SINGAPORE: It is COVID-19 rather than trade wars or geopolitical events that has triggered a long overdue global recession in 2020.
Singapore ports handled 37.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units of containers in 2019 or an average of 3.1 million TEUs every month. For the second quarter of this year though, it fell 6.2 per cent from the previous year to an average of 2.9 million a month.Given these slowing economic activity indicators, it therefore came as no surprise that the Ministry of Manpower reported this week that labour market conditions weakened in the second quarter.
For instance, according to Keppel Corp, Keppel Offshore and Marine's Singapore workforce was reduced to about 1,200 persons at the start of the circuit breaker in April, from about 24,000 in March. Governments and central banks around the world are still taking a “whatever it takes” approach to minimise the harm to their economies. “Whatever it takes” in Singapore saw the government rolling out four sets of budgetary measures over four months, equivalent to almost 20 per cent of GDP.
The COVID-19 pandemic forces huge changes in how people live and work, and how businesses, big and small operate. Singapore is adapting as well. The Ministerial Committee for Digital Transformation has been set up to accelerate the city-state's adoption of digital technology. For instance, for the local construction sector, when can contractors bring more of their workers to work sites? If subcontractors do not start work soon, they may not receive any payments in the second-half of this year. Can they survive?