Impact of Postponement of World Economic Forum Meeting on Singapore's Preparations

5 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Trade and Industry with the rescheduling of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to August 2021 (a) how has this impacted Singapore’s plans and preparations for the event; (b) what are the measures in place to reduce the likelihood of further postponement; and (c) how will the Government address the challenges and concerns faced by WEF to ensure the conference proceeds as planned.

The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Alvin Tan) (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to thank the Member for his question and the Members of the House for their continued interest in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Special Annual Meeting. I think it acknowledges the significance of Singapore's hosting of this important global event and the signal of confidence that it sends about Singapore's management, thus far, of the pandemic.

The WEF rescheduled the Special Annual Meeting in Singapore from 25 to 28 May 2021, to 17 to 20 August 2021. The WEF explained that the current restrictions on global travel and the challenges that many countries are facing in combating the COVID-19 virus, have made it challenging to plan for an in-person meeting in this half of the year.

When the WEF announced this change, it made the point to reaffirm its confidence in Singapore's management of the COVID-19 situation and the measures that had been proposed to ensure the safe conduct of the event. I would like to assure the Member that we will proceed with the necessary preparations with these new dates in mind, but we will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation here in Singapore as well as globally, and make the necessary preparations as required.

Mr Speaker: Mr Yip Hon Weng.

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I have two supplementary questions. First, will the Ministry consider having this event done virtually or in a hybrid style – both physical and virtual – should the situation worsen? And second, what are the other major international events that we will be courting for next year, should the conduct of the WEF be successful?

Mr Alvin Tan: I thank the Member for his supplementary question. The key point is that we must remain open to the world and to all the different opportunities that come before us, and these include very important events such as the WEF's Special Annual Meetings. We are currently building our muscle to manage as well as to host these events.

As I mentioned in my Parliamentary Question response about two weeks ago, the WEF Special Annual Meeting is subject to the Singapore Tourism Board's (STB's) Safe Business Events Framework and that includes testing, safe management measures and so on and so forth. This will apply to the WEF's Special Annual Meeting, but we are building our muscle to test, to trace, to vaccinate. We thus far had about 29 of these business events. It is not just business events. If you look at other kinds of events like the ONE Championship as well as the ATP Tour coming up this weekend.

We are calibrating to the prevailing measures, we are calibrating to the prevailing COVID-19 situation and we will be open to seizing these opportunities but making sure that we conduct the events safely for our global community, for the attendees but also for our local community.