the form of questions for the Minister to address.

First, 95% of our electricity is generated from natural gas. Insofar as we do not transition toward cleaner sources of electricity generation, what will be the impact of incentivising electric vehicles be? Are there any proportionate investments being made in transforming our energy mix?

Second, it is not disputed that public transport is more efficient and less polluting as compared to personal vehicles. A perennial problem preventing greater utilisation of public transport is "first mile and last mile" connectivity issues. In this regard, does the Government intend to accelerate our investment in our park connector networks to ensure greater access to public transport hubs and to encourage alternative modes of transport via cycling?

Lastly, as we even transition toward electric vehicles, how can we ensure that even less pollutive technology such as hydrogen fuel cells, are not locked out of the market?

Ultimately, I submit that simply transitioning to electric vehicles is not enough. If we want to have a significant impact, we must be prepared to think boldly. We must transform our mindsets. We must transform our infrastructure. We must take the lead in moving toward a fossil fuel free future in our region.

Thus, over the next few years, I hope that this House will seriously consider adopting alternative power sources including nuclear energy given the advances in technology and to look beyond electric vehicles.

Sir, I move to the final segment of my speech. Mr Speaker, one thing which unites all Members of this House, is our desire to serve fellow Singaporeans. In this final segment, I will focus on how we can continue to invest in our fellow citizens.

In this segment, I will first address our SkillsFuture programme. Following that, I will speak about how we can further invest in our fellow Singaporeans.

In order to succeed, our people must be adaptable to changes. They should be able to ride the structural waves that are disrupting the world. Our aims of becoming a global node of innovation and enterprise will materialise when we can ensure that our Singaporeans who are locally trained are globally framed.

On to SkillsFuture, Mr Speaker, I welcome the Government’s proposal to top-up the individual SkillsFuture funds. This sends a strong signal about our priorities. However, beyond topping up our SkillsFuture funds, I raise the following questions for the Minister to consider.

Although we have done well to promote the ethos of lifelong learning in Singapore and with Singaporeans' take-up rate of SkillsFuture being at 49% in 2019, how can we incentivise more of our workers to upgrade themselves?

Second, and related to the first point, I am concerned that the current SkillsFuture programme does not maximise the potential of all Singaporeans. I note that Budget 2020 does not provide any SkillsFuture top-ups for workers aged over 60. Given our increasing longevity, I wonder if the hon Minister can extend the additional top-up to those aged over 60.

In this regard, Sir, I have two potential solutions which this House can consider moving forward. The first involves tapping on existing expertise of our local SMEs. The second will require us to leverage upon existing technologies.

Firstly, I propose creating a framework for a Structured Apprenticeship Programme as implemented in the UK and Germany. In this programme, students will undergo apprenticeships which will eventually culminate in a full bachelor's degree or industry recognised standards or qualifications. All these while earning a real wage and being trained in the skills employers want.

Sir, this idea is not without precedent. We currently have the ITE Traineeship programme. This is an apprenticeship programme that benefits both employers and employees where students can work towards their ITE qualification while gaining practical experience. In SUSS and SMU, part-time degree programmes are also available to individuals who wish to work and study.

Sir, a natural progression would be to tap on these existing frameworks and expand the work-study offerings in our system. I am confident that our SkillsFuture programmes will see higher participation rates if we are able to provide practical pathways to success.

More than a specific programme, Sir, I suggest that we leverage upon existing technologies to enhance our SkillsFuture experience. Currently, our SkillsFuture programmes exclude workers with little control over their schedule, such as shift workers. Singapore is poorer for the fact that a segment of our population cannot upskill themselves adequately.

Sir, I wonder if the adoption of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or similar e-learning technologies, may be a potential solution to this issue. Over the last two years, our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) have seamlessly transitioned to e-learning following the COVID-19 situation.

Thus far, many lessons and tutorials have gone online. For instance, in our local Universities, even group work and presentations are being held virtually. This move clearly shows that the required infrastructure, platforms and systems are well in place.

Indeed, there are many models available for Public Service to consider. Such a synergy has the potential to lay the foundation for a public, open university that offers alternative structured higher education pathway for those seeking to upgrade themselves for their career progression.

At the end of the day, Sir, I hope that SkillsFuture will be made more accessible for our fellow Singaporeans. We should enable them to upskill, no matter the circumstance.

My last point on investing in our fellow Singaporeans, Mr Speaker, can be summarised with this phrase "Locally Trained and Globally Framed". Since our separation from Malaysia, we have always recognised that Singapore cannot be insular in our economic approach. We have invested heavily in ensuring that we are an attractive place to do business.

However, as the current crisis demonstrates, it is not enough that we create jobs in Singapore. Sir, I believe that our nation’s long-term economic survival depends on Singaporeans being able to compete overseas.

This is where the phrase "Locally Trained and Globally Framed" comes in. We need to ensure that our Students acquire the cross-cultural skills and deep international understanding which would enable them to compete with the best in the world. I am heartened that Budget 2020 sets a target for 70-70 exposure in our IHL students. In this regard, the New Colombo Plan initiative by the Australian Government is a model worth studying.

Sir, we must prepare our young people to succeed in the new economy. They must be relational. They must possess an international outlook and must hold their own in this ever-changing world.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, a hallmark of Singapore’s Budgets is that in good times, we are prudent and sensible. In tough times, we demonstrate our mettle and sensitivity. Budget 2020 is a clear and unambiguous reflection of the latter.

In this time of crisis, Budget 2020 provides some much-needed stability. However, we must always look towards the future by making long-term investments in our infrastructure and our people to ensure Singapore is staged for success. On this note, Mr Speaker, I state my support for Budget 2020.

Mr Speaker: Mr Leon Perera.

2.50 pm

Mr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, in 2019, we were considered by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to be the country closest to the frontier of competitiveness in the world. However, instead of giving in to the temptation to vaingloriously bask in such rankings, we looked critically at the report on real shortcomings so we can reflect on them. The WEF report highlighted room for improvement in respect of promoting entrepreneurship and improving the skills base, for example.

Sir, I should therefore focus my speech on three aspects of national life that pertain to the longer term outlook that we face – vibrancy, meaning the quality of the economy; livability and the well-being of the people and sustainability of our fiscal resources – before concluding with some directional suggestions that attempt to speak to the challenges we face across all these three dimensions.

Before I begin, I declare my interest as a CEO of a research consultancy that undertakes work in a variety of business arenas including industry 4.0 spaces.

Firstly, on vibrancy. Mr Speaker, Sir, on the back pages of The Economist magazine, they track economic indicators of various countries. Decades ago, Singapore's GDP growth was consistently among the highest in the region and the world. In recent years, it has been more modest but still better than or the same as other developed countries in this region. In 2019, however, our GDP growth was low against even developed Asian economies like Korea, Taiwan and Australia, let alone the US, and this was before the coronavirus. The Government's forecast for 2020 is roughly the same rate of growth.

Sir, while we face the short-term challenges of dealing with COVIC-19, in the mid-term, our economy faces deeper structural challenges.

Firstly, our economy is now heavily dependent on China which was experiencing a growth slowdown even before the coronavirus.

Second, our productivity performance goes up and down but it is also bifurcated between high productivity, manufacturing and other externally oriented sectors and some less productive sectors, and between an MNC sector with higher productivity and an SME sector that employs two-thirds of our workers with less.

Thirdly, our SMEs and particularly micro businesses will face headwinds, not only from the coronavirus, but also the more general China's slowdown. In fact, it is argued in a recent letter in the media from the Chairman of Credit Counselling Singapore, many micro businesses may become ensnared in a cycle of chronic indebtedness as a result of the economic impact from the coronavirus episode, as happened with SARS in 2003.

Fourth, while the GDP share of R&D is decent, it is not as high as in some developed countries, and there is some evidence that R&D GDP share is linked to Total Factor Productivity. More importantly, beyond the MNC sector, it is not at all clear if R&D is being taken up and commercialised successfully on a substantial scale by our local companies, notwithstanding some take-up of licences from A*STAR by local enterprises, for example.

Fifth, we continue to be successful in attracting foreign direct investment or FDI. But we have all come to acknowledge that future FDI inflows may be under threat from anti-globalisation trends that my party Chairman Ms Sylvia Lim spoke about yesterday. In particular, the deliberate efforts some countries may take to pull back supply chains to their domestic economies in light of things like the coronavirus and US-China geopolitical tensions. To insulate against this risk, we face the challenge of raising the game of our local firms.

Sixth, with the rise of uniquely disruptive technologies like AI, autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things and drones, whole categories of employment may be wiped out practically overnight. The advent of autonomous vehicles may put at risk the jobs of drivers in the taxi and private car hire industry. Many jobs in back-end operations and front-end services are also at risk from AI, robots and chatbots.

So, one additional challenge is to ensure that our people can keep their heads above tomorrow's rising waters of employability amidst the sea of economic disruption not seen in generations, not only in respect of skill sets like Deep Tech and coding but also soft skills like creativity, leadership, entrepreneurial acumen and resilience. In fact, the authors of the WEF report cited room for improvement for Singapore in skills like critical thinking.

Sir, how do we meet the challenge of enhancing our vibrancy, which implies stimulating homegrown innovation and entrepreneurship?

The next broad point I will speak on is livability. A blind chase for vibrancy of an economy is no full guarantee of the well-being of its citizens. Putting effort into livability, therefore, is one of the most crucial challenges facing Singapore. What else can be done to breed confidence that our system will manage livability in the future?

Our total fertility rate has been one of the lowest in the world for years. Twenty-nine percent of young Singaporeans in a recent survey said that they would consider migrating in the next five years. I suspect that getting livability right would make a difference on these fronts.

The approach to managing the cost of living is a case in point. Why not develop an approach to policy-making that commits the state to adjust for future conditions by building the adjustment mechanism into policy design, rather than leaving it to future acts of Executive discretion, which may or may not happen? Right now, this is done in some cases like permanent GST Vouchers but not in others.

One example of this would be adjusting Silver Support for inflation from time to time based on policy design rather than leaving it up to the Government and Parliament at its discretion. Parliament can still vote against inflation-based increases should fiscal resources be insufficient. So, the mechanism can still contain an element of evaluation. But the fact that the design of the policy has a built-in mechanism to recommend changes and adjust based on inflation at certain defined time intervals create some assurance that, yes, society will not leave me stranded in the future one day. This is not just a benefit for today leaving me uncertain about tomorrow.

This is a very specific example to make the general point that if more well thought through social protections and stabilisers are built into policy design, it may assure Singaporeans that the society has their back. And this may reduce risk adversity and the focus on short-term income rather than long-term income. This in turn may promote a culture of being more willing to take risks to re-skill, to start a business and possibly even to have children because one is more confident about the future.

Some research suggests that our economic outlook and our sense of economic security does impact these behaviours. And if we fail to address the challenge of livability like parts of the US and England, our people may turn against globalisation which would damage prospects for vibrancy.

Let me note in passing, one could respond to this point by saying that this is a call for profligate spending because it requires spending commitments before we know we have the money to fund it. It is not. It is a call for building into policy design mechanisms that self-correct and have built-in adjustment processes rather than leaving it purely to future Executive discretion. The Executive and Parliament can still decide not to go ahead if the money is not there.

Next, Mr Speaker, Sir, I want to talk about sustainability. Vibrancy and livability already difficult challenges in themselves but we must ensure that policies aimed to address these challenges are sustainable and are responsible. To be sure, it is a good thing that we have large reserves that yield net investment returns or NIR, the largest state revenue stream today and that can be drawn down in emergencies. Many countries do not have this and have high levels of fiscal debt relative to GDP.

But are there not also dangers in going to the other extreme and being too prudent as it were? Could that also lead to a failure to seize opportunities to develop the capacities of our people for the future?

Clearly, we have to find the Goldilocks zone between these two extremes. An analogy from the business world might be the two extremes of spending too much and running into a cash crunch on the one hand and not investing enough in the company to develop the capabilities of the employees, new business strategies and intellectual property on the other.

Sir, our reserves have been estimated at over a trillion dollars. Every year, these reserves grow from half of the net investment returns as well as from land sales and any unspent surplus from each term of government, among other things.

I am not suggesting drawing down on the reserves at this point. But in the longer term, is there more scope to slow the rate of reserves growth, so as to release more funds to invest in our people and address the challenges we face in terms of livability, employability, innovation and so on that I spoke about in the first part of my speech?

Let us bear in mind that during the worst global economic crisis the world had ever seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, we drew down only a tiny fraction of the reserves. Should our reserves always go up and up at the same rate? Can we not have reasonable conversations about how to vary the slope of reserves growth while agreeing that the principal should only be drawn down in an emergency? And how, in doing that, we can invest in our people and our companies so as to help them become the most creative, the most resilient, the most innovative, and the most entrepreneurial that they can possibly be so that they can deal with any challenges the world can throw at us with confidence?

If we do use more fiscal resources to do that, we should also recognise that if our efforts are successful, we may be able to save and social safety net spending further downstream and we may also raise GDP and hence tax revenue which are good fiscal outcomes. My analogy here would be spending more to make vaccines free or close to free – a subject that I have raised few times in this House – which may have the effect of reducing state spending on hospital subsidies, MediFund and so on further downstream. And this is just an analogy.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the three dimensions of national life I mentioned, are very much interconnected. However, as formidable as the challenges are, they are not insurmountable if we tackle them earnestly. Therefore, I would like to conclude with just a few directional suggestions on how we might address these future challenges from where we are at, at this point in time.

Firstly, investing more in local enterprises that can deliver. This was how the Japanese built up their world-beating giant firms – the Japanese and Koreans I should say. For those local firms which can consistently deliver financial and economic growth while safeguarding or growing domestic jobs to those firms that significantly enhance our economic vibrancy, more support could be provided beyond the caps and limits associated with current economic schemes.

I had an exchange on the subject in this House with the then Minister for Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mr Iswaran in 2017. I understand his counter argument that we do not want to go too far down the path of picking winners. There is a grain of truth there. But some of our existing efforts like state-backed co-investment, for example, could be seen as picking winners anyway. And why not let the winners pick themselves?

This was the philosophy of Korea in the 1960s and 1970s, where the state insured provision of loans to chaebols on large firms, which could consistently grow exports and hard currency earnings and loan support was withdrawn from those that could not consistently deliver those results. While to be sure not everything Korea did in those decades was correct in hindsight, that policy contributed to the emergence of giant companies like Samsung and LG today. Conversely, supports to local firms that do not demonstrate ambition and performance can be disciplined and focused on competitiveness improvement, job safeguarding and business succession planning.

Sir, this is a call for strategic results-based spending to develop local entrepreneurs in ways that benefit domestic employment. This is not a call to give away state monies to local firms irrespective of outcomes, and I trust that it will not be referred to as the latter.

Secondly, Sir, we know that productivity is partly a function of investment and we cannot depend only on FDI for this investment in the long term. Can we not do more to tap on our fiscal resources to channel substantial R&D investment into creating IP that is then seated to local companies in a very substantial and systematic way, but with the IP owned by the state and licensed to the firm's so that the state can nudge these firms to grow in ways that benefit the domestic economy and locals?

The area's earmarked for R&D investment in this way could be targeted so as to fill gaps in the global IP landscape in future-ready fields like AI so as to ensure maximum "commercialisability", so to speak. I know that there are limits to how much we can do under WTO rules and other treaty obligations, but surely there are ways to navigate these obstacles to some degree. And, as I referred to earlier, A*STAR has licensed IP to SMES, but the question I am raising here is how to upscale this to enhance the commercial impact and provide enablers to ambitious local firms to become world-beating.

Thirdly, many of our talented youth go into the Civil Service. Twenty-six percent of Autonomous University graduates go into the public service as their first job, according to a Parliamentary answer given in 2018. Can we create a programme that mentors and coaches civil servants in their 30s, 40s or 50s, who wish to leave the service to become entrepreneurs? Such a programme could help them develop skill sets relating to fund-raising, employee recruitment and retention, marketing and so on. Not so much training, but coaching and pointing them in the right direction as well as connecting them with funding sources including state back ones. After all, we do not only want locals to get the $7,000 jobs and the $10,000 jobs. We also want some locals to create such jobs.

Fourthly, can we undertake a project to map out the categories of jobs at risk from Industry 4.0 and then initiate a programme to inform workers in these sectors of the imminent risks over the mid and long term and nudge them to engage in re-skilling and career switches to high growth disruptive industries. Perhaps an incentive scheme could be deployed to attract local workers into Industry 4.0 sectors, like renewable energy, drones, AI and deep tech, especially those sectors where the Singaporean Core is weak. Having a pool of workers with such training could also help attract both foreign and domestic investment in these high growth sectors. Of course, any such move has to be done in tandem with the growth of investment in these sectors to ensure the jobs and career paths are available to those who join such industries.

Lastly, as part of the Singapore Public Sector Outcomes Review (SPOR), can we adopt independent measures that regularly track the capacities of our people versus other countries in terms of attributes, like resilience, entrepreneurship and creativity? Beyond just hard skills and cognitive intelligence, it is these capacities that we need to nurture in the long term. It is these capacities that will be our surest defence against whatever economic and technology evolutions bring; and tracking them in the SPOR report is a nod to the fact that our policies do play some role, not the main role, or the only role to be sure, but some role, in nurturing these capabilities and capacities among our people.

Mr Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, the future is always uncertain but there are some epochs in history where it is more uncertain than average and we are probably living through one of these. We are dealing with huge geopolitical shifts, massive economic disruption, changing demographics, the existential threat of climate change and the possibility of Black Swan events like disease pandemics.

But uncertainty is never a reason not to make projections and not to make both plans times of change and crisis are also moments for the agile the resilient and the creative to find new opportunities, anticipating and adapting to those moments in history like our own that see non-linear change can bring immense benefits not only in economic terms.

3.09 pm

Miss Cheryl Chan Wei Ling (Fengshan): Mr Speaker, by now it is no surprise to hear many saying that Budget 2020 is a timely relief for workers and some specific business sectors impacted by COVID-19. It also addresses short-term inadequacies while setting out plans for our strategic long term. I am thus encouraged by this Budget and glad the Government has prioritised assistance for different groups of citizens across our society.

Over the years, we have seen significant financial packages announced to address long-term healthcare needs for our ageing population, GST offsets for the lower income groups, housing support, education subsidies to level the playing field for improved social equality and much more. These packages seek to enhance social mobility, provide care for those more in need and promote greater wealth distribution across society. Without doubt, these packages which have a long tail, will have a hefty price tag as they cater for increasingly larger groups of Singaporeans.

In this regard, I wholeheartedly agree that the responsibility of the Government is to provide for those who have less resources and less able to sustain their daily needs. But the cost of living has been a perennial concern amongst Singaporeans, and even more so as we age. How can we better address this in current uncertain times?

Are the financial packages that we see now an indicator of the Government on what is to come in future? Are we moving towards more of a welfare state? And to what extent can the society safety net provide if self-sufficiency from family and personal means remain as the first line of support in our country? This is a topic that I think we should begin to consider – retirement adequacy.

In 2017, MoneySense commissioned a Financial Planning Attitudes Survey that showed only one in five surveyed felt they are knowledgeable about investing. Some Singaporeans also had misconceptions about when to start planning for their finances. Half of the young working adults aged between 17 and 29 have not started thinking about financial planning because they think it is still too early to do so. And just 20% of those surveyed felt the need to do financial planning only when they are looking at retirement. Whether the number of survey respondents were in the thousands or less, this is reflective of a worrying trend and the existing mindset of the young working class.

It is totally understandable that our current Pioneers and some Merdekas will need all the support that can be given as they earn lower wages in their lifetime and thus limited savings, much less a decent CPF savings to depend upon. But this cannot be the case for the younger generation. Today, most seniors rely on their CPF, housing, personal savings and some income from work if they are still gainfully employed or if their children are willing or able to provide for them. However, we need to recognise that this landscape is changing for the middle-aged individuals.

First, family sizes have shrunk with each family having at most one to two children. Parents are naturally more indulgent in their expenditures for every child. From enrichment classes, tuition, gifts, holidays and more; it is impossible to imagine any parent will give less to their offspring even if they do not compare with others in society. Through growing affluence, changing lifestyles and personal aspirations, it is par for the course today that each family have more expenses outlay over time. While general income level has risen and theoretically should be more for dual income families, it appears that meeting immediate financial needs are already a problem for some.

To plan for retirement which may be two to three decades down the road, may be a tall order for many of them. For some, the necessity to plan is just before they are about to enter retirement or have less certainty in being employed. The issue will be further exacerbated with fewer children in each family and for those whose children may be able to, but are less willing to provide financially for their parents.

Second, an increasing proportion of our younger generation are gaining overseas exposures at study or work and some are involved in the gig economy. For their benefit, we encourage more to internationalise, to learn and capture broader experiences and opportunities globally. But with rising percentage of such families living overseas, their retirement support pillars will inevitably change. For those living and working overseas early in their career, they may not have invested in housing within Singapore and the CPF contributions differ depending on their compensation package or the nature of their work. When they choose to return to Singapore in the later years, the cost of building their retirement nest will take a different starting point. By then, some may face different challenges in their ability to accumulate sufficiently for their retirement.

On one hand, I support and feel it is necessary for the country to continue to provide for its citizens. But on the other hand, I think it is time for us to consider if and how we can continue to afford these long term, larger support packages for every generation. As working and income pattern changes, increased exposure of living or working in more than just the home country before retirement, and investments in the next generation burgeoning for each family, I cannot help but ask if our citizens should plan their financial and retirement needs more holistically and earlier.

Sir, I would advocate that, as a nation, we should begin this awareness on financial retirement planning when each worker still has an active income and as they begin different stages of their life-cycle decisions. This has consequences on how and when we provide subsidies for those who cannot afford or those who are more vulnerable. How can we measure who qualifies or not for any scheme? That may need re-definition in future. Simply means testing by per capita income for each household may see the need for a different yardstick, or how intrusive would it be for the state to assess deeper on their situation beyond funds availability or even immediate family support. These are areas worth pondering and better sooner than later.

On this issue of retirement adequacy, I would also like to draw attention to the group of special needs individuals. There is a large spectrum of people with varying needs and the type of support required. As able-bodied persons, it is typical for us to have our own concerns about growing up, education, livelihood, family and occasional thoughts of what life might be like in our senior years. But for individuals with special needs, these may not even be fleeting thoughts for some of them. Some lack the ability to plan and defend for themselves, others could be limited for different reasons, thus, becoming an added worry for their parents who are ageing.

MSF has also continuously engaged different groups to understand and assist through provision of integrated support services aimed at promoting inclusion of persons with disabilities in the community and to enhance their quality of life. The third Enabling Masterplan for 2017 to 2021 spells out some of these enhancements.

In my conversations with my residents and having attended focus group discussions for people with special needs, their families, care-givers and employers, I realised that there is still much we can do as a society to assist them. How are we ensuring opportunities for all via our social strategies in education, healthcare and housing?

While some would argue that many recognise the need to include people with special needs and acknowledge their existence, I cannot agree that we have truly taken actions to be more inclusive in embracing people with special needs. There seems to be a lack of in-depth lifecycle planning support pillars for people with special needs from childhood to adulthood to their old age.

If we must begin the process, it starts from helping and partnering them, allowing them to be a part of our community from young. Indeed, this is a much needed step to provide their parents, family and themselves a little more comfort that they can live, work and socialise as a part of the community while comfortably being themselves.

There are a number of support that we can provide for them. I will cover more of this in the Committee of Supply debate on their living environment in public housing, their employment post-schooling age and how the community and businesses can partner them. Here, I will focus on two aspects.

One, rally the society to be inclusive from young. As a start, we must recognise the presence of people with special needs and their ability as an individual. Pre-schools and formal schools can do more to educate the children in embracing differences and welcoming them from within the school community. As individuals, all of us, too, can be more gracious, accepting and forgiving to families who have children of special needs. They deserve a place in our community, from the neighbourhood playgrounds to public transport and common dining places. There is no need for cold stares, harsh words or social media commentaries for any special needs individuals. They are individuals with their own rights and well-deserved to be treated with dignity like any other person. We should have campaigns that counter such negativity and give more room for families with special needs to be out in our community, to share our common spaces and feel at ease that they are one of us.

Second, provision of affordable legal support and streamline the search process of assistance schemes suitable for their needs. For special needs individuals, some may have disabilities or are cognitively challenged to handle legal matters on their own when their legal guardians are no longer around with them. Be it the Will, having an acting Attorney-in-fact or managing other legal matters that involve their daily lives, they are more likely to need better access and support at affordable cost on a regular basis. Having trusted parties who have a long-standing relationship with them and being able to defend their interests are crucial for those with special needs.

With the extensive assistance schemes available across the Ministries or specific to their special needs, it is not an easy task for them to navigate and know how to seek help. It is uncommon today for each special needs person to have been assigned to a social worker or being supported in network groups. When their legal guardians are no longer able to extend the help in organising their life needs, this will be an escalating concern and possibly more pressing for them apart from financial aids.

Mr Speaker, as a country and Government, we always begin with good intent to support and provide the best possible care for our citizens. This continues to be the guiding principle in our process of extending financial and broad-based support to the society. But as we progress in our nation building, it is also our responsibility to deliberate how much more we can do, whether a fiscally sustainable assessment is made for support packages and how do we address the future state of support that we hope it to be. My concerns, notwithstanding, Sir, I stand in support of the Budget.

3.20 pm

Ms Tin Pei Ling (MacPherson): Mr Speaker, Sir, the COVID-19 outbreak is a test of our nation's social fabric, our collective strength and character.

Around the world, we observed how the deficit of trust in government and public institutions prevented or worsened efforts to contain and control the outbreak. In one Asian economy, hundreds rallied for days to protest against plans to turn some buildings into quarantine centres. In one European economy, hundreds in a town protested having their fellow countrymen who were COVID-19 evacuees from China from being quarantined in their town, despite assurances by the government that none had symptoms of infections. They put up roadblocks, burned tyres and hurled stones at buses, resulting in several injuries. Out of desperation, the health minister declared she would spend the next two weeks locked up in quarantine with the returnees. In other places, government attempts to refute false rumours, although backed by medical experts, were ignored at best and stoked fear at worst. People hoarded critical supplies and deprived them from people in high-risk environments who needed them the most. In a public health crisis, it is heartbreaking to see such anti-social behaviours. Where has the “leave no one behind” belief gone to?

It is a different scene in Singapore, thankfully. In Singapore, we see some of the ugly behaviours, too, but there is a lot more of the good acts that we have observed. Where we saw frontline workers being discriminated or denied service by some individuals, we see an even stronger response from many Singaporeans who wrote messages and prepared gifts to express their support. We also see ground-up initiatives by groups of volunteers who engaged seniors and the more vulnerable within our communities to give out practical items, such as hand sanitisers. Of course, another example is when the silent majority seemingly came to life during the recent "Twitter Parliament", suggesting that hoarding and, therefore, depriving others of essentials should not be encouraged.

With decisive leadership and strong public institutions, we have so far kept the situation under control. Our leaders regularly inform the public of the latest development in Singapore, and the Government responds to queries with clarity and transparency. Civil servants worked tirelessly every day since before Chinese New Year to ensure "no stone left unturned". Medical frontliners bravely stepped up to care for patients, and cleaners worked extra hours to ensure a clean and safe environment for Singaporeans.

In fact, our efforts to combat the COVID-19 virus has been widely recognised. A Harvard study described Singapore as having "gold standard" for case detection; WHO was "very impressed" by Singapore’s response to COVID-19. Kudos to our Government and frontliners! Kudos to my fellow Singaporeans who demonstrated calm, reason and compassion in the face of uncertainties that allowed us to control the outbreak quickly. Thank you for showing us and the world how beautiful Singapore is.

These would not have been possible if not for the trust between our Government and people, as well as the strong social cohesion forged over time. We must cherish this and never be complacent.

Speaker, Sir, I see Budget 2020 as one that preserves jobs and social cohesion. In the midst of our battle against the coronavirus, we have this Budget debate. I am glad that in his Budget, the Deputy Prime Minister addressed the impact of COVID-19 on our economy as well as the long-term needs of Singaporeans. Budget 2020 is a responsive Budget that prepares Singaporeans for the challenges ahead. The $4 billion Stabilisation and Support Package helps companies to stay liquid, thus preserving the jobs of Singaporeans. Against uncertainties arising from global headwinds, it is essential to ensure that Singaporean workers remain supported and adaptive, with measures to encourage them to be more productive and innovative.

In particular, SMEs – comprising 72% of our employment – are most in need of supportive measures to help them retain local employees. Jobs are important to Singaporeans' livelihood, important to keeping families financially buoyant and important to social cohesion. Various studies, including one by the World Bank in 2013, have shown that job access has a direct impact on a society's trust and civic engagement. The same 2013 World Bank report also stated that jobs and the types of jobs influence people's aspirations, social beliefs and their sense of belonging to the country. I, therefore, applaud the decisive move to set aside a whopping $4 billion to help Singapore companies and Singaporeans in this time of difficulty.

To ensure that the Government's intent of providing our citizens with strong and reliable support is achieved, I have two suggestions, based on feedback from my residents and grassroots leaders.

First, ensure the good will that comes from these Budget measures ultimately flows through to the micro and small enterprises. For instance, passing on cost savings from commercial landlords to tenants and ensuring access to the Enterprise Financing Scheme by micro enterprises. Banks may be less motivated to serve individual micro enterprises, even with a greater risk-share by the Government, but these enterprises can band together if facilitated by the respective merchant associations.

Of course, it is not just the Government that can help the smaller enterprises. I note the recent launch of a “SME Help Fund” that aims to help SMEs whose businesses are struck by the COVID-19 outbreak. Member companies pooled together $5 million and leveraged technology platforms to offer low interest loans to affected SMEs, which must also be majority owned by Singaporeans. From application to disbursement, the process is as fast as 48 hours. I was told that the responses from SMEs have been overwhelmingly positive. When I spoke with one of the fund's founders, JL Family Office CEO Andy Lim, he said they wanted to help SMEs and that this is one practical way of how Singaporeans help Singaporeans. I was very heartened to hear this.

This is an example of how different groups in the society can take the initiative to help fellow Singaporeans in times of need. Their efforts complement the Government's and, collectively, these efforts help to strengthen our social cohesion.

Second, provide more recognition and support for freelancers. Freelancers are especially vulnerable to changes in the economic conditions. Many events and work assignments are cancelled or deferred as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. A number of them have taken their own initiative to band together online to support each other as they are hit by the outbreak. I trust that the unions are actively reaching out to them. Freelancers are especially vulnerable to changes in the economic conditions.

Many events and work assignments are cancelled or deferred as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. They have little savings or "fats" to see them through this period of work drought. Worse, if they have a family to support.

Many of the financing options available now are not readily accessible to them as they are not registered companies and have no GST registrations. Could the Government consider extending the working capital loan to this group of freelance workers? Or help them access the other measures aimed at helping businesses with cashflow to keep them afloat as well?

As we address the immediate impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, we should also not lose sight of investing for the future. I am glad that the Government continues to have a firm grip on this, evident in the other components in the Budget.

Still, I would like to reiterate the importance of investing in our people to ensure a high concentration of high-quality talents in Singapore, for Singapore. During this period of economic uncertainty, it is a precious opportunity for us to re-skill and upskill our workforce, catalyse the transformation and get ready for the future economy.

Singapore is clear about our future economy direction. We need talents to fulfil this. Technological disruptions have resulted in jobs becoming obsolete. But with technological advancements, many more new jobs will be created.

We need to provide good and meaningful jobs, where workers are empowered and have agency. But to take on these future jobs, Singaporeans need to be equipped with the right skills and possess international perspectives.

I support the ITMs and welcome the next bound of SkillsFuture initiatives. Singaporeans should be encouraged to work with employers to determine what courses to attend to ensure job relevance and be guided along as well. However, I wonder if these measures are enough.

Also, to attract top enterprises to Singapore to create good jobs, we need a high concentration of skilled workers with a critical mass of world-class talents. Singapore excels in the biotech sector now after 20 years of investments. A critical success factor is the large pool of high-quality talents that we built up over the years, enabling Singapore to lead in this sector ahead of competition. Similarly so for other sectors. Looking ahead, Singapore needs to offer an abundance of talents who not only meet existing demands but also attract future unicorns to Singapore from the region and beyond. As talents beget talents, there is a virtuous cycle to this.

Yet, global competition for skilled workers is stiff. In a February 2020 McKinsey's article , it was reported that 87% of companies surveyed around the world say they either are experiencing manpower gaps now or expect to experience it within a few years. Respondents expect market and technology trends to play a big part in these shifts. More dramatically, the World Economic Forum describes the world as facing a "re-skilling emergency" One billion people globally need to be re-skilled by 2030. Companies and countries are motivated to close the skills gap fast. Singapore needs to be even faster – one to two years' window of opportunity, according to some prominent business leaders I encountered from within and outside of Singapore.

The Government has been investing and introducing targeted programmes to build up our talent pool. As the Chinese saying goes, "百年树人", talent cultivation takes time. But we are racing against time. Topping up with foreign talents may be part of the solution, but strengthening our Singaporean Core is, of course, the core solution. Therefore, to reinforce the momentum, may I suggest the following:

First, we need a stronger push for Singaporeans to re-skill and upskill, and right-skill from young. I am happy to know that coding is now compulsory for all upper Primary students, in the form of a 10-hour coding enrichment programme. This is a good step, but I hope the Government can consider taking an even bolder step and recognise it as part of formal curriculum. This signals the importance of this subject. Furthermore, some would argue that computer language is increasingly akin to English or mother tongue languages that we learn in school. As the digital future is inevitable, why not take that step further and recognise coding as our third language?

We also need stronger incentives to encourage adults to take on future economy-oriented courses. The additional SkillsFuture credits in this year’s Budget are a welcome addition, but to help Singaporeans pick up essential skills that allow them to compete globally over the long term, there should be stronger guidance and more targeted initiatives.

Second, we must continue to encourage international exposures for students and younger working adults. It is essential for young adults to be given full internship opportunities as well in countries like US, China, Israel and other emerging economies with a vibrant tech scene such as Indonesia and Vietnam, for them to gain a global perspective and foster meaningful networks that will benefit them and their professional community.

In this year's Budget, the Asia Ready Exposure Programme, together with the Global Ready Talent Programme, are timely. Business China, too, is working closely with MOE and other agencies to promote internship opportunities for our tertiary students and young working adults to intern in China, and the response was encouraging. We need to work on availing more of such overseas opportunities for our young, so that we can cultivate a critical mass of young Singapore talents with a world view.

Third, we need to deepen our relationships with global top talents and facilitate value transfer to our own local talents. Could we consider a mentorship programme that attracts top talents and company founders from around the world to mentor our youths and start-ups? Singapore is a hub for many top technology and professional talents, and we should make use of this opportunity to groom our younger generation and benefit from their mentors' expertise, experience and networks. This initiative will also increase Singapore's mindshare among these top talents and foster our youths' image as motivated, hardworking and bright young individuals who are globally competitive.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Mr Speaker, through this COVID-19 crisis, we can see the composure and decisiveness of Singapore leaders, the efficiency and meticulousness of organizations within the Government, the bravery and kindness of our frontline workers, as well as the generosity and mutual concern that Singaporeans have for each other. It has shown what Singapore is capable of, and how beautiful this country is.

In comparison, we have seen how citizens from other countries have lost faith in their government, discriminated against their fellow countrymen, prevented disease control measures from being implemented, resulting in the spread of the disease. It is indeed disheartening.

Hence, the deep trust between our people and the Government is especially valuable. This was built over the years, with government policies that have always put the long-term interests of Singapore and Singaporeans at the core, allowing Singaporeans to enjoy a good quality of life and stable jobs. There should be no let up in efforts to build this trust.

In difficult times, the ability of governments to figure out the root cause of problems and implement targeted solutions to minimise impact on the people is very important. Hence, I am very happy that the Deputy Prime Minister has introduced a budget to deal with the situation during this critical period. Besides ensuring adequate supplies for frontline workers, funds have also been set aside to reduce the impact on companies' cash flow, so as to protect jobs.

Although it is important to deal with the current situation, it is equally important to plan for the future. Singapore has experienced many rounds of economic transformation and ventured into new emerging industries at different junctures, maintaining its lead successfully. The key to our success is the high concentration of good quality talent here who can meet the skills demand of new industries.

With Singapore moving towards the future economy, there will definitely be a strong demand for talents. In view of the shortage of talent around the world, some corporate big wigs believe that Singapore may only have a window of opportunity of one to two years to get ahead in artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology. Attracting talent is a short-term solution, but more importantly, we need to ensure that Singaporeans upgrade their skills, and that we nurture our young to equip them with future skills and global mindsets. Although talent development schemes have been included in both last year’s and this year’s budget, I hope that the Government can consider the suggestions below.

One, incorporate coding into mainstream curriculum, ensure that all Singaporean children have basic understanding of coding so that they can have a head start.

Two, instil the spirit of lifelong learning in our people and encourage them to make use of the SkillsFuture Credit to take up courses relevant to the future economy.

Third, continue to encourage students and young working adults to intern in countries where technology development is more rapid. Aside from gaining experience, these internships will also broaden their horizon and their networks.

Fourth, set up mentorship programmes where top-notch talent and entrepreneurs can be matched with young local talents and start-ups with potential, to build capabilities, share experiences and network.

(In English): As we enter more uncertain times, with pressure on our community from the COVID-19 epidemic and global financial turmoils, I am heartened to learn that this year’s Budget is comprehensive and inclusive. This is a Budget for our people and our future. I support the Motion.

1.37 pm

Prof Lim Sun Sun (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Our Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister has delivered a remarkable Budget this year. In this regard, I wish to speak on 3Ms pertaining to the Budget. You might think, given the generosity of the Budget that my 3Ms stand for Massively More Money. But no, the 3Ms I will speak on today are mobility, maturity and mentality.

First, mobility. Social mobility is the holy grail of governance. In Singapore, we have made persistent efforts to boost social mobility with significant injections of social spending, especially within the past decade. Budget 2020 is no exception, especially with its Care and Nurture and Stabilise and Support Packages. I welcome the various measures including grocery and GST Vouchers, kindergarten, transport and school meal subsidies that will certainly help lower income families ease their financial burdens. We cannot underestimate the impact of such subsidies. I recall that when I volunteered at the charity Food from the Heart, children from poor families who received monthly food goodie bags saw improved grades. Why so? Once their parents stopped bickering over where the next meal would come from, and there was money left over for transport, the children started to attend school more regularly and this translated tangibly into improved academic performance.

Beyond these financial measures, however, what more can we do to ensure that our society is not overly stricken by the proverbial Great Gatsby Curve? This curve describes how family resources and social networks influence a child's future earning potential. When this curve is too pronounced, the advantages conferred by family wealth and connections get entrenched over time, leading to social stratification. As the World Bank's Fair Progress report argued, low mobility, both real and perceived, can dampen an individual’s aspirations for the future.

To more directly address such discouraging perceptions, we need to initiate more systematic mentorship for children of less advantaged backgrounds so that they are inspired by role models who have successfully risen from similar circumstances. As the saying goes, "you cannot be what you cannot see". We therefore need to invest more strategically in more after-school programmes where students from lower income families are offered targeted academic support and career guidance in order to bridge the privilege gap.

My second M is maturity. As our economy matures and digitalises ever more intensively, we are at a critical crossroad to consider future growth directions. Clearly, in our well-connected society where we are bound together by the internet of people and also the internet of things, a promising path for us to explore is the one illuminated by big data. The application of data analytics in virtually all aspects of life, including finance, business, urban planning, healthcare and education, can generate powerful insights for enhancing resource optimisation, service delivery and efficiency gains. With data to fuel Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, we can forge a culture of data-driven innovation that aims to raise our quality of life.

But that begs the question as to who should own the data and be allowed to profit from it. The social compact between people and corporations which are collecting data about us is riddled with inequity. Indeed, the ‘compact’ is one of distinct asymmetry between the big technology companies and consumers. Hitherto, technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba have selfishly hoarded their data, from which they distill critical insights to create market dominating products and services. If we continue to let these Goliaths have exclusive rights to exploit the data that they harvest essentially for free from all their users, what chance is there for the scrappy start-ups of the world to innovate for the greater good? We must leave the door wide open for start-ups to compete against the incumbents. Oxford University professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, coauthor of Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data, suggests adopting a “progressive data-sharing mandate” that forces companies above a certain size to share some of their data with smaller competitors. In the same vein, the European Commission recently issued a document titled “European strategy for data” which outlined potential steps it may introduce to require companies to share and pool data.

Just as Singapore was a front runner as one of the first countries to launch a Model AI Governance framework, we should also consider blazing the trail and pioneer regulation on the collection and use of big data. This will have the twin benefits of levelling the playing field between first-movers and start-ups, and fostering a vibrant pro-innovation environment.

Importantly too, academics should not be left out of the data game. At this point let me declare my interest as a professor at the Singapore University of Technology and Design and a member of the Social Science Research Council.

Mr Speaker, our world is beset by a host of wicked problems such as sharpening income inequality, climate change, rising populism and the damaging scourge of online falsehoods. The best and brightest talents in our world-leading universities have much to offer by way of problem solving, as the multi-faceted COVID-19 crisis has highlighted. With more concerted regulation around data sharing, we can ensure that universities are well-equipped with robust data to conduct research for societal benefit.

I would like to further suggest that there be greater data sharing by the Government, for example from its national level surveys. Such data can help to facilitate productive and evidence-based policy analysis by academics and researchers in our Universities and research institutes. Concerns around data security can be addressed through the generation of synthetic data that realistically represents authentic data but that protects privacy and confidentiality. I am glad that plans are apparently underway for such data sharing and I welcome further details as soon as they are available.

Moving forward, we should also consider studying the experience of countries such as New Zealand and the United Kingdom that have advanced data sharing infrastructures and procedures, to identify best practices that we can seek to emulate. Data sharing by the Government is a strategic shift we must undertake to fully realise our Smart Nation ambitions.

Precisely because our economy is maturing and transforming, change is indeed the only constant and our workforce has to be prepared for that reality. I therefore applaud the SkillsFuture Credit top-ups in Budget 2020. However, this infusion of funds will be for nought if attitudes to upskilling do not shift.

My last M is therefore mentality. Our collective mentality around upskilling must change, from "nice to have", to "must do". And this mentality has to be shared by workers, employers and educators.

During a recent conference, I had the benefit of exchanging insights with practitioners and researchers in the adult learning eco-system. We all converged around several sobering points. That while our workers need to constantly upskill, they do not find the necessary motivation to do so. This arises from a combination of work-life pressures, inertia and resistance to change, and a sense of defeatism that the new skills they acquire will not translate into concrete improvements in their salaries or job prospects. Separately, when employers are dismissive of their employees’ needs or interest to upskill, their motivation is further undermined. Such negative mentalities around upskilling must be addressed, be it through nudges, support programmes or public education efforts.

Importantly too, we cannot expect Singaporeans to develop an inherent drive to learn unless they associate schools and other learning environments with positive experiences. As I mentioned in my Adjournment Motion in Parliament last month on the fear of failure, the overwhelming achievement orientation in our education system does not imbue an intrinsic love for learning. Instead, students become Machiavellian and grade-oriented, while instructors then teach to the test to meet KPIs. To become a nation of lifelong learners, we need to accelerate our transition away from a focus on grades towards broader and more enduring learning outcomes. Students should not just be learning, but learning how to learn.

With greater attention to these three Ms of mobility, maturity and mentality, I am confident that we can overcome the challenges ahead, both distant and immediate. I wish to therefore conclude by underlining my strong endorsement of the subsidies announced in response to the current COVID-19 crisis. The $4 billion package announced to help workers remain employed through three months of offset wages offer a vital lifeline in current climes. By helping an estimated 1.9 million local workers through this key Jobs Support Scheme, we can help to allay the anxieties of these workers and their families and demonstrate that ours is an inclusive society where we have a head, but also a heart. Mr Speaker, I support the Budget.

3.47 pm

Mr Ang Wei Neng (Jurong): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Budget. I will like to first declare my interest as the CEO of ComfortDelGro Taxi Business.

Given concerns over COVID-19, I am proud that Budget 2020 is the result of quick response, built on a deep understanding of what Singaporeans are feeling and going through. The Budget is one which will help us all to ride through this period of global panic in a calm manner. At this juncture, I would like to thank the frontline staff, especially the healthcare heros, MOH’s team and all involved in fighting the COVID-19 for their sacrifices, dedication and determination.

I am also heartened that in preparing Budget 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Heng and his team had spoken to more than 1,000 people, including corporate chiefs to collect feedback.

As someone who is active in both the public and private sectors, the issue of balancing regulations to take care of the interest of the regulators and the companies being regulated, is one which continues to be of concern of many. Following my speech during Budget 2019 debate about cutting red tape, I was heartened that there were anecdotal improvements.

But apart from extraordinary situation, it is important for the policy-makers to consult the stakeholders regularly. Such consultation is a continuous process and a never-ending journey.

One area that catches my attention is SGX's competitiveness. Following my Parliamentary Question in January 2020, last month, I am glad that SGX has relaxed the need for quarterly reporting and announced that half yearly reporting will suffice. This is a good move to reduce compliance costs.

However, SGX seems to be losing its shine. I understand that many local companies are listing on other stock exchanges in New York, London and especially Hong Kong, over SGX. In 2019, 10 Singapore firms were listed in Hong Kong, raising US$155 million. This is a 25% increase from 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Computer gaming accessories company Razer chose to list not in Singapore but in Hong Kong in November 2017. Some of these firms listed overseas are apparently drawn to better liquidity and higher valuations. I have personally spoken to the head of two companies that listed their companies in Hong Kong last year. They have also affirmed the same.

Worse, according to Euromoney.com, delistings over the last five years have outnumbered listings. The number of companies registered on the SGX fell to 741 at the end of 2018, from a peak of 782 in 2010.

From the reply to my Parliamentary Question in January 2020, I understand that SGX is not tracking the number of local companies that choose to list in other countries. It may be wise for SGX to connect with some of these companies, to find out why they choose to list their companies overseas. This would also have implications on Singapore’s ambitions to become a prime financial hub.

Next, Mr Speaker, I would like to touch on the issue of sustainable transport. As a person intimately involved in the management of a large fleet of more than 10,000 taxis, a sustainable transport is an issue which I am most concerned with. On a yearly basis, ComfortDelGro Taxi replaces more than 1,000 vehicles on average and we are keen to replace them with cleaner vehicles that emit less carbon dioxide. Currently, we are trying to speed up the replacement of diesel taxis with petrol-electric hybrid taxis. Meanwhile, we also have four full electric taxis.

Thus, we are fully supportive of Singapore’s drive to move towards a sustainable and "green" transport and phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. I am heartened by MOF’s announcement to launch an Electric Vehicle (EV) Early Adoption Incentive or EEAI by providing 45% rebate off the Additional Registration Fees (ARF), capped at $20,000 and subject to a minimum ARF of $5,000. At the same time, the Government will impose an additional road tax of up to $700 per year for EV.

When we do a calculation based on the more popular Korean full electric passenger car, the EV Early Adoption Incentive scheme does not appear to be attractive. In fact, the current Carbon Emission-Based Vehicle Scheme (CEVS) which offers a rebate of up to $30,000 off the ARF is more attractive than EV Early Adoption Incentive Scheme of only $20,000. The additional road tax makes a EEAI even less attractive.

In addition, cabbies that drive EV have to endure the inconvenience of taking 30 minutes to one hour to fully charge their electric taxis. The promise of halving the charging time and halving the cost of car battery every three years still remain a promise. In fact, some in the car battery "industry point out that exaggerated claims are commonplace, and that not everyone is convinced” that planned car battery breakthroughs will become a reality.

Thus, I will like to clarify with MOF do they really think that the EV Early Adoption Incentive will entice fleet owners like us to choose EV over hybrid vehicles.

Do not get me wrong, I am supportive of having more "green" and "clean" vehicles. It is just that we do not want Singapore to bet on the wrong "green" car like the experience we have had of CNG cars.

Rather than putting all eggs in the one basket, I would like to suggest considering other alternatives to not replace, but supplement EVs, like fuel cell or hydrogen vehicles. China, Japan and South Korea are already working to put millions of hydrogen-powered vehicles on their roads, because it is not only cleaner, its driving range and refuelling time are comparable to gasoline cars.

We understand that in the second half of 2019, last year, the Prime Minister's Office has awarded a hydrogen feasibility study to American engineering giant Kellogg Brown & Root, to assess the feasibility of importing hydrogen for downstream uses, ranging from vehicle fuelling to power generation. Can PMO or LTA share their preliminary thoughts while waiting for the full report of the study?

This year's Budget, Mr Speaker, is the Unity Budget with an eye on COVID-19. Mr Speaker, Sir, please allow me to speak in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] The COVID-19 outbreak has seriously impacted many Singaporeans, including taxi drivers. When people talk about the smaller crowd in downtown areas, I lament the fall in businesses for taxi drivers.

During the SARS outbreak, even though there was a drop in foreign tourists, locals still go to work as usual. But today, many office workers take turns to work from home and this has worsened the situation for taxi drivers.

We thank the Government for launching a special relief package for taxi drivers on Valentine’s Day. Taxi drivers will receive a rental rebate of $10 per day from the government, and another $10 per day in rental rebates from taxi companies. In total, taxi drivers will receive rental rebates of $20 per day. Yet, taxi drivers still complained. Taxi companies then decided to provide another $16.50 in daily rental rebates to taxi drivers. In other words, taxi drivers will enjoy up to $36.50 in rental rebates per day. Even though taxi companies will be running at a loss by doing so, for the sake of taxi drivers and the taxi industry, taxi companies still decided to go ahead with the rental rebates. But still, many taxi drivers are unable to make a living. We therefore hope that Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat will consider providing more assistance for taxi drivers. Thank you!

(In English): Their loved ones are most impacted by the outbreak for taxi drivers. All the taxi companies are providing additional help over and above the Government's Special Relief Fund or SRF of $10 per day. Some taxi companies, including ComfortDelGro Taxi, is providing additional rental rebate of up to $26.50 over and above the SRF. That is, cabbies are getting a total rental rebate of up to $36.50 per day until the end of March 2020. With these additional rebates, the taxi companies will go into red over the next few months. Even then, the cabbies are still suffering a significant drop in their net income. Thus, I call on Government to do more for cabbies. Perhaps, the Government can consider matching what the taxi companies are doing for the cabbies by increasing the quantum of Special Relief Fund (SRF).

Singaporeans will remember the good deed by the Government. Just a couple of days ago, one cabby by the name of Robert Chew wrote me a touching email. Let me read out an excerpt of what he wrote: "I would like to thank you as Member of Parliament for bringing our feedback to our Government and working with them to offer us some financial assistance by way of supplementing our daily rentals.

These are indeed very hard times for us as our incomes have been severely hit and many drivers have given up. Not to mention also the daily stress of fearing for our own health as we are frontline service providers who do not want to be a problem to our loved ones.

Sir, I would like you to know that we appreciate any help your company and the Government are providing us to help us survive this episode. This fight is far from over and may last several more months.

Let us work together in our fight against this epidemic as we look forward to coming out of this crisis stronger and better. We most certainly will overcome. We must!

May you and your loved ones stay safe and healthy."

Robert summarises nicely the sentiment of many taxi drivers. Other than P2P drivers, the livelihood of Singaporeans working in the private sectors have been badly affected by the negative impact of the economy.

Those working in the tourism industry are the worse hit. Gig workers and freelance workers are also badly hit. Many freelance workers are engaged by Government departments. For example, fitness instructors engaged by Active SG, orchestra music instructors engaged by MOE schools are having their earnings significantly reduced when organisations are cancelling activities involving more than 50 people.

While there is a cancellation clause which is included in the contracts of some legally savvy freelancers, many others do not. For such cases, I will like to appeal to MOF to allow the Government agencies to pay up to 50% of the fees charged by freelancers even when their engagements are cancelled due to COVID-19. Such help will go a long way in keeping them afloat.

Another vulnerable group are those in society who receive help from charities and non-profit groups. As fund raising has almost come to a standstill, this is because many businesses are more concerned with survival than corporate philanthropy. Thus, we must do what we can to help keep these charities and non-profit groups going and stretch their fund-raising dollars.

I will like to suggest the Government extend the Bicentennial Community Fund (BCF), where the Government matches $1 for each dollar of donation. It was supposed to end on 31 March – this year – 2020 but I strongly advocate that it be extended until the end of 2020 so that the beneficiaries whose lives depend on the money raised from well-wishers can continue to get help.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, Singapore has done a very good job of managing COVID-19, putting all resources in finding and healing the sick. The greater challenge now is how we can pull together and help one another. Those who can must help those who cannot to tide over the economic crisis. The Budget has made a very good first step and the rest of the journey is for us to walk together and together we can overcome the odd.

Mr Speaker: Order. I propose to take a break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair at 4.20 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 4.00 pm until 4.20 pm.

Sitting resumed at 4.20 pm

[Deputy Speaker (Mr Lim Biow Chuan) in the Chair]

Debate on Annual Budget Statement

Debate resumed.

Assoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, from the 14th to the 15th century, wages in Europe doubled and inequality declined significantly. Inequality would not rise to the same level until the 1700s. The cause was not productivity improvements or up-skilling. Unfortunately, the cause was the Black Death, also called the plague, which killed by some estimates more than one-third of the population in Europe. The demand for labour went up and land was redistributed amongst the survivors. The plague is a zoonotic disease. The bacterium is endemic to rodents and carried by the fleas that infest rats. The plague originated in China, was carried west along the Silk Road by traders and spread thence to Europe, most famously, by Italian traders fleeing the Mongol siege of Caffa by ship.

The Plague destroyed not only populations, but also the existing social and economic order throughout Europe. Governments of the day responded with novel and extreme measures. In England, the Statute of Labourers 1351 made it illegal for workers to demand pay greater than those wages prevailing before the Plague. While there is little evidence it was effective, it appears to have contributed to a major English peasant revolt in 1381. Governments also realised, perhaps belatedly, that inequality itself weakened society's ability to resist the plague. The poor could not afford treatment, but they could pose a risk to all if they contracted it. As a result, towns hired plague doctors to treat rich and poor alike without payment. Necessity is the mother of public health.

I tell this story in the hope that history does not repeat itself. But it is startling what the parallels are between the plague and COVID-19. The policy questions have changed little over the years. COVID-19 is more than a public health risk: it is a threat to the present global political, economic and social order.

China's strong policy of containment has essentially decoupled China temporarily from the global economy. Singapore has suffered more than most. In 2018, 3.4 million tourist arrivals – nearly one in five that year – were from China, and China is our largest trading partner. The efforts of Budget 2020 to address the economic impact of COVID-19, and beyond that, to restructure the economy, are timely and I fully support the intent behind them.

But even if, as we hope, the impact of COVID-19 will be short-lived, it would be irrational to plan to return to the same apparently prosperous world that we inhabited just a few months ago. Countries and companies are assessing whether economies and supply chains should be so tightly coupled. So, for our part, we should take this opportunity to strengthen weaknesses in our economy and society that may yet affect the course of the outbreak and our resilience to future ones.

International experts, Mr Deputy Speaker, have judged that Singapore's approach to COVID-19 is a model for public health systems worldwide. We should be proud of the hard work that our healthcare and Home Team institutions have put in to protect our society.

We can afford the tremendous costs of containing COVID-19 because we have a highly successful market-based economy. But there is a paradox there. Our efforts to contain COVID-19 now depend on many people in the frontline who have benefited much less from the market economy than others have. Our efforts also do not depend on the private healthcare sector. They instead depend on the strength of our public healthcare institutions which are paid for outside the market.

The key contradiction which the present crisis has highlighted is the growing and invidious divergence between market prices and social value. To understand this, we need to deconstruct the ideology or the myth of market forces. In crude terms, the myth is the idea that the price and distribution of goods and services, determined by competitive market processes, must be efficient and socially appropriate. This model of market forces underlies our policy thinking about economic restructuring because for the most part it works well. It is impossible to protect all jobs or industries in economic restructuring, because doing so would cripple the efficiency of the economy and harm ourselves in the long run. However, we should never assume that the market price is equivalent to social value. Market prices may be efficient, but that says little about it being equitable or socially desirable.

What comes to mind to illustrate this is how the frontlines of our war against COVID-19 have been increasingly manned by people whose market prices are low but social values immeasurable, especially during a public health crisis. Rosalind, one of the cleaners at my University, does more on a daily basis to protect our students and staff from COVID-19 than I possibly can.

She and her colleagues go into our offices and classrooms and toilets daily to make sure that they are disinfected. The cleaning frequency has been stepped up. She bears the risks of cleaning up dirt and spills and worse things and she has more work now but the same pay. Our Town Councils likewise largely depend on foreign workers and elderly local cleaners who do jobs that few of us would accept for the same pay.

This disconnect between market prices and social value is not a problem confined to those of the lowest incomes. Security officers put themselves at risk serving quarantine notices and screening for sick persons at our institutions. One such officer did, in fact, contract COVID-19. Our emergency medical responders and nurses put themselves at risk every day as their work puts them in direct physical contact with the sick. And our general practitioners (GPs) are working under very difficult circumstances to screen and treat the sick, to make the judgement call if a patient is a suspect COVID-19 case. Yet, the rewards for GPs have never been very high compared to that for specialists and surgeons, to say nothing of the pay for nurses and first responders. There may be market reasons why elective aesthetic surgery gives a doctor a much better living than primary care, but surely, there are few social reasons why this is so.

A second reason for interrogating the myth of market forces is that there is no guarantee that market prices and allocations reflect efficiency. In theory, prices in a competitive market track the marginal productivity of any resource closely. This implies the market allocation of resources should be efficient at producing the greatest useful output for society at the least cost. But this need not be true, especially once we consider the importance of resilience in maintaining social functioning in difficult times.

Market forces have concentrated the production of medical personal protective equipment, such as surgical masks, in a relatively small number of factories worldwide, many of them in China. Medical institutions worldwide do not keep significant reserve stocks because the supply chain is usually swift and reliable. In normal times, yes, the globalised system of production is superbly efficient. We would, in fact, question normally whether it is good value for money if MOH were to start subsidising the costly production of surgical masks in Singapore, or the creation of a stockpile that far exceeds that of projected clinical use. The COVID-19 outbreak, however, demonstrates the limitations of efficiency as the sole judgement criterion.

The Straits Times reported on 21 February, just last week, that private hospitals in Singapore have seen big drops in foreign patients. Usually, they get about 40,000 medical tourists a month. But now, many have cancelled their appointments. Now, normally, it is a good thing to have a thriving private medical sector in Singapore. It gives patients choice; it makes Singapore a medical hub. But it is likely if the COVID-19 outbreak worsens, that our GPs and public hospitals will continue to be severely stretched with a high caseload while the private specialist sector may well be short of work. This is neither resilient nor efficient. And yet, it is the market outcome, because there is market demand to pay for excess capacity in the private sector. There is none to pay for it in the public sector.

Our public healthcare system is under pressure, as are healthcare systems worldwide, to be more efficient, to cut waste and slack. To keep public healthcare prices low, we schedule appointments for subsidised healthcare as tightly as possible, to extract the most out of our manpower and equipment. This comes at a hidden cost to the resilience and morale of our healthcare workers. In a crisis, these effects become more salient. Any lack of slack means that in a crisis, we risk having insufficient spare capacity to deal with unexpected surges in demand. We must then rely on our healthcare workers to work overtime to keep us safe.

China and now Korea’s experience in managing the current crisis are important reminders of how vulnerable our public healthcare system could be. We are just one unlucky "super spreading" incident away from severely taxing our public hospitals. To be sure, the Government has done well in planning ahead. The NCID, which has been a mainstay of our fight against COVID-19, is proof that we have taken the lessons of SARS to heart. But we must guard against the short sighted pursuit of efficiency at the expense of resilience. We may have to prepare for a new normal where increased globalisation and the disintegration of public health systems worldwide mean that we will face imported disease outbreaks more frequently than ever before.

Let me now turn to inequality, Mr Deputy Speaker. The COVID-19 outbreak is likely to hurt the livelihoods of those who already live precarious economic lives – the freelancers, the workers in small and medium enterprises. The market forces myth explains inequality through the argument that pay is equal to productivity. This in turn forces us to emphasise improving our productivity in order to raise wages, which in the long run is more sustainable.

But there are any number of market distortions which would explain why the productivity-to-pay relationship, while it may hold on average and in the long run, does not always hold for the individual or even the sector. In Singapore, wages for low-income workers stagnated for much of the 2000s. The occasional paper on "Income Growth, Inequality and Mobility Trends in Singapore" published by MOF in 2015, documents that from 2004 to 2009, cumulative, per-member household income growth was only 4% for the the lowest quintile as opposed to 19.5% for the top quintile.

Were the prices right for low-wage labour in the mid-2000s? If we believe fully in price theory the answer is yes and there is nothing that can be done about it beyond Government support and transfers. But, fortunately, wiser heads prevailed.

In 2012, former Chairman of the National Wages Council, Prof Lim Chong Yah, called for "wage shock therapy" to raise the wages of bottom income earners while freezing that at the top. While the Government did not agree with Prof Lim's approach to the problem, it nonetheless worked through the tripartite framework to introduce the Progressive Wage Model, which provides an explicit framework for pushing salaries up in key low-wage sectors. We have seen a strong reversal of formerly stagnant wage growth for low-income Singaporeans. As reported in the latest Key Household Income Trends 2019, cumulative real growth in per-household member income was 29.5% and 31.8%, for the first and second deciles, from 2009 to 2019. Top decile income growth, meanwhile, slowed to 15.9%t for the same period.

Does this mean that productivity for low-wage workers has jumped by 30% over the last decade? It is difficult to take at face value without more study the price theory implication that cleaners have suddenly become hugely more productive, even with the benefit of training. I suspect it is more likely that wages were simply too low, possibly because of the easy access back then to low-wage foreign workers and our low-wage workers' lack of bargaining power.

In any case, the solution to being a nurse is not for that nurse to become a doctor and the solution for cleaners is not to hope that our children do not have to take up that job or to depend on an inexhaustible supply of low cost foreign labour. Society needs both nurses and doctors, cleaners and lawyers. The solution is to pay and respect low-wage workers better.

Mr Deputy Speaker, in recent days, key corporations in Singapore starting with Temasek Holdings and now including SATS, SMRT and Capitaland, and perhaps more, have decided to restructure and reduce the wages of senior management staff in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. I applaud these moves to demonstrate solidarity with Singaporeans on the ground. They are important not just for the morale of frontline staff, who may yet face cost-cutting, but also sends a signal that the risks and costs of COVID-19 should be socially distributed.

Let me suggest that this year, we orient all efforts towards protecting and even increasing the wages of lower paid Singaporeans, and paying for it by restraining and restructuring the wages of those higher up – which would include, I would suggest, hon Members as leaders in their own professions. Today, we commend our cleaners and security guards, nurses and public health workers, for being in the front line of protecting us against COVID-19. We acknowledge the work of our public transport workers, our hawkers and shopkeepers, in keeping our supply lines and life running as normal. Can we give them a tangible increase in their salaries to acknowledge their sacrifices?

If we do not have the words to express our gratitude, then at least, let us have the dollars.

More fundamentally, COVID-19 and the demands of economic restructuring should have us question whether our social risk sharing institutions, for unemployment, housing and health care, provide sufficient protection and resilience. There was a lively debate yesterday on unemployment insurance in the Chamber and I think the discussion should continue. We cannot depend just on charity for filling in the gaps, especially since charitable activity may also be hurt by an economic or social crisis. In particular, our resilience today to major shocks such as COVID-19 depends very much on the government of the day enacting strong and tailored measures, because we do not have many automatic risk sharing measures in place. This is both a strength and a weakness because resilience depends on the performance of the political leadership of the day. Events near to us show that this cannot be guaranteed.

I started this speech by noting how the Black Death fundamentally reshaped economic and social institutions in Europe. The long-run history of economic inequality is that significant reductions have only occurred in the wake of huge disasters such as the Black Death, the collapse of empires, the first and second World Wars. Left unspoken is whether inequality played a role in precipitating these collapses.

At the moment it seems, if we are fortunate, COVID-19 will only be a shock, not a disaster, for the global economy. But we have to continue the work of strengthening and restructuring our economic, and societal institutions, to ensure that when the next test comes, Singapore will stand as resilient as it has today. Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Government’s Budget.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Senior Parliamentary Secretary Low Yen Ling.

4.37 pm

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministers for Education and Manpower (Ms Low Yen Ling): Mr Deputy Speaker, the emergence of COVID-19 has in recent months, placed several threats in our horizon near and far. However, we take heart that since SARS, we have built up our defences and are better prepared to deal with this virus outbreak today. We are deeply thankful to our healthcare workers, government agencies, cleaners and many frontline personnel who have put their duties first, to protect us.

Apart from these, we have a strong foundation of community help and network to respond to challenges that come our way. Since its formation, the Community Development Councils or CDCs have played a critical role in partnering the community to strengthen bonds and help vulnerable groups. We have the “"BC" mission – A stands for Assist the Needy, B stands for Bond the People, C stands for Connect the Community. The mission is even more crucial than ever, in a time like this.

Each of the five CDCs – Central Singapore CDC, led by Mayor Denise Phua; Northeast CDC, led by Mayor Desmond Choo; Northwest CDC, led by Mayor Teo Ho Pin; Southeast CDC, led by Mayor Maliki Osman and Southwest CDC, helmed by myself – each of these five has its own set of local assistance schemes to meet local needs, as well as programmes to foster community development and ownership. A diverse range of partners from the community contribute to improving the welfare of the community and those in need. For example, in 2019, the CDCs rolled out 111 local assistance schemes that benefited close to 156,000 beneficiaries.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat has in this year’s Budget, provided $20 million for the CDCs to better meet the needs of their residents through local initiatives. To this end, the five CDCs have been working together to launch an island-wide initiative to provide meals in the heartlands for vulnerable families. This effort not only complements the Care and Support package to help Singaporeans who need extra support with the cost of living, it will also bring business to many heartland food joints, coffeeshops which are feeling the effects of the slowdown due to COVID-19.

Yesterday, Member Mr Png Eng Huat had suggested that the grocery vouchers for low-income families be extended for use in small retail shops. In the past few years, our local constituencies have been working with heartland retailers and businesses to meet the nutritional needs of low-income families. The mayors and the CDCs welcome the timely $20 million injection of funds which will provide additional resources for us to scale up these efforts across the nation and reach out to more of those in need, as well as boost the support for local businesses and heartland enterprises.

The upcoming Free Meals and Drinks scheme will be redeemable at participating coffeeshops, participating food courts and participating heartland enterprises. Details are currently being worked out and will be released in due course.

The $20 million Meals in the Heartlands initiative is expected to benefit some 100,000 vulnerable families and each CDC will administer the scheme accordingly to meet the needs of its residents.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, being able to have a decent meal is a form of security and support key to boosting the resilience of families-in-need.

Earlier, Prof Lim Sun Sun also talked about the importance of nutritional meals. These are important for the kids to start the day right. For example, the ability to have a simple breakfast of kaya toast and eggs – whether with Milo for the kids and Kopi-O for the parents – as a family can start the day right, and put parents and kids in a better mood to bond, talk and share. These kinds of moments can often be elusive for those preoccupied in making ends meet. So it is even more important for them to receive greater help in this area.

Taking a ground-up approach, the CDCs will work closely with partners in the community, merchant associations, F&B outlets, self-help groups, SSOs, grassroots leaders and volunteers to form a cohesive network of support to shore up the nutritional, physical and psychological needs of this group of Singaporeans. This win-win solution not only provides businesses with additional revenue during uncertain times, it serves the families in need and brings the community closer together in mutual support.

This type of collaboration benefits the community at large and the CDCs have often involved volunteers and organisations who reach out to those in need. For instance, we have had the Central Singapore Milk fund for children; we have the NorthEast Community Vouchers; we have the NorthWest Food Aid Fund that provides food vouchers, cooked meals and food rations; we have the SouthEast Roxy Family Fund for daily expenses like diapers, food or medicine; and we have Food Connect@SouthWest and Meal Service@SouthWest.

In the coming months, we will see the CDCs widening our outreach and deepening our engagement with partners as we work together to beat the COVID-19 storm. SMEs form the lifeblood in our economy. SMEs make up 99% of our enterprises and SMEs hire close to 70% of employees in Singapore. Since 2013, seven years ago, CDCs have partnered Enterprise Singapore, key trade associations and business chambers to each set up an SME Centre in each of the five CDCs. The SME Centres reach out to heartland enterprises and support them through capability workshops, Government schemes, advisory services and help them improve productivity.

Last year, 6,800 SMEs benefited from the business advisory sessions from the SME@CDC centres and another 2,400 companies took part in 60 capability workshops to enhance their brand, productivity and marketing. The CDCs will continue to do more for our SMEs, as they face the need to constantly evolve, to stay relevant in today’s disruptive climate. From training and talent development, to business advice and community partnerships, we will continue to deepen our efforts with heartland businesses, to energise their growth and survival, for SMEs provide the majority of jobs in Singapore.

Apart from working alongside SMEs, the CDCs are dedicated to improving the future and prospects of Singaporean workers. In 2017, we started SkillsFuture Advice to help Singaporeans navigate their lifelong learning journey and capture opportunities to skill up with courses that they can attend with their SkillsFuture Credits. The CDCs have since surpassed the initial outreach target of 80,000 individuals in three years. By 2019, more than 100,000 Singaporeans have participated in over 3,700 SkillsFuture Workshops in the heartlands, in the community.

Building on this strong foundation, the five CDCs look forward to closer collaborations with SSG, WSG and e2i to expand our SkillsFuture Advice outreach. All five CDCs will intensify our momentum to help Singaporeans, especially mid-career and also mature workers, to be better equipped and resourced to cope with the impact that COVID-19 may have on their careers. Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, please allow me to continue in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Neighbourhood shops and micro businesses in the heartlands are important members of our community and are important to the larger community as well. Over time, many residents and shopkeepers have become friends, and the entire neighbourhood feels like a close-knit family.

The merchants' associations are important organisations that represent merchants and they exist in many constituencies. Grassroots organisations, Community Development Councils and various merchant associations have always been in close communication, working together to organise various activities and events to inject vibrancy into the neighbourhoods, boosting pedestrian traffic to bring in more business.

Here, I will share an example.

In the Bukit Gombak constituency where I serve, a Chinese New Year event that is similar to the River Hongbao is organised every year. Businesses in the neighbourhood would participate in the CNY bazaar, and there would be large lantern displays and Getai to attract residents to the town centre to shop, eat and enjoy Getai performances. Both residents and neighbourhood merchants benefit from this win-win event, and I know that many constituencies have similar CNY bazaars.

From this example, we can see that maintaining the vibrancy of communities and neighbourhoods can help to ensure a sustainable business environment for heartland merchants.

In terms of funding, besides the $1.6-billion-dollar Care and Support Package, the Government will also set aside $20 million for ComCare schemes under the CDCs. This will allow CDCs to work with neighbourhood merchants to help low income families through their individual platforms. At the same time, this will help to boost residents’ spending at neighbourhood shops and coffee shops. More details will be revealed by the five CDCs soon.

The mission of the 5 CDCs is to build a caring and cohesive society, and many assistance schemes by the CDCs are people-centred. In 2019, we implemented 111 measures that helped more than 150,000 beneficiaries.

To better assist our neighbourhood shops in achieving success, the CDCs, Enterprise Singapore, trade associations and merchant associations have banded together to set up SME centres to provide advisory services for heartland merchants. In 2019, about 6,800 shops have made use of this advisory service. Another 2,400 small and micro businesses have also participated in workshops to improve their operations, management and promotion strategies.

Although large merchants have the advantage of providing new and diversified offerings, neighbourhood merchants have the advantage of providing personalized services, as well as friendships and mutual understanding with customers built over the years. I think this is extremely valuable.

People say that there will be businesses for shops as long as the community is vibrant. One crucial factor is taking proactive measures to drive customer traffic in the neighbourhood. It is the shared responsibility of everyone to ensure that the community and neighbourhood remain vibrant, to build a pro-people, pro-business and friendly neighbourhood.

(In English): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, although the months ahead may hold uncertainties, we can be sure that on the ground, the five CDCs are fortifying the network of support across the heartlands and strengthening our local businesses, our vulnerable families and Singaporean workers. With concerted and specific measures as well as fresh resources, we are closing ranks with fellow Singaporeans and heartland enterprises as well as local businesses.

As we fight back, as we steady our ship, as we hold our ground, we can get through this together. For no matter what the odds may be, we stand as one – SG United – overcomers, to emerge even stronger. Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support Budget 2020. [Applause.]

4.51 pm

Mr Ong Teng Koon (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Deputy Speaker, this year’s Budget debate is taking place under the dark clouds caused by a global pandemic. But Singaporeans can take heart that we are better placed than almost any other country to deal with this crisis and to mitigate its impact. The Government has gone all out to address the potential fall-out from COVID-19, and my residents would like to express their thanks to the Government for this Budget and all the help that has been offering. My residents have also asked me to express thanks to our frontline workers whose bravery, commitment and calmness have inspired all of us to carry on.

However, COVID-19 is a once-in-a-decade threat to the economy and the full effects are not even apparent yet. Even if it does not get worse, it has already blasted a hole in the world’s supply chain. Chinese manufacturers have shut down for a month and many industries are hurt because of lower Chinese demand and because of the broken Chinese supply chain.

To cushion the impact on local businesses, the Government has introduced a comprehensive set of measures in this year's Budget. Protecting businesses means protecting jobs and protecting families. This is why I support the Government’s efforts to inject additional stimulus in the economy. I am especially appreciative of the Stabilisation and Support Package where $4 billion will be made available to local businesses to tide over short-term dislocations, and the Transformation and Growth Strategy where $8.3 billion will be made available to local businesses to position for the future.

Mr Deputy Speaker, nevertheless, I would like to make four additional suggestions for the Government to consider.

The first point relates to feedback from the SME community. The Stabilisation and Support Package will help small enterprises but it is really too small for medium enterprises. There is a "sandwich" class of companies where it is too big for such small help to matter but too small to survive for long periods of negative cash flows. The Corporate Income Tax rebate of 25% of tax payable is a welcome measure, but it is capped at $15,000. This is a small drop in the ocean for such companies. Even a $600,000 loan guarantee by the Government may not be enough for a medium enterprise whose revenue may be up to in the region of $50 million to $100 million a year. I would like to urge the Government to calibrate and scale this assistance according to the size of the company.

The second question relates to the timing of the help. What can the Government do to speed up cash flow assistance to these companies? It has been almost six weeks since the virus started to impact travel and commerce. Many businesses are already running down on their reserves and they cannot depend on their suppliers to extend credit because their supplies are similarly impacted. Cash flow is the lifeline of every business. From what I heard from the banks, it will take until mid-March to approve new loans and these loans will not be disbursed until mid-April. For some, this will be too late. So, I would like to ask the Government what more can we do to open the spigot to make sure that these companies do not go down because of the virus in the short term.

The third point relates to what we must do to prevent short-term pain becoming chronic, in the form of long-term unemployment among mature PMETs. If companies go under because of COVID-19, many jobs will disappear and may never come back. Even if they come back, they might on to a different, younger crowd. Employment for mature PMETs exhibits a ratchet effect. It only goes one direction. It is much easier for a mature PMET to lose a job than to be hired back into one.

So, therefore the emphasis on SkillsFuture 2, SkillsFuture Entreprise Credit and the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package in this year’s Budget is therefore much welcomed. I am also gratified to learn from the Deputy Prime Minister Budget speech that in the last three years, productivity has risen by 2.6% per year and real median income has risen by 3.6% per year. These are positive developments for the Singaporean worker. But I would also like to ask how we can get Singaporeans to do the relevant training, instead of spending their SkillsFuture money on new skills and interests that might not help them to stay employed.

I totally agree with the Deputy Prime Minister when he said that enterprises know best what are the skills needed for their businesses to transform. But, under the Enhanced Training Support for SMEs, the Government already pays for 90% of the course fee and 80% of worker’s salary while employees are undergoing training. Minister Josephine Teo also said in her speech that funding is not the constraint or the impediment that is preventing workers from getting training. But I know that SMEs are not willing or are unwilling to send their workers because it is just too difficult for them to take their workers away from day-to-day work. Therefore, the new SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit that is capped at $10,000 per year, I feel might see a very low take-up rate.

I would like to suggest for the Government to intensify efforts to help businesses to find replacement manpower to cover their employees when they are undergoing training. And this might even include having to pay the salary of such temporary replacement. I think this would encourage upskill their workers while not compromising their day-to-day activities.

Residents have also given feedback that it is difficult to get placement into the Professional Conversion Programmes which operate on a "place and train" basis. Place and train means that you have to get placed in a job first before you can undergo training. But it creates a catch-22 situation for mature PMETs. They need the training to get a job, but need to get the job to get the training. So, they are stuck. I would urge the Government to provide more than the hiring incentive of 20% salary, capped at six months that is announced in the Budget, in order to further incentivise companies to make the first move.

The fourth point is what do we do for the longer term, how do we increase the resilience of our economy and our workforce? A key lesson learnt from the COVID-19 virus is that even when you have money, you cannot buy a mask. Similarly, in the area of manpower, we need to build up our self-sufficiency. We need to reconsider outsourcing.

I would encourage the Government to identify areas of critical need or essential services, and to build up a core of local talent. The speed and ability of GovTech to swing into action and update from "gov.sg" or "maskgowhere" is testament that in-house ability matters in times of crisis. Another example would be the need for experienced engineering tech talent, experienced engineering staff during the SMRT crisis in 2015.

It might be cheaper to outsource in the short term, but the strategic value of insourcing would be very apparent and outweigh the cost when disaster hits.

One way of doing so is to build up a local eco-system of SMEs with the requisite local expertise to operate these industries to become our version of Mittelstand. Germany has its famous Mittelstand – the heart of German industry. The unifying mindset is a focus on social, inter-generational and community responsibility. Mittelstand companies contribute to the local economic and social welfare. They also offer stability and loyalty to their staff by investing heavily in training and retaining staff in times of crisis.

This stands in contrast to the more common Western style of capitalism, with an exclusive focus on profits. Their overriding obligation is to their shareholders, not to other stakeholders like workers. This "winner takes all" mentality might have also contributed to the growing inequality problem that we see in the world today.

From a societal perspective, it is not always clear that unbridled capitalism will lead to the best outcome. Perhaps it is time for us to explore how we can build a core of locally-anchored, stakeholder-conscious Singapore businesses that can help our economy in both good times and bad times.

Singapore already has many of the ingredients to cultivate our own Mittelstand eco-system. We are uniquely placed to work together as a government and as a society to achieve a bold vision. Enterprise Singapore and the private sector can work together to identify the right industries. EDB can can bring these businesses to Singapore.

Innovation can be driven by research and academic institutions, with funding from NRF and RIE, and there can be tripartite collaboration with the unions to make sure that our workers have a voice. Trade associations can also help to mobilise the workers.

Our emphasis on lifelong learning will provide a skilled workforce of craftsmen and domain experts. Perhaps what we really need is for the Government to invest in a Mittelstand fund or to start a Mittelstand development bank to catalyse the entire SME eco-system. Give it an inspiring name, articulate the bold vision, set an ambitious timeline and make it happen. Let us show our pioneering spirit once again. Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Budget.

5.02 pm

Ms Foo Mee Har (West Coast): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, this year’s Budget is set in one of the most uncertain times of Singapore’s history. Our economy grew by a modest 0.7% in 2019, its weakest growth since 2008 Financial Crisis. With the current COVID-19 outbreak fast spreading across the world, the outlook for 2020 is even more bleak and uncertain.

Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat has provided much-needed assurance, by announcing a rock-solid Budget that inspires confidence to press ahead. People say money cannot buy happiness. But I can think of many things money, in the right hands, can provide: peace of mind, opportunities to better one’s circumstances and hope for the future. Budget 2020 offers us that. Let me elaborate.

Singapore’s economic foundations have been and continue to be strong. The fiscal strength has enabled Deputy Prime Minister to announce one of the most expansionary Budgets in 20 years – $106 billion to support families, seniors, workers and businesses. Budget 2020 will provide "Stabilisation and Support" for the current COVID-19 outbreak, enable Singapore to seize opportunities to transform and grow, as well as to build and secure our future.

The money will come from diversified sources of tax, Net Investment Return Contributions (NIRC) from our reserves as well as accumulated surplus from previous years’ fiscal prudence and discipline. It is at times like these when we really appreciate having this reservoir of financial resources to keep Singapore on an even keel, come what may.

It is at times like these when we should also reflect on the significant contributions made by NIRC. Its contribution to fund total expenditure has grown from 13% in 2015, it is now 22% in 2020 – projected to be 22% in 2020. So, in five short years, it has gone from 13% to 22%. Besides being the single largest source of revenue, NIRC is also projected to grow at 9.3%, compared to only 1.7% total increase in all the taxes in FY2020.

I am worried about calls from some quarters for the Government to take more from our reserves, rather than to safeguard our strategic "asset". Is it not unwise to kill the "goose that lays the golden egg”?

I am even more worried about the growing dependency on NIRC. As NIRC, we know, is subject to volatility from tough investment environments, I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether it might be prudent to consider setting a threshold on NIRC dependency, beyond which recurrent spending should only be funded through recurrent revenue.

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for responding to my call to delay increase in GST. Whilst he has assured us that GST will not increase for at least another two years and has also provided support in the form of GST Assurance Package, some Singaporeans are still wondering why would we need to raise GST at all, given the apparent budget surpluses and additional capacity of $6 billion of GST offsets? Increases in cost of living is foremost in the minds of many people, particularly retirees.

Sir, I would like to repeat my call to the Deputy Prime Minister to continue looking for other sources of revenue. Even though the wealthy are already contributing substantially to our taxes through a progressive Personal Income Tax, GST, property tax, ABSD and so on, I really believe there is still room to consider wealth tax and estate duties – all aimed at building an even fairer and more equal society.

Some may be concerned that a re-introduction of estate duties, previously abolished in 2008, may harm Singapore's status as a leading wealth management centre and incentivise wealth and business owners to engage in complex structures for tax avoidance. As other forms of wealth taxation are now being considered by a number of other countries, the notion of wealth taxes generally do give rise to concerns about how taxpayers might react.

But income and wealth inequality are global issues and there are wide recognition amongst governments and wealth and business owners of the need to address them. As the world moves towards considering broader and fairer tax systems, Singapore should maintain its principles of keeping tax structures simple and tax rates low whilst meeting the interests of all stakeholders, particularly of those who are most in need.

So, now we live in a new era of automatic information exchange under the Common Reporting Standard and other global requirements to disclose beneficial ownership across the world. Transparency in ownership and value of assets is rapidly becoming a new norm.

When tax is well structured at competitive and fair rates, together with tax treaties similar to those to which other jurisdictions are parties, an effective estate duty and, perhaps, accompanying wealth tax regime may actually be an allure for assets to be maintained in Singapore.

In a world of turbulence and uncertainty, Singapore's world class infrastructure, rule of law, financial and political stability is priceless for the peace of mind of the wealthy. This is especially so when the environment in Hong Kong, Asia's other leading wealth management centre, has been marred by months of street protests and instability, and long-term uncertainties regarding its tax and legal systems.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I thank the Deputy Prime Minister Heng for a very generous Budget with measures to help with cost of living, training, jobs and retirement adequacy. Whilst there is a really "feel good" sentiment on the ground, more needs to be done to help Singaporeans understand exactly how these measures will benefit them. And I am picking this up when I am on the ground trying to explain.

There are many different schemes to keep track of, from the new schemes such as Care and Support Package, Matched Retirement Savings Scheme, GST Assurance Package; to enhancements to existing programmes such as the Silver Support Scheme and SkillsFuture top-ups. On top of existing support programmes, they all have very different qualifying criteria, some based on housing type, individual income, household income, age criteria and often combinations of criteria.

And I do agree these multi-faceted targeted schemes are more cost effective than broad based ones, but together they can become too complex for the average person on the street to digest. I would like to suggest that the Government provide a Personalised Budget Statement or make available a Budget Calculator on how Singaporeans and their family, based on their unique circumstances, can stand to benefit from Budget 2020.

Sir, regarding support for businesses, I urge the Deputy Prime Minister Heng to really stand ready to do more. The coronavirus outbreak has hit the businesses hard. The general feedback is that many businesses are experiencing up to 50% drop from their usual volume, and the Budget measures are too small and too short term to address these challenges.

Besides the dramatic impact on tourism, aviation and retail sectors, COVID-19 has significantly disrupted supply chains in manufacturing to even vegetables for the restaurants. Locked-down Chinese cities are unable to supply the parts that have become integral components of the supply chains here. Many workers are stuck in China, unable to return. Activation of Business Continuity Plans, extra cleaning, medical leave, leave of absence and so on have put additional pressure on costs and manpower.

It will be especially crucial, I agree with Member Ong Teng Koon, to provide relief for cash flows to tide them over this difficult period. With $7.7 billion of budget surplus left for this term of government to tap on, Deputy Prime Minister Heng has ample ammunition to do more, I hope. I would like to ask if he would consider a second package if circumstances warrant it?

Would the Deputy Prime Minister consider extending the Jobs Support Scheme to six months and increase offset of wages to 12%, as what was done during the Global Financial Crisis? Would he consider extending the support package to more sectors? Would he also consider coordinating efforts with banks to restructure loans, so that SMEs and affected individuals can get moratorium on repayments for, say, up to six months, just to ease the cashflow?

In the meantime, it is heartening to see large corporations and landlords rise to the occasion in support of the smaller ones – including rental rebates by Changi Airport Group to retailers and the Hope fund, put together by the Young Business Leaders of SBF, to support SMEs with immediate working capital. This is the time for the big boys to chip in and help their smaller brothers.

Sir, long-term transformation and growth remain the key focus of this Budget. The issue of manpower constraint continues to be a major struggle for businesses across the board, even as we are resolved to reducing our dependency on foreign workers. We need to urgently develop new ways to find, train and retain the talent necessary to sustain growth.

Learning from the Swiss, industry associations can play a pivotal role in galvanising players in the sector to join forces in curating and delivering impactful training for the industry. I believe that Singaporeans will become more accepting of supplementary foreign labour if we actualise the systematic plan to train and develop them for attractive careers.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, finally, Budget 2020 showcases Singapore's capacity to build a bright and sustainable future. Deputy Prime Minister had set ambitious goal to tackle climate change and has put aside a $5 billion Coastal and Flood Protection Fund. The spark in Singapore's climate change journey has been lit in this Budget. Singaporeans can look forward to a sustainable future and participate in exciting new developments as we manage Singapore's transition to a low carbon, low emissions, clean economy.

In conclusion, Budget 2020 inspires confidence in uncertain times. It has provided Singaporeans with peace of mind, ample opportunities and a sustainable future. The concerns over COVID-19 will eventually fade over time, but the efforts to transform Singapore as a Global-Asia Node of Technology, Innovation and Enterprise will ensure Singapore remains exceptional. I cannot agree more with the Deputy Prime Minister Heng, when he says that the Singapore Spirit is strong and growing. Together, we will advance, as One Singapore. I support the Budget.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Christopher de Souza.

5.15 pm

Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, I had my speech finalised on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I found out that I was speaker number 48 out of 48. What can you say after a list of 47 esteemed speakers? So, I decided to rework my speech.

The past two days' speeches – many made passionately – reminded me of a BBC documentary which I had listened to last month while I was on the way to work. The documentary was called "disagreeing better". No. It was not a guide about how to better disagreements. Rather, it was a guide about how to resolve disagreements better. Hence, the title "disagreeing better".

Why is this relevant at all? Because the documentary touched on the negative repercussions on societies when they are polarised. The danger the BCC documentary sought to point out is the very danger so many of us in this House seek to battle. In short, in Singapore, we do things quite differently. We seek unity here. Hence, the Unity Budget.

Why is this important, especially at this time? Because the crisis can bring out the best or the worst in society.

Will there be disagreements along the way? Of course. These will relate to fiscal measures, social policy and issues of societal values. But how we resolve these differences – and come out of a large crisis or mini crisis – is key. The willingness to listen, to be open with each other, to share and risk empathy; and then to decide. These are all essential for an efficient decision-making body and have been so aptly displayed by so many of the 47 speakers before me. So many of us in the Chamber regard the unity of Singapore and the united response to the crisis as the priority.

Ms Jessica Tan gave real life examples from her constituency as to why providing opportunities in education is key. Ms Denise Phua shared how these opportunities should be extended to SMEs. Mr Desmond Choo talked about giving working mothers and mothers on maternity the best shot in their careers.

And you see characteristics of each in Budget 2020 – the umbrella of opportunities for re-skilling, re-training and advancement for the Singaporean workforce. You see the undercurrent of unity in so many of the speeches. You see that in Mr Png Eng Huat's speech where he talked about the need to unite rather than point fingers and stigmatise, how we should not ostracise China, and that it was good that we sent them a second humanitarian shipment.

So, the BBC documentary sought to point to the danger of disunity. Yet, in this House, through the 47 speeches before me, you see an over-arching priority to unite, and I think that is quite novel in the world today. And it is, in fact, inspiring and encouraging. Hence, Unity Budget.

If we look at the globe, there is sectarianism, I versus you, hardly any effort to build the common ground or common paths forward. Yet, so many of the speeches in this debate here have had as their foundation the topic of unity.

But it is not only about unity. There is also the need for transparency, honesty – as Mr Cedric Foo emphasised; and being open with difficult facts too. A "framework of honesty", if you like. And I see how that framework is being deployed in the Budget. For example, being upfront with Singaporeans early about the future hike in GST, being open about why over reliance on the NIRC may not be fiscally prudent and why at this stage, we need to think of raising GST in the future.

This is being open and mature. It makes for the politics of trust and honesty. It makes for a reliable decision-making process.

If I may be bold enough to say, it is the same framework that we see being deployed within the COVID-19 taskforce – sharing the infections numbers, the discharged numbers, the ICU numbers, sharing information about the clusters and importantly, readying Singaporeans for the method we will use to deal with the virus in the longer time, whichever of the scenarios plays out.

So, as with Budget 2020, as with the debate of the 47 speakers before me, as with the manner in which the Ministerial taskforce in COVID-19 is addressing the difficulties facing our country today – facts discussed candidly and openly, and a sharing of ideas and suggestions and then, importantly, decisions. This is what we are doing in this Chamber. This is our Singapore way.

Singapore is like a steady ship in the ocean. We have gone through storms together before and we can go through them again.

Perhaps, in this moment of the COVID-19 outbreak, we should also take the opportunity to try to remove the hierarchical way that some in our society view jobs and professions, with certain professions viewed as more prestigious while others jobs viewed as less dignified. In my view, such stratification is not the way it should be. This was also a point raised by Prof Yaacob and Mr Alex Yam, and I agree with them. If anything, the COVID-19 crisis is proof to all of us that everyone is important – everyone has a role to play – everyone is needed.

Allow me to explain. In order to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus, office buildings carry out temperature taking. Those manning the temperature booths, often security guards, are important as they provide a first line of defence. But the guards are putting themselves at risk. Other measures that have been taken are the increased cleaning and disinfecting of places, such as playgrounds and high touch points, such as lifts and hotel rooms. Our housekeeping staff, uncles and aunties in the hotel industries, frontline staff, cleaners – they all play such an important role in the prevention of the spread of the virus. Many have had to work overtime due to the crisis to meet the increased rate of cleaning common areas. And yes, these diligent and determined workers also put themselves at risk.

In a Straits Times' interview entitled, "Coronavirus: It’s a dirty job, but if I don’t do it, who will?", one of the cleaning companies has had their teams work seven days a week these few weeks, all hands on deck, including the manager Mdm Tay. I quote from the article, "Few Singaporeans are interested in working in the cleaning industry, but Madam Tay hopes that through the work they do – especially during this outbreak – people will learn to respect the job. We are helping to prevent the spread of the virus in Singapore'.", says Mdm Tay.

The immigration officers are on the front line, so are the enforcement operations managers of MOM. The nurses and those working at the service counters at hospitals and healthcare institutions play a crucial and important role. Their professionalism is inspiring.

All workers on the frontline should be appreciated. None of us asked for this to happen. None of us want this to happen. But since it has happened, we need all hands on deck. There should be an appreciation that everyone, even those who play less visible roles, are important to our society. We should be less focused on hierarchy and more focused on appreciating each member of our society, especially as we battle COVID-19 in a singular and united determination. And I hope that we will also retain this experience, that everyone in our society is important, even after we overcome this crisis, as we forge our collective future.

Sir, even as we are in a ship together, we need to ensure that the Budget has in place measures that are of practical help to our people. This is especially important to the hotel, tourism and food and beverage industry. According to a snap survey done by Restaurant Association Singapore, close to 60% of restaurants in Singapore stated that they are not prepared and equipped enough to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 on their operations. For those who rely heavily on tourists, the estimated loss could go up to 80%.

To help the food and services sector during this period, the Adapt and Grow initiative was expanded. In relation to rental costs, for food and beverage and retailers, it is good that there are full month rental waivers for some hawkers and half a month of rental waivers for commercial tenants of Government agencies. However, for those on private property, it is the landlords of those retailers on private properties who are given property tax rebates and encouraged to pass on to the retailers. Instead of relying on the goodwill of landlords to pass on savings to their lessees, is there no other more direct way we can alleviate the challenges that those in the food and beverage industry are facing? For example, will the Ministry consider requiring landlords to declare whether they have passed on the rebate to their lessees? And if so, how much has been passed down in dollar terms? Already, it has been reported by the Restaurant Association Singapore that 200,000 employees have been affected since the outbreak.

As Business Continuity Plans already need to be in place, it may also be a good opportunity for businesses to test and hopefully prove that flexible working arrangements work. If it works, more firms may be ready and confident to try adopting it as an available standard practice to support our working parents with young children and working care-givers. For some of the enterprises who want to take this opportunity to change the way they work, this Enterprise SkillsFuture Credit may come in useful.

Furthermore, in relation to using this crisis as a place to plan for the future, there is one particular area that we have announced our intention to look for new sources of supply and look into the capabilities for local manufacturing, that, is, masks. It would be especially useful since epidemics will spread between countries more quickly. But the issue of masks also points to a larger priority, namely, the diversification of our supply sources.

I have spoken about food security before. Currently, the coronavirus or COVID-19 is affecting the world trade of goods and supplies.

In light of this, we need to take stock of what other items, besides masks, we potentially need to manufacture on our own in the future, and if we do manufacture them, whether our supply sources for the materials are sufficiently diverse.

Secondly, for our businesses who are facing problems with diversification of supply sources, what support from the Government is available for them to facilitate the making and establishing of connections with more diverse trade partners?

Budget 2020 also has its eye on the future. Businesses have been given incentive measures to take this opportunity to re-skill and re-train workers to increase future productivity. We also need, however, to instill measures that make learning something that is embedded in the way things are done in Singapore, long term. This is crucial as we are facing an economy characterised by disruptive technology. Change will come. Just like COVID-19 presented itself to us as a disruption, or another phrase by Deputy Prime Minister Heng, as "a spur and a test" that COVID-19 has presented to us, we cannot run away from such a change, disruption, spur or test.

We need to change the way we think about learning. Year after year, we cite the Chinese saying, live until old, learn until old, that is, lifelong learning. We learn that in Primary schools too. But, do we really live it? Do we see learning as a chore rather than a joy? Do we see learning as a burden rather than a privilege? I would like to suggest that we think about the way we can build lifelong learning into the curriculum of students. It is not just a good attitude to have in life but necessary in the kind of economy Singaporeans will face in the future.

A good example of what could be done is what is already being done at SMU. We could broaden what is being done at SMU.

At SMU, disruption is built into part of the syllabus through the way the core curriculum is designed. The core curriculum has three pillars: capabilities, communities and civilisations.

Under capabilities, students pick up skills, such as numeracy and management lessons, to navigate the modern world. Internships are integrated with the other pillars, with a work-study scheme available so students can take up longer internships and earn credits at the same time. Under communities, students discover Singapore's Asian context through courses under the areas of economy and society, technology and society, cultures of the modern world and community service.

SMU's core curriculum was designed to nurture a generation of "adaptive and adroit graduates who are technically competent and agile, socially conscious and adept in their communities and inspired by the timeless puzzles and challenges confronting humanity." This instills in students the aptitude for and attitude of lifelong learning. That is something other schools could consider so that the students will not be theorists only but be able to handle both theory and practical, having the dexterity to apply strong foundations of theory into new real-world applications.

Sir, I move on to my third and last topic – climate change – and why I stand in strong support of the $5 billion set aside to shore up our coastal defences.

Although there are some in Singapore who disagree with the use of the phrase "climate change" as they are of the view that the climate is and always has been changing, allow me to just use the phrase to point out some trends we should be concerned with, particularly relating to the rise in sea levels. Historical data measuring average sea levels of the Singapore Strait from four research-quality data points at Tanjong Pagar, Raffles Lighthouse, Sultan Shoal and Sembawang, indicate that there was a 2.9 mm yearly increase of our sea levels from 1984 to 2011. So, sea levels have risen and ice in the ocean has been melting and physics will say that there will be an increase in sea levels.

What this means is that low-lying small nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu may face, or in fact, are facing existential crisis.

Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr de Souza, you have three minutes more.

Mr Christopher de Souza: I will take two, Sir. Leaving one spare. Thank you.

Because of the dire consequences rising sea levels have on Singapore's future, it is good that the Budget takes these longer term challenges into account and prepares for them. The $5 billion investment to ameliorate the effect that sea levels have on Singapore is thus commendable and far-sighted.

In my speech, Sir, I compared Singapore to a steady ship in the ocean. As a country, we have weathered storms together. The Budget Statement and the debate on it are important to train our focus on how to ensure we get through the storm as one united people. As Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat wrote in his Facebook the day before he delivered the speech, "we would not have been able to act quickly and decisively, if not for our deep reserves. I do not mean only our financial reserves... I also mean the reserves of strength, resilience, empathy and resourcefulness among our public servants and fellow Singaporeans".

It is such resilience that allows us to plan well into the future, well beyond this storm. It is our Singapore way – responding as one people, tirelessly safeguarding our country’s reserves and future. It is for these reasons, that I stand in support of the Motion. [Applause.]

Mr Deputy Speaker: Leader of the House.