PM Lee Hsien Loong at the NTUC Ordinary Delegates’ Conference 2009

NTUC President, Brother John de Payva, Secretary-General, Brother Lim Swee Say, Ministers, Brothers and Sisters, fellow Singaporeans, I am very happy to be here this morning for your ordinary delegates’ conference. Swee Say invited me in April. He emailed me, and said he felt that I should attend to give some encouragement because of the global downturn. Fortunately, since April, the mood has brightened considerably. Today, your symbol is still upturn, but John de Payva tells me you are going to change the message from upturn to upturning, which is a considerable step forward. But that does not mean that we should just move on and forget about what has happened. We have to reflect seriously on this difficult experience, what does it mean for us, how can we progress in the future. 

This time last year, the world was staring down the edge of a cliff. The roots of the crisis go back quite a long way, but by the middle of last year, many economies were beginning to falter and then in September, we had Lehman Brothers collapsing on 15 September and that triggered a worldwide panic. A lot of people had thought that Lehman Brothers was too big to fail. It was a very big bank, failure would be catastrophic, the American Government would never allow it to happen. But the American Government allowed it to fail and suddenly, all the other big banks and financial institutions had a question mark put against them. Maybe something can happen to them too. So, confidence went down, liquidity evaporated, customers disappeared and the shockwave spread all around the world. 

The sick banks were mainly Western banks. Hence a lot of us hoped that the Asian countries would get off more lightly, but in a globalised world, there was nowhere to hide. We are all linked through trade. We export to China, but China exports to America and Europe. So when America and Europe have less demand, we have fewer exports. Banks are global. Citibank is in America, but they are also here; European banks likewise. When they run into trouble in Europe and America and they pulled back their lending, and they pulled back worldwide and our companies were affected. Stock markets are connected because the investors invest in all these stock markets together. When New York and London plunged, you can see the Singapore stock market, Hang Seng, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Tokyo, all go down. We found that we were fully connected after all.

The governments around the world responded with decisive, dramatic, unprecedented steps. They bailed out the banks with government money and guaranteed their debts. They implemented enormous fiscal packages to stimulate the economy and they approved new money for the IMF, for the World Bank, so that there are institutions to help countries which run into trouble.

After Lehman Brothers collapsed, we watched, very anxiously, as the situation deteriorated day-by-day. We discussed what to do about it. Also when to do it and how to do it? We had two choices. Should we go for a quick off-Budget package - immediate band aid, deal with the problem straightaway, or should we watch, assess how our economy responds and then mount a more comprehensive package in the Budget which can cover everything. At that time, the Budget was only a few months away because it was already October and the Budget was due in February. After discussing it, we decided that the most critical and the most urgent priority was to keep our workers in jobs and we had to do something about that straightaway. We introduced SPUR in December last year. We used the downtime to encourage companies to send their workers for training, upgrade their skills, keep them employable. And we are very grateful to NTUC and to the tripartite partners for supporting SPUR strongly and making it a success. But for the rest of the measures, we decided we will wait for the Budget, but we will bring the Budget forward to January. This is a clear signal that a decisive response is on the way, our eyes are on the ball and we will take a little bit of time to assess, to plan and to work out a good reaction, which will be decisive.

By the time of the Budget, the situation had become much worse than even the pessimists had expected. Trade went down by one-third, shipping and airline businesses - SIA, Changi Airport, PSA - all plunged. Retail, restaurants, recreation were also affected and there were serious fears of record retrenchment, worse than we had experienced back in 1998 during the Asian crisis and of unemployment rising rapidly. We watched very anxiously, we were very worried and I remember one trade unionist telling me about PSA, saying he has been working there for 30 years and it has never been so scary.

Given this grave situation, we launched a full response, all guns firing, in the Budget ,with a Resilience Package of $20 billion. It resulted in a big deficit, six per cent of the GDP and it had several major key programmes. Firstly, to bring forward our infrastructure projects and to accelerate government hiring so that we invest and stimulate the economy at the same time and create jobs. Then we had the Special Risk Sharing Initiative, which enabled companies to have access to credit which they desperately needed. And we had the Jobs Credit to help companies to reduce labour costs and, therefore, to keep their jobs. For the SRI and the Jobs Credit, we tapped on past reserves, first time we have ever done that. But this was an emergency and we wanted to show that we were going to tackle the problem with all the resources at our disposal, everything that we had.

Fortunately, the Resilience Package worked. It is because employers and unions supported this, because the NTUC used the package to work closely with employers and to discuss with the employers how they can cut costs to save jobs, instead of cut jobs to save costs. And so the NTUC got the employers to consider alternatives to retrenchments. For example, using the Jobs Credit to improve their financial position and hold on to workers; to send excess workers on training using SPUR or to implement other alternatives - temporary lay-offs, shorter work weeks, wage cuts etc. As the unionist said (in the earlier video), if the management is prepared to take the sacrifice, we will work with you. Many managements did.

These efforts buffered Singaporeans from the storm. The GDP went down ten per cent in the first quarter, but unemployment went up only moderately, from two-and-a-half per cent at the end of last year to 3.3 per cent latest in the second quarter of this year. A lot of the jobs losses was by foreign workers. Our foreign workers number went down by 21,000, but local employment, in fact, went up by 7,000; not a lot, but it is amazing that in a situation like this, local employment could actually go up and it is because we had the right measures and also because we had the foreign workers to buffer us. As a result of this, I think we have muted the pain and life has gone on more or less as usual. Whenever I get visitors from abroad, they tell me that when they walk along Orchard Road, when they visit our shopping centres or restaurants or, for that matter, when they read about property launches in the newspapers, they cannot believe that the GDP went down ten per cent in the first quarter. It does not connect, they do not feel it.

We can say that on the whole, we have weathered the storm well, but we should not forget the sacrifices which have been made by individual workers. Many have taken pay cuts. They may have kept their jobs, but they have suffered pay cuts, either directly or through loss of overtime or shorter work week or no pay leave. Some have been inevitably retrenched and these workers have gone through tough times and their families too. Fortunately, many have received help and encouragement from the unions to find new jobs and to pull through the difficulties. For that, I would like to thank all the union leaders and all your members for your contributions.

Now, we are past the worst of the storm. Second quarter, we had 20 per cent GDP growth, quarter-on-quarter. Third quarter, we just had the flash estimates yesterday, 15 per cent growth, quarter-on-quarter, which was much better than we had expected. And if you compare third quarter this year with third quarter a year ago, which was mostly before Lehman Brothers collapsed, we are, in fact, above water. We went up by 0.8 per cent. As a result of this, we have revised up our growth estimates for this year again and our latest estimate for 2009 is somewhere between minus two per cent and minus two-and-a-half per cent, still minus, but not bad.

This past year is not just a roller coaster ride but a bungee jump. It has taught us and reminded us of some important lessons. First, that we are a small and open economy and more vulnerable to the global storm than other countries. Malaysia has gone on down too, but less than us. Indonesia is more or less stable because it has a big domestic economy. Vietnam, also bigger than us, is growing steadily, and it has not gone negative. But Singapore, we went down sharply, we came back up also sharply. We are more volatile, more open. But while we are small, we are not unable to protect ourselves. We have the means to do that. How? By staying united and tackling the challenges together, by analysing the situation carefully and doing sensible, rational things which work for us, by making full use of all our resources in the crisis, but also remembering during normal times to build up our capabilities, build up our reserves, put away something for the rainy day and strengthen our cohesion so that when we need to work together, we have a team.

That is the history lesson, but the question is what comes next and what should we do about it?

The IMF’s assessment is that the major economies have stabilised and next year the world should see modest growth and, therefore, Singapore should also see modest but positive growth in 2010, which is good news. But I would like you to bear in mind the possibility of something not-so-happy happening. We do not think it will happen, but things could go wrong. Why can it go wrong? Because the growth you see in Europe, in America, and to a lesser extent, in China, is because of government spending. The government is distributing vouchers, credits, reducing taxes, encouraging people to spend, buy cars, buy electronics, washing machines, whatever. It feels good while it lasts, but when it runs out and the stimulus ends, the economies may slow down again. And if their economies slow down again, our growth will also dampen. So we have to bear that in mind.

We also have to bear in mind that in any case, our unemployment is likely to stay up for some time. Whether we grow next year or whether we have a very slow difficult year next year, our unemployment is not likely to come down quickly. Second quarter was 3.3 per cent. We thank our lucky stars it was only 3.3 per cent. In the short term - third and fourth quarters - it may well rise higher than that. We do not have the numbers yet, we will have them by the end of the month, but it may well go up because unemployment numbers tend to lag economic recovery. When business comes back, employers want to be absolutely confident that the business is really up, that the economy is really going to sustain its growth before they start hiring again on a big scale. The US unemployment now is nearly ten per cent and they are expected to go above ten per next year. Europe, too, unemployment is up. We must expect some impact on us in Singapore of these overall economic conditions. Therefore, we have to be psychologically prepared for dampened growth, or anyway for unemployment to stay high.

This is the backdrop against which we have to decide what to do with our special measures in the Resilience Package. There are three of them which we have to think about - SPUR, the Special Risk Sharing Initiative and, of course, Jobs Credit. SPUR is the easiest to discuss because it is a two-year programme, and it has one more year to go. We will let it run for these full two years because it is a right programme. We will continue to need job training and upgrading, whether it is a recession, whether it is a boom, whether the economy picks up faster or slower. We must therefore continue to incentivise companies and also incentivise workers to up-skill, re-skill, and multi-skill. In fact, we have to redouble our efforts as we come out from the recession because in the longer term, I think the challenges are going to be greater.

The Special Risk Sharing Initiative is a scheme to encourage banks to continue lending money to businesses even in the downturn and not to pull back all their lines. It has helped up to maintain the loans to companies and it has kept many SMEs afloat who might otherwise have crashed even though their business was fundamentally okay. I think now that conditions are more normal, banks have become more willing to lend to companies, but there is still some uncertainty and in some sectors, companies are still having difficulty getting financing. The scheme runs until January. We have a bit of time. We will monitor the situation before we decide what to do, but whatever we do, whether we continue it, modify it, alter it, the Government will continue to support companies to have access to credit.

Thirdly, Jobs Credit, which I think is what unionists are most concerned with. The scheme has done its work. It has held retrenchment down and unemployment numbers down. The final payment of the Jobs Credit will be done in December and is based on October payrolls. That means, payroll this month will determine the final payment of the Jobs Credit which is in December on the present scheme. This was an extraordinary response to a grave economic crisis. Strictly speaking, after the second quarter and third quarter numbers, with the improving global situation, the Jobs Credit is no longer needed because the economy is recovering and some companies are hiring again. But if we withdraw the Jobs Credit suddenly and completely, I think companies may have some difficulties adjusting. So, we talked to employers and unions to get a feel for their sense of what the situation was and both sides, employers as well as unions, understood the need to withdraw the Jobs Credit, but they hope to be given another few months. We have carefully considered all these views and we have decided what to do. We will extend the programme for another half a year, with two more payments but on a stepped-down rate. The current rate is 12 per cent of salary, subject to a cap of $2,500 on the salary. There will be two more payments - first payment based on employees on the payroll in January 2010 and the payment will be at half-rate, six per cent of salary, and the second payment which is based on employees on the payroll in April 2010 which will be at one-quarter rate, at three per cent of salary. It is two extra payments and it is not cheap. It is going to cost the Government $675 million.

Question is how are we going to pay for this? We funded the Jobs Credit from Past Reserves. We got the President's permission and the CPA’s permission to spend the money from the Past Reserves because at that time, we were facing the bleakest outlook we had seen since independence, at least economically, and so we felt it was justified and the President agreed with us. This is no longer the situation today. Therefore, the two new Jobs Credits payments will be funded out of the normal government budget. We have not asked the President and we have informed the President that we are going back to regular government financing. This is back to normal economic management and I think the Government should take responsibility.

We appreciate that not all companies are out of the woods. Some SMEs are still concerned about business conditions, some industries are still under pressure and also unemployment, as I explained, will take a while to come down. But we have to see these issues in totality of the whole economy and of the measures which we are taking. The Jobs Credit is not meant to help specific companies or specific industries. In particular, it is not meant to help weaker companies instead of stronger ones. It is an across-the-board relief to lighten the burden for everybody, necessary in the midst of an exceptional crisis. Now that the crisis has passed, we need more targeted measures to support economic restructuring and to enhance productivity.

Last week, I was in Tokyo. I visited the Keidanren, which is their employers’ federation, equivalent to SNEF, but, of course, much bigger, and met some of their senior businessmen. One senior Japanese businessman asked me a very penetrating question. He put it very politely because the Japanese always put things very politely, but he knew exactly what he wanted to ask. He said, you are encouraging companies to hold on to surplus workers, underemployed but holding on to them to keep unemployment down. But at the same time, you talk about promoting innovation, creativity, productivity. You have got Biopolis, Fusionopolis, R&D. How can you get all these new activities and all these productivity if companies are holding on to surplus workers? So, I explained to him. I said holding on to surplus workers is a short-term measure. The economy has plunged, we do not want companies to cut all their workers immediately. Let us hold on and see what happens first. But even then, we did not just have Jobs Credit. We also had SPUR to upgrade the workers during this slack period and we did not just have these temporary first aid measures. We also formed the Economic Strategies Committee to work on strategies for the longer terms, things which he was referring to – R&D, Biopolis and so on. With the Jobs Credit, we helped to stabilise the unemployment and the overall situation. Therefore, we could pursue innovation, train the workers and develop longer-term strategies.

The Japanese businessman was absolutely right. We needed the Jobs Credit in the emergency, but if we keep it for too long, it will delay restructuring which is necessary and it will discourage workers and resources from being moved from companies which are less productive and need them less to companies which are more productive, which are growing, which need them more and where they can make a contribution and where they can do better for themselves after the transition. We cannot prosper again and sustain our growth by keeping workers underemployed and underproductive. In the longer term, we have to pursue higher productivity, build capabilities and move workers from the less competitive businesses into the newer, more competitive expanding businesses. In other words, we have to foster restructuring. We cannot hold back restructuring, we cannot freeze our economy where it was in 2007 before all these problems started.

The Economic Strategies Committee is working hard. It will have recommendations in time for the Budget next year. The Budget will have measures and programmes to support companies' efforts to grow, to innovate and to compete based on higher productivity and better performance. And the measures and programmes will reward the firms which are best able to spur jobs creation over the medium to long term. That will be a better approach to sustain our growth than to continue with emergency measures for too long.

Given this global situation, we expect to see slower growth over the next one or two years, but beyond that, the prospects for Asia and Singapore are bright. There are many positive factors for the Asian economies - low cost, improving infrastructure and hardworking, talented, hungry people - people who want to do better, who are working hard for themselves, who want to transform the economies and who create opportunities for us in the middle of Asia. Singapore has many positive factors too, not just our location, but also because we have impressed others. By the way our workers have stayed resilient and flexible. By the way we have responded decisively and effectively and avoided politically-popular but damaging actions which would have hurt ourselves. And by the way Singaporeans and unions have supported the measures and given their confidence to the Government. And so we have reinforced our reputation as a stable and conducive place to do business and people are noticing.

For example, there was a French business delegation in town earlier this month. It was led by a French bank, Credit Agricole, and 30 of their French companies were here. The bank’s Chief Economist came with them, Jean-Paul Betbeze, and he explained why they were here. He said Singapore is tipped to be one of the winners in this new financial world order because companies are looking for ‘clear, neat and consistent rules, and good regulators implementing them’, especially financial services companies. You need to know what the rules are, you need to have confidence in the regulators and the Government to be honest, capable and not to change the rules on you. People now want to be in a safe place for banking and finance. He said Singapore will face competition in Asia, especially from other financial hubs like Shanghai and Hong Kong, but Singapore still occupies a crucial niche as an alternative to these two other cities which are more Chinese-centric. That is what other business people tell us too. I met one multinational who is moving his big global headquarters here and he said he has got an office now in Hong Kong, but it was very difficult to persuade them to spend any time thinking outside of China because China is such a big opportunity. If you are in Hong Kong, you are focused only on China, but if you are in Singapore, China is still there, but the rest of Asia is there, and the rest of the world is there, so Singapore is a good place to be. Another thing which is going for Singapore, according to this French economist, is that we have successfully established ourselves as a ‘double hub: as a centre for exports as well as one of the key financial capitals in Asia’. So, we have got finance, manufacturing, services, we are exporting as well as doing financial business and so French companies are using Singapore as a springboard into the region.

Therefore, even now we are getting companies come to Singapore and new jobs are being created here. A couple of weeks ago, there were many Russian businessmen in town because there was a Russian-Singapore business forum. So, I went to meet them. I met one Russian businessman. He owns a company in St Petersburg, way up north in Russia, and he makes materials for bathroom fittings, toilets, wash basins and so on. He supplies the materials, he does the logistics. He has two global purchasing headquarters, one is in London, one is in Shenzhen. Having come to Singapore several times, having seen Singapore and decided that he likes Singapore, he is going to move the two headquarters to Singapore, make one global purchasing headquarters here, in place of London and Shenzhen, and he is going to move here and he is going to move his family here too. By the time somebody from St Petersburg comes to Singapore, brings his business here, his family here and hopefully in the longer term, strike roots here, I think we are doing a good thing.

But we must also understand that the world has changed and our circumstances have also changed. We will do well this way as long as we continue to transform ourselves and our economy and prepare our workers for change. The external conditions are different. After the global crisis, the businesses which went out will not come back soon and new competitors will come and we have to go into new areas of business. But apart from the world, I think in Singapore we will face capacity constraints. We need land for industries, we are almost full. We need workers to man our factories and businesses. We have large numbers of foreign workers and we cannot easily just double them again. We cannot just expand indefinitely. We must adapt to our physical limits and find ways to transcend these physical limits — go abroad, do business in the region and make the most of the space, the people, the resources we have within Singapore.

Foreign workers are a very good example. We are acting to moderate the inflow of foreign workers because there is a limit to the number we can have in Singapore. We put them in dormitories, we put them in old schools, we even have to put some of them in Serangoon Gardens. That is about 800,000 foreign workers. If I had twice that number, I would have nowhere to put them and so we have to moderate the inflow and make the best use of them. I think union leaders may feel relieved because you may feel that this means less competition for our own workers, especially at the lower end. I have discussed this with the Central Committee members and they have felt that they have been under pressure and the foreign workers are cheaper and work harder, and Singaporeans find it hard to compete. Maybe if there are fewer foreign workers, the competition will be less. It may be so, but only for a short term because in the long term, if we cannot increase our workforce easily, it will have major implications for our economy and even for our own people. Because it will be harder to maximise our growth in a boom. In normal times too, growth will be slower. That means there will be less vibrancy, that means it will be less easy for Singaporeans to find jobs and to find opportunities.

Employers are already finding it harder to find workers. You read about it in the newspapers: we have tightened up on the rules and you can see employers saying they cannot find workers and some of them appealing when their workers are taken back. Some of it is employers hoping that the Government will relax, but at the same time, I think there is an important element of truth there, that if we do not have that many workers, we would miss opportunities which will come our way. But we have to trade off: on the one hand, how many we can take, on the other hand, how many opportunities are there. We have got to judge this carefully and calibrate our policies to maintain the right balance. But Singaporeans will have to get used to lower growth than before and we have to make this trade-off. We cannot avoid it.

Within the constraints, we have to do our utmost to maximise our performance. For example, there are things we can do. We can expand our local workforce, get more seniors to work, get more women back in the workforce, get more childcare, so it is easier for women to go back after they have had babies. But more crucial, we have to become more productive. Each worker has to be more productive, each team has to be more productive, each organisation, whether it is a company or a government department, has to be more productive. As Mr Lim Swee Say says, we must be cheaper, better, faster — CBF. What does this mean for workers? It means that in a globalised economy, you cannot expect to do the same job and ride an escalator up effortlessly and earn more and more by doing more or less the same work every year. It is not possible. Other people will be doing the same work as you and more other people will be doing the same work and willing to do it cheaper. If they are not here, they will be in Malaysia, if not in Indonesia, if not in Vietnam, if not in China, and if Shenzhen does not have the workers, somewhere, Chengdu or Xian or Yunnan or Kunming, somebody would be willing to do this job. To earn more, each worker has to upgrade himself, become more skilled, do higher value jobs. You have to keep on learning and improving in order to earn more as you go along. It is true of workers, it is true of companies. Companies can only do better if they innovate, if they improve their processes and products, if they venture into new and promising areas. It is not like riding an escalator, it is like rowing a boat upstream and if you are not making progress forward, the water is going to push you back.

Economy-wide, we have to phase out the less productive activities gradually and replace them with new activities and new industries. We cannot stop companies relocating to other countries which have picked up these capabilities, but we can continue moving up to attract and to retain new activities and to encourage new companies as well as companies who are already here to upgrade and to deepen their roots. You look at the disk drive industry. It used to be one of the biggest industries in Singapore, it has been here for 30 years. We worried for almost these 30 years how long we can keep this industry because we could see that other people were developing their capabilities, and each time we saw a new centre come up, we ask ourselves what happens to our jobs? We had Seagate, we had Maxtor, we had Connors, so many companies. In fact, many of the companies have disappeared. But we have kept the industry for 30 years because each time a new centre came up, we were able to upgrade our operation here, to have more sophisticated disk drives, more complicated, more flexible operations. So UWEEI remains one of the biggest unions in Singapore because a lot of their members work in the disk drive industry. We watched Penang, we kept our position; Thailand, we kept our position. We watched Philippines, they tried but not so successfully. We watched China, they set up in Wuxi. In fact, we had an industrial park in Wuxi and they came to our industrial park. At first with some difficulties, but they mastered the skills. So, now, finally after 30 years, Seagate says we are going to phase out disk drive making in Singapore by the end of next year, and it means we will lose about 3,000 jobs. But Seagate will still be here, doing hard-disk drive media manufacturing, making the material for the disks, doing R&D, having an international headquarters here and there will be about 2,000 people working for Seagate still in Singapore.

The process continues. We are really rowing the boat like everybody else and some we let go. It is alright, provided we get new activities coming in - aeroplane engines, pharmaceuticals, IT and so on. It is easy to say you are rowing the boat, but it means constant change, constant adapting, constant retraining for workers, new skills, new jobs, new industries. There is a very important role for NTUC to play because left to themselves workers may be worried and confused, but the unions can help them to cope with the uncertainty, to understand the economic reality and to undergo the training and retraining and, therefore, master the situation and make progress in their lives.

I am a bit worried that because the worst of this crisis has passed, people may not strive so hard to upgrade themselves. Already, interest in SPUR has declined. Last year, SPUR’s “business” was very, very hot, even earlier this year. But now companies are not so anxious and the workers are not quite so anxious to go to SPUR anymore. But, in fact, the global competition is still there and you have to get the message across to the workers: continual training is the only way forward. We will give you our full support. As a government, we are investing millions of dollars. We are establishing two new campuses for continuing education and training, one East Campus at Paya Lebar Regional Center, one West Campus at Jurong Lake District, to be one-stop shops for training and retraining workers, and sourcing and redesigning of jobs. It will be like E2i campus, but bigger and better. Please make full use of them.

There is no short-cut or easy solution for this. Even Japan, which is a very cohesive and very developed and well-organised economy, finds this a difficult problem. They used to work on a very corporatist system, to give workers certainty and stability. There is seniority-based, lifetime employment, for a large number of their workers. So workers work with one company throughout their life, their pay based on how long they have been there. In return, the company looks after the workers: down period, you hang on to them, during up periods, you reward them and your worker’s identity is your company. And in the services sector, they kept protected jobs for Japanese workers who are not so productive. If you go into a Japanese department store, you go into the hotel, somebody opens the door, two pretty girls bow at you. You go into the lift, pretty girls bow at you again. You come out from the lift, somebody else is there. It is not just for me, it is for all the visitors. But it is not sustainable and what is happening now is that the Japanese companies are outsourcing temporary workers who accept lower pay, no benefits, so that unemployment has gone up, income of the lower end has fallen, inequality of income has become a problem. It is one of the reasons, not the only one, but one of the reasons why the Japanese got fed up with the LDP and voted overwhelmingly for a new government from the opposition party, from the DPJ, with Mr Hatoyama as the Prime Minister. Now the new government has to grapple with the same very difficult issues, but they will not find easy solutions either. If the world’s second biggest economy cannot protect its workers in a closed system, Singapore, with a small and open economy, has no hope of doing so successfully. The only way for us is to push for constant transformation, to create new economic space to grow and to prosper.

I was overall encouraged by my visit to Japan. They wanted to know about Singapore, they wanted to know about the region, they wanted to know what their opportunities were for working with us. Many of them are thinking of using Singapore as a base to service the region, for example, in India, where they do not find the environment so familiar. Others want to work with Singapore companies to do projects all over the world, for example, in water technologies. We will do our best to bring them here. Other companies too are coming here. You have heard about Rolls-Royce, you have heard about Medtronics, Abbott, Roche. Even Asian companies like Li Ning. You may not have heard of Li Ning, but Li Ning was the athlete who ran around the wall of the Olympic Stadium last year, “飞岩走壁” and he makes sports shoes and clothes and he wants to set up here.

So, we have good projects. We are a bit shy to talk about them publicly because EDB says the companies do not want to be misunderstood that they are taking jobs away from other countries to come here. Please do not cause them difficulties with unions elsewhere because they do not want difficulties with their government, with their own workers there. But in fact we are doing well and one of the reasons we are doing well is because the unions in Singapore understand what is necessary and support them with the environment which enables them to prosper in Singapore. We are very grateful for the unions to do this. Because of you, because we have worked together, we have delivered good results, even in a crisis year and we will ensure a bright future for the country. Let us continue to push together, to make progress and to improve the lives of all Singaporeans.

Thank you very much.

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