Sunday afternoon 19th July 2020 Sunny Blue Skies
We had our watershed election on 10th July 2020. It was a unique one, as it was called for by the incumbent party forming the Government in the midst of the SARS Cov 2 crisis where Singapore is still recording hundreds of new infections everyday, albeit mostly (95%) from the foreign worker contingent.
The pandemic is far from over, and our 2nd quarter GDP estimates showed a contraction of over 12% from the previous quarter - the worst ever since I started my working life way back in the late 80s, or more than 30 years.
Now that the dust is (barely) settling, My hope for Singapore and the new Parliament is to have or focus on these structural issues hitting us now and in the future :
a) more checks and balances in the Executive - debating and airing all views before casting a vote to move forward or roll back bills.
b) a relook at job opportunities for Singaporeans, especially PMETs (professional, managers, engineers and technicians), giving them more than ample opportunities and financial credits (SkillsFuture etc) to learn and the rest is up to them. It will be tough to adapt, but adapt we must. People in my age group are especially vulnerable having gone past the ideal hiring age and unless we have the right skillsets such as computing C++ or Python experience, we will be overlooked time and again.
We only have Grab, Security guard, service personnel jobs in the moribund retail and banking setor at this stage in life. The prospects will not get any better nor the pay package any better, so train our minds to take on the next challenge of it will be a very meagre existence going forward. Adopt a kiasi or paranoid (afraid to die) attitude.
This is very strange coming from me, but even I need to face the harsh realities of the 'new normal'. One that eschews personal relationships, getting too comfortable and whiling away precious time with friendly meetups. The COVID-19 is all upon us and we need to fight it for a long time, first with less meetups, secondly with masks in place ever so often. It is not nice but the risk of getting infected outweighs the need for camaderie for the sake of bonding.
c) Poor : Give the chronic sick and elderly a greater financial stipend. Whatever mistakes they did with their lives or misspent, people need a sense of dignity in their golden years.
d) Unemployment benefits : true this will impact everybody's tax bill (being raised) but do it with the social good for everybody in mind.
f) More help for Small and Medium Sized Companies ; be it tax reliefs, jobs support and rental deferrments. Nothing beats cash on hand, such as grants based on (for example) the last 3 years Balance Sheets and Profit and Loss management reports. Yes, many of these same SMEs will go bust, but cashflow is the lifeblood of any company large or small, so balance sheets are critical to attract further investment in form of cash grants to keep the SMEs alive while the industry re-invents itself.
I think the rash of many funds available for the SMEs from Enterprise Singapore, and Astar to name 2 are still in my opinion, too high hanging fruit. The effort insofar as time, resources and presentations are at best, a token.
We practically have to explian in detail the entire process flow to an 3rd party to assess the project's feasibility and if we are onto a 'winner', I think I would go for private funding rather than applying for the onerous productivity or even business development grant.
What do I see in my 'crystal ball' economically for Singapore ? It is a matter of survival and that means re-adapt into the new cloud based marketing model of product innovation, user convenience and keeping ahead of the competitiveness with new ways of doing the same old work.
Adapt or face the end of life of traditional business models, for many companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment