What Singapore does best is strategic planning. That has ensured our success since our founding in 1965 and of course, the strong leadership and zero corruption tolerated. I believe that I should give praise when that is due and well deserved.
As a country, we are now at the crossroads again. The world has gone into a protectionistic mood, no thanks to Brexit and Trump and more of the same from Europe soon (Le Pen and others). Growth is pathetic at best and uncertainty super high. No one seems to be clear of what can happen next after 9 years of low inflation and slow growth from the GFC in 2008.
The government had started a committee called CFE (Committee on the Future Economy) almost a year ago to try to plot the country’s strategic direction for the next 10 years. The report was published this week.
The CFE propose 7 main strategies :
- Deepen and diversify our international connections
- Acquire and utilize deep skills
- Strengthen enterprise capabilities to innovate and scale up
- Build strong digital capabilities
- Develop a vibrant and connected city of opportunity
- Develop and implement industry transformation maps
- Partner one another to enable growth and innovation
The full report is 143 pages long and there is 15 pages executive summary in the attached link below :
https://www.gov.sg/microsites/future-economy/the-cfe-report/read-the-full-report
How does this affect us? There will be more details coming out in the coming week and government policies and subsidies will be geared towards these areas as the country refocus on what is important to ensure our survival in the long-term.
I had lunch with a group of close friends this week and we were talking about our Plan B, what to do next since some of us are into the retirement stage. Given that the country has provided us with a roadmap for the next 10 years, perhaps we should align our interest to this and figure out if we can create a business proposition. That is our homework for the week. Hopefully, we can come out with a coherent plan to execute. As Yoda says : “To do or not do, there is no try.”
One recurring theme continues to come to mind for me : start a retirement village. I have talked about it in detail in this blog. I tried to start it last year but was unable to. Maybe its time has come now? I need to explore this again. It will be a first to market advantage if I can pull this off.
Meanwhile, we should also continue to brainstorm on other possible ideas too.
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