Mr Heng Swee Keat, Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies, launched the refreshed Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs) for five sectors from the Advanced Manufacturing & Trade cluster – Electronics, Precision Engineering, Energy & Chemicals, Aerospace and Logistics – at the opening ceremony of the Industrial Transformation Asia-Pacific 2022 (ITAP) trade event today.
The strategies outlined in the five ITMs pave the way towards Singapore’s overall goal to grow manufacturing value-added (VA) by 50 per cent from 2020 to 2030. This will be done by focusing on innovation, embracing sustainability and training talent to seize job opportunities in the backbone of our economy.
Manufacturing is the largest component of Singapore’s economy, making up 22 per cent of Singapore’s GDP in 2021. Together, the Electronics (including semiconductor), Precision Engineering, Energy & Chemicals, and Aerospace sectors contributed to 80 per cent of Singapore’s annual manufacturing output of S$372 billion. The Logistics sector is a critical enabler for goods to flow within Singapore and to the rest of the world.
Our established strengths in manufacturing allowed the economy to remain resilient through the pandemic. Manufacturing output grew by 13.2 per cent in 2021, almost twice the pace of overall economic growth that year of 7.6 per cent.
The refresh of these ITMs is timely given the dynamic global environment today. Fuelled by rising protectionism and inflationary pressures, more countries are looking to reshore and rebuild manufacturing capabilities closer to home. But despite sharper global competition, Southeast Asia has benefited from a reconfiguration of supply chains for resilience as well as a growing regional market. Manufacturing is also being reshaped by new decarbonisation and sustainability goals as well as the maturation of Industry 4.0 technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, robotics and the Internet of Things or IOT) that have made the production of goods more efficient than ever before.
Manufacturing will be smarter, greener and more connected in future. The ITMs reflect Singapore’s 2025 ambition for each of these five sectors:
- A critical global node for advanced Electronics manufacturing and innovation
- A vibrant ecosystem of digitalised Precision Engineering enterprises with a global footprint
- A sustainable global Energy & Chemicals hub that supports green growth
- A global node for Aerospace manufacturing, and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO), with leadership in engine MRO
- Asia’s leading Logistics ecosystem
(Please refer to the Annexe for more information on each ITM)
These five ITMs will uplift companies in Singapore through support for research and development, deep tech innovation, extensive digitalisation and environmental sustainability. They also aim to foster partnerships between local small and medium enterprises (SMEs), larger international firms and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to help SMEs adopt new technologies and build capabilities to capture global business opportunities.
In 2021, one in every eight jobs in Singapore – or around 450,400 jobs – were manufacturing jobs. The ITMs will spur the continued creation of good jobs for Singaporeans, and ensure workers have the relevant Industry 4.0, tech and sustainability skills to take on roles in emerging areas such as additive manufacturing and robotics for the Precision Engineering and Aerospace sectors, artificial intelligence for the Electronics sector, digitalisation for the Logistics sector, as well as process engineering for sustainable products in the Energy & Chemicals sector.
With the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, the local manufacturing workforce has evolved to become a “white-collar” workforce. There are more PMETs (Professional, Managers, Executives and Technicians) than non-PMETS in manufacturing roles. In 2021, 68 per cent of the local (Singapore citizens and PRs) manufacturing workforce worked in PMET roles, a 6 percentage point increase from 2017. Manufacturing labour productivity also grew by 11.9 per cent per year from 2017 to 2021, up from 5.3 per cent per year in the preceding five years.
