One of my more prominent memories of my last year in university, was being at an event where the then Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Tony Tan was the guest of honour. Dr. Tan was on visit to the UK and the prominent members of the Singapore community had gathered to see what he had to say about Singapore’s relationship with the UK.
During this event, I was introduced to the representative of a Singapore government-controlled company. This was an exceptionally educational conversation into the workings of the Singapore advertising market and suddenly the representative mentioned that the Company had the capability of upgrading the entire island to broadband fiber optic system overnight (this being in 2000 when broadband was just becoming a standard and wi-fi belonged to the realms of science fiction). I remember asking him why the system wasn’t upgraded if there was the capability to do so. The reply was that the company was making so much money from the status quo and there was no rush to upgrade the system.
I’ve been made to recall this story because my day job in the insolvency sphere and my side hustle promoting start-ups paint two very different pictures of the Singapore economy. In the side-hustle, you’re given the impression that Singapore is serious about being a “Silicon Valley” for Southeast Asia. Our government, which is famous for its “control freakery” is somehow sending out ministers to give all sorts of speeches about needing people who can take risk, think out of the box and so on, all in the hope of getting the world’s innovators to set up shop in Singapore. Apparently, the world’s most famous group of control freaks are committed to growing Asia’s Elon Musk out of Singapore. Funnily enough, the statistics might be proving them right:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/world-most-innovative-economies/
However, in my day job, I run into a lot of businesses in the old-fashioned industries like shipping and construction. These are the industries that are capital, asset and let us not forget labour intensive. The most prominent part of these industries is the fact that they are powered primarily by labour from what the former US President called “Shithole” countries because they involve physically demanding labour in rough conditions.
While the old-fashioned industries may not have the glamour of the “sexy tech-start-ups,” they are what you’d call the backbone of the economy. Singapore was founded as a trading centre so it goes without saying that the shipping industry plays a vital role in keeping Singapore relevant in the world. Singapore’s construction industry also has a role in keeping Singapore’s infrastructure in tip top condition.
These are also the industries with the most amount of patronage (the major construction projects are inevitably government ones) and depend the most of exploitation of the poor for their profits. Let’s face it the work of say paving a road requires you do physically do it and the only people willing to do it at low wages are the people from what Donald Trump most famously called “Shithole” countries. Not only do these workers power the old-fashioned industries, they are also the source of funds for a strangely entrepreneurial industry called “labour supply,” which basically involves a group of middle men getting workers to work on various construction projects for a certain fixed wage and pocketing things like overtime.
Thanks to Covid-19 and the explosion of cases in the dormitories, to get an idea of the extent that the industries were dependent on foreign labour. The tax payer had to step in to assist the dormitory operators to “upgrade” their facilities to more livable ones and when questioned as to why the tax payer was bailing out an industry that had benefited from keeping workers in conditions that helped breed the disease, the standard response from the industries was this was our national obligation because the system of keeping workers in disease breeding facilities benefited the rest of us through cheaper real estate (which was a polite way of saying nobody would be able to afford a roof over our heads).
Leaving aside all the other arguments on the merits of foreign labour, one thing is clear – our old-fashioned industries are exceedingly unproductive and basic task that could be done more efficiently are done by manpower.
I take the conversation I had with a General Manager of a Swiss company that sells cable pulling wenches. The man found it easier to sell his machines in the “Shithole” countries in the region then in the land of “ultra-modernity.” His point was that despite the fact that a single one of his machines could pull a cable a greater distance and, in less time, then several men, the “bean counters” on the client side found that it was cheaper to hire those several men (a cynic might also argue that you only pay goods and services tax once on the sale of a machine but the worker’s levy is a monthly affair).
https://www.plumettaz.com/en/product/capstan-trailer/TL%203022%20DRE-1050%2F9
There is technology available to make old fashioned industries more productive or at least less dependent on manpower. I think of a former Nanyang Technological University (NTU) professor, who is working to develop a wheelchair that will help the mobility of the aged. With an aging population, this would be a good product in Singapore’s market. However, if you look at what he considers his “selling” points, you’ll realise that it will reduce the need for manpower, which means an army of agents will have less to earn from an army of maids, which also means that there will be less money generated in the form of levies.
This is clearly not a question of a lack of money or technology. If you work on A*Star or DSTA accounts, you’ll realise that a lot of patents do get filed and if something can’t be invented or develop in Singapore, there are technologies developed elsewhere which can be bought.
So, the question then becomes, if the money and technologies are there, why aren’t they being adapted to create greater efficiencies? I go back to that conversation all those years ago and the answer seems that too many people are making money from a system that encourages exploitation and discourages efficiency or productivity.
If Covid-19 brings us anything, it should be to force the old-fashioned industries to adapt to new technologies that create greater
efficiencies. An investment in technology might seem daunting but in the long run in pays off. I think of the most successful member of my army cohort who has become a “cleaning entrepreneur.” He provides robots who can help keep our environment clean:
https://www.lionsbot.com/robots/floor-cleaning/
Singapore has reached a stage where the problems it faces cannot be solved by only one source of ideas. It needs entrepreneurs like my friend, who are looking at ways of making basic industries more productive and less exploitative.
The government needs to find ways to make it expensive to make money in the shit and incentivize ways in which people can make money from cleaning the shit. That is if the government is really serious about restructuring the economy to a “new normal” and making us a more productive nation.
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