Commentary

New tax framework outlined in Singapore Budget 2018 next step in enhancing country’s position as a fund management and domiciliation hub.

Logistics is the latest industry to face a bold makeover in the Singapore government's $4.5 billion Industry Transformation Programme. The initiative aims to achieve a value-add of S$8.3billion (US$6 billion) and 2000 jobs for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMET) by 2020 through leveraging on new technology such as big data and analytics.

I am a passionate Uber user. I have always used it in Singapore and when I travel in Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, Shanghai, London, anywhere I am on business. I am therefore very disappointed that Uber has called it a day and decided that 23% of Grab is better than competing. This is very bad news for consumers in Singapore. Here are five reasons why:

Today, investors are paying increasing attention on how companies are managing digital disruption. After all, no one wants to invest in the next Blockbuster or Kodak.

Many people ask how Singapore can prepare for, and lead in, the era of artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of talent and human capital. AI is bringing huge impact to all of our lives and so it is a natural question to ask.

It has been a year since Singapore took the landmark step of allowing legal finance for arbitration, bringing the country into line with the US, UK, Australia and numerous other leading centres of dispute resolution. Singapore took the prize for being the first Asian country to open up to legal finance. The Lion City is now in a highly competitive position to allow its users of arbitration to enjoy significantly lower legal costs to pursue meritorious cases, as well as improve their balance sheets and legal budgets. Following Singapore’s lead, countries and corporations across Asia are exploring how they too can enjoy the benefits of this innovative financial service.

With a high rate of mobile penetration and the proliferation of e-commerce sites in Singapore, more and more millennials are buying online. According to We Are Social, 59 percent of Singaporeans have made purchase online while 39 percent have purchased a product or service on their mobile devices in 2017.

Singapore’s mobile penetration hit a high of ~158% in the first quarter of 2014, but by the third quarter of 2017, it had fallen by 10% to reach ~148%. OCBC Investment Research in its 2017 telecom report predicts a “muted outlook as space gets crowded”. With penetration rates already this high, it appears that the Singapore app economy is nearing saturation.

Asia, the US and Europe, and in fact all global markets share the same trend towards: “Mobile Agility”. Mobile agility allows consumers access to information no matter where they are. Singapore is inherently unique in that the connectivity permeates across the island at both higher speeds and availability levels as it does in other places with more land mass. Either way, this technology makes it possible for consumers to go everywhere and do anything with the help of connected apps and IoT devices. From voice assistants like Alexa to Google to Connected Car Ecosystems, Mobile Agility technologies make every aspect of modern life easier.

In Singapore, with a changing workforce demographic comes a change in workplace preferences, attitudes and expectations.

Singapore’s hard-fought economic transformation is dependent on the ability of its enterprises and people, to learn, unlearn and relearn new capabilities and skillsets.

Singapore’s 2018 Budget includes a new Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) designed to help firms internationalise. This is welcome news, but with today’s growing climate of global protectionism and fragmentation, it will take more than grants and tax breaks to help firms navigate overseas expansion in this post-globalisation era.

Singapore’s e-commerce market is slowly positioning itself as a key player in the country’s retail industry. E-commerce is expected to make up 6.7 per cent of all retail sales in the city-state come 2025, triple that of the 2.1 per cent figure in 2015. The net worth of the e-commerce industry was estimated to reach more than US$5.4 billion (S$7.46 billion) in the next seven years, according to a 2017 financial report by Google and investment firm Temasek Holdings.

It seems as if queuing is almost part of the Singapore culture – it appears to be that we’re happy to queue for things we know will be worth the wait.

Traditionally, visibility and scrutiny of a company’s tax position was limited to a small number of interested parties who used disclosures in annual reports to garner what insight they could. In the last few years, that position has changed dramatically. The Panama and Paradise papers, along with numerous news headlines, have led to Boards taking a much closer interest in tax and its impact on reputational risk.

It was during one fine day in my trip at East Coast Park, when I decided to use a bike sharing app for the first time.