Commentary: Companies and workers, forget life before COVID-19. Budget 2021 will help us prepare for life after it

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While the Budgets in 2020 were cumulatively about preservation and adaptation during an emergency, Budget 2021 is about necessary structural ...

The subsequent Budgets did not stinge on moves to make going digital simple for SMEs, since such firms employ two-thirds of the workforce and contribute nearly half of Singapore’s GDP.These schemes include the SMEs Go Digital programme, Start Digital Solutions, Productivity Solutions Grant, and the SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit, just to name a few.

The hope is to return to “business as usual” pre-pandemic. But the reality is that those “brick and mortar” business models are facing an existential threat from the accelerating shift from physical to digital, from tangible to intangible, from borders to a cyber-world.Thankfully, the 2021 Budget’s laser focus on transformation and frontier tech should dispel discussions over whether Singapore is out of the woods and clearly cast the lens to the future in a post-COVID era instead.

There are also plans to launch new schemes such as a chief technology officer or CTO-as-a-Service initiative, a Digital Leaders Programme to help firms hire a core digital team, and an Emerging Technology Programme that will co-fund the costs of testing and adopting new technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence.

They should ultimately expand the markets for local enterprises beyond the domestic shores as part of reinforcing economic resilience.For workers, the transformation of workforce skills is pivotal to aiding and empowering Singapore firms to embrace the digital economy. Workers wearing face masks fumigate a construction site to prevent the spread of dengue fever in Singapore on Apr 17, 2020.

 

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