Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong has said Singapore's workforce needs to raise productivity and improve capabilities to spur economic growth.
Mr Goh said these two issues will be addressed by the Economic Strategies Committee when it releases its report on February 1. He was speaking on the sidelines of a community event on Sunday.
Mr Goh was at his Marine Parade ward, giving out hongbaos to welfare recipients.
Even as the government is trying to help those who are less well-off, Mr Goh said Singaporeans have to be prepared for slower economic growth.
Singapore's economy grew by five per cent on average per year over the last decade. But the growth came mainly from expanding the foreign workforce.
Mr Goh noted that Singapore's productivity increased by only one per cent a year in the same period.
As the government is committed to cut the growth of foreign workforce, Mr Goh said Singapore will need to double its productivity to achieve a three to four per cent growth every year. But he cautioned that this will not be easy.
He said: "This is the trade-off. If you want to grow fast, it means a larger foreign workforce, which I think is not advisable because already we have too huge a presence of a foreign workforce in Singapore and we are not emphasizing productivity."
Mr Goh suggested that Singapore's services industry can look to its European counterparts on how to improve productivity levels.
He said: "If you have been to Europe, you find that we have one person serving many people. Here, we have many people serving one customer.
"When I first went to Brussels, I was very impressed by just one lady ... serving about 10 customers. Her business had just started. She was her own cashier, she was the coffeemaker, she was the cleaner, everything, just one person."
Mr Goh also responded to reporters on the news that more young people are joining the opposition parties.
He said: "If they wish to choose to contest against us - they are decent people with good views - I think it is to be welcomed. Of course, I will be happier they would join us, but let it be.
"We have been interviewing people. But frankly speaking, don't stir up any excitement about election. I think we are still concentrating on economic recovery."
Mr Goh added that the People's Action Party (PAP) has also been going out to attract younger candidates, including more women.
WE ARE ALL ONE FAMILY.
Monday, January 25, 2010
PM Lee maps out 3 priorities for govt: economy, population, politics
Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday identified three areas of priority for the government: restructuring the economy, addressing the population shortfall and updating the political system.
In a wide-ranging speech to the annual Singapore Perspective Conference organised by the Institute of Policy Studies, Mr Lee said Singapore's economic policies must enable the country's economy to perform to its limits and help Singaporeans thrive in the new world.
He said the Economic Strategies Committee will publish its recommendations next week and the government will respond to them in the Budget.
On the population shortfall, Mr Lee said Singapore's birth rates are not improving despite the government's best efforts.
Last year, there were about 170 fewer live births than in 2008.
This would mean that the total fertility rate would have gone down further.
PM Lee stressed that while the decline could have been due to the global economic downturn, it was still a grave trend. If left unchecked, Singapore will face not just an ageing, but a shrinking population.
Therefore, he said the government needs to encourage Singaporeans to start families with parenthood benefits and other incentives.
However, he added that the country must also top up the population and talent pool with immigration in a measured and calibrated manner.
Turning to the subject of updating the political system, Mr Lee said that while having a sound system is essential, that in itself is not enough to produce political stability and good governance.
He said that the nation is still dependent on having the right people in charge and an able and committed team coming forward to lead the country.
The Prime Minister said a key task for his predecessors and himself has always been to identify promising people to form the next team.
He said good progress has been made in this area but he does not have a complete next team lined up in Cabinet yet.
He is confident that by the next general election, the People's Action Party (PAP) will field a team which will consist the core of the next generation leadership.
Mr Lee also stressed that leadership renewal will be a major issue in the next general election.
Countdown to Shanghai Expo
LESS than 100 days before the World Expo opens in Shanghai, armies of workers wearing yellow and orange hard-hats are buzzing around a huge muddy site where the pavilions are far from finished.
But officials say preparations are on track for the massive six-month event, which is due to bring at least 70 million visitors streaming into China's biggest city from May 1.
'We're confident as we've been working on this for eight years,' said Xu Bo, assistant commissioner general at the World Expo. 'Right now 90 per cent of the structural work is finished and now we're starting interior work.'
Less than two years after China successfully hosted the Beijing Olympics, Expo 2010 will offer the Asian giant a new opportunity to impress the world, and organisers promise the event will be record-breaking. The site is the biggest ever for an Expo and it will welcome a record 192 participating countries and 50 international organisations, along with the mammoth number of visitors, most of them Chinese.
'The Expo is a sign of power, and for us it's a very strong symbol,' Mr Xu said about the first Expo to be held in a developing country, funded by a budget of more than four billion dollars.
China has also allocated US$14 billion (S$19.6 billion) for new highways, subway lines, road repairs and the renovation of many districts in Shanghai - a figure that does not even include the expansion of the city's Pudong airport. 'Shanghai has become a permanent building site,' said Mr Xu.Work smarter, harder
SINGAPOREANS have to work smarter and harder, and pick up new skills to keep the economy growing over the next decade, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said on Sunday.
Given the Government's move to moderate the influx of foreign workers, the rate at which productivity is increased will have to double if economic growth is to hit 3 per cent to 4 per cent a year, he explained.
Raising productivity is one area that the Economic Strategies Committee (ESC) will address in its recommendations on Feb 1, he said.
The Government forecasts economic growth of 3 per cent to 5 per cent this year and on Saturday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong tempered expectations of an overly strong economic recovery.
Speaking on the sidelines of a community event on Sunday, Mr Goh noted that average annual economic growth was 5 per cent over the past 10 years. But productivity rose just 1 per cent a year on average.
This good growth came from an expanding labour force, of which foreigners constituted a large part. But reducing reliance on foreign workers meant Singapore had to double its productivity growth to 2 per cent, he said.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Is too much sitting as bad as too little exercise?
Sitting all day may significantly boost the risk of lifestyle-related disease even if one adds a regular dose of moderate or vigorous exercise, scientists said Tuesday.
The health benefits of pulse-quickening physical activity are beyond dispute - it helps ward off cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, among other problems.
But recent scientific findings also suggest that prolonged bouts of immobility while resting on one's rear end may be independently linked to these same conditions.
"Sedentary time should be defined as muscular inactivity rather than the absence of exercise," concluded a team of Swedish researchers.
"We need to consider that we are dealing with two distinct behaviours and their effects," they reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Led by Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the scientists proposed a new "paradigm of inactivity physiology," and urged fellow researchers to rethink the definition of a sedentary lifestyle.
They point to a recent study of Australian adults showing that each daily one-hour increase in sitting time while watching television upped the rate of metabolic syndrome in women by 26 per cent - regardless of the amount of moderate-to-intensive exercise performed.
Thirty minutes of daily physical exercise decreased the risk by about the same percentage, suggesting that being a couch potato can cancel out the benefits of hitting treadmill or biking, for example.
Metabolic syndrome is defined as the presence of three or more factors including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, high cholesterol or insulin resistance.
New research is required to see if there is a causal link between being sedentary and these conditions and, if so, how it works, the researchers said.
One candidate is lipoprotein lipase, or LPL, an enzyme that plays a crucial role in breaking down fat within the body into useable forms.
Recent research has shown that LPL activity was significantly lower in rats with restrained muscle activity - as low as one tenth of the levels of rats allowed to walk about.
The LPL level during such activity "was not significantly different from that of rats exposed to higher levels of exercise," the scientists reported.
"This stresses the importance of local muscle contraction per se, rather than the intensity of the contraction."
These studies suggest that people should not only exercise frequently, but avoid sitting in one place for too long, they said.
Climbing stairs rather than using an elevator, taking five-minute breaks from a desk job, and walking when possible to do errands rather than driving were all recommended.
The health benefits of pulse-quickening physical activity are beyond dispute - it helps ward off cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity, among other problems.
But recent scientific findings also suggest that prolonged bouts of immobility while resting on one's rear end may be independently linked to these same conditions.
"Sedentary time should be defined as muscular inactivity rather than the absence of exercise," concluded a team of Swedish researchers.
"We need to consider that we are dealing with two distinct behaviours and their effects," they reported in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Led by Elin Ekblom-Bak of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the scientists proposed a new "paradigm of inactivity physiology," and urged fellow researchers to rethink the definition of a sedentary lifestyle.
They point to a recent study of Australian adults showing that each daily one-hour increase in sitting time while watching television upped the rate of metabolic syndrome in women by 26 per cent - regardless of the amount of moderate-to-intensive exercise performed.
Thirty minutes of daily physical exercise decreased the risk by about the same percentage, suggesting that being a couch potato can cancel out the benefits of hitting treadmill or biking, for example.
Metabolic syndrome is defined as the presence of three or more factors including high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, high cholesterol or insulin resistance.
New research is required to see if there is a causal link between being sedentary and these conditions and, if so, how it works, the researchers said.
One candidate is lipoprotein lipase, or LPL, an enzyme that plays a crucial role in breaking down fat within the body into useable forms.
Recent research has shown that LPL activity was significantly lower in rats with restrained muscle activity - as low as one tenth of the levels of rats allowed to walk about.
The LPL level during such activity "was not significantly different from that of rats exposed to higher levels of exercise," the scientists reported.
"This stresses the importance of local muscle contraction per se, rather than the intensity of the contraction."
These studies suggest that people should not only exercise frequently, but avoid sitting in one place for too long, they said.
Climbing stairs rather than using an elevator, taking five-minute breaks from a desk job, and walking when possible to do errands rather than driving were all recommended.
High levels of vitamin D cut risk of colon cancer: study
High levels of vitamin D are linked with a lower risk of colon cancer, according to a comparison of more than half a million Europeans, published online Friday by the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
Patients with the highest levels of vitamin D in their blood had a nearly 40 per cent lower risk of colorectal cancer compared to those with the lowest levels.
Vitamin D, derived mainly from sunlight but also found in foods, plays a key role in bone strength by increasing levels of calcium in the blood.
Whether it affects incidence of cancer has been hotly debated and the evidence is sketchy.
The paper draws on a very large study, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) project, carried out in 10 Western European countries.
The authors sound a note of caution, saying it is unclear whether vitamin D supplements are any more effective than a balanced diet or getting regular exposure to sunlight.
Further work is needed, they add, to show whether the statistical link in this investigation is born out - and whether there could be any side effects from taking supplements or eating food fortified with vitamin D.
Smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, alcohol and eating red and processed meats have previously been established as factors in cancer of the colon and rectum.
Patients with the highest levels of vitamin D in their blood had a nearly 40 per cent lower risk of colorectal cancer compared to those with the lowest levels.
Vitamin D, derived mainly from sunlight but also found in foods, plays a key role in bone strength by increasing levels of calcium in the blood.
Whether it affects incidence of cancer has been hotly debated and the evidence is sketchy.
The paper draws on a very large study, the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC) project, carried out in 10 Western European countries.
The authors sound a note of caution, saying it is unclear whether vitamin D supplements are any more effective than a balanced diet or getting regular exposure to sunlight.
Further work is needed, they add, to show whether the statistical link in this investigation is born out - and whether there could be any side effects from taking supplements or eating food fortified with vitamin D.
Smoking, obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, alcohol and eating red and processed meats have previously been established as factors in cancer of the colon and rectum.
Beijing per capita GDP tops US$10,000 in 2009
Average living standards in Beijing improved in 2009, with per capita gross domestic product topping US$10,000 for the first time, official data showed Friday.
The capital's economy grew 10.1 per cent on-year to 1.19 trillion yuan (US$174.3 billion) - exceeding the national GDP growth rate of 8.7 per cent - according to figures published on the Beijing Bureau of Statistics website.
This means per capita GDP for the city's 17.55 million residents reached 68,788 yuan, or US$10,077, the bureau said.
"The breakthrough is a milestone for Beijing," bureau deputy director Yu Xiuqin was quoted by state media as saying.
China's economy expanded by 8.7 per cent in 2009 after the government went on a four-trillion-yuan spending spree and bank lending nearly doubled from 2008, according to official data released Thursday.
Average annual disposable income for Beijing's city dwellers rose 8.1 per cent to US$3,915, while for rural residents around the capital, the figure reached US$1,755, up 11.5 per cent on the previous year.
Average living standards in Beijing still lag behind those in southern Guangzhou and Shanghai, where per capita GDP reached US$11,900 and US$10,529 respectively in 2008, according to latest official figures.
The capital's economy grew 10.1 per cent on-year to 1.19 trillion yuan (US$174.3 billion) - exceeding the national GDP growth rate of 8.7 per cent - according to figures published on the Beijing Bureau of Statistics website.
This means per capita GDP for the city's 17.55 million residents reached 68,788 yuan, or US$10,077, the bureau said.
"The breakthrough is a milestone for Beijing," bureau deputy director Yu Xiuqin was quoted by state media as saying.
China's economy expanded by 8.7 per cent in 2009 after the government went on a four-trillion-yuan spending spree and bank lending nearly doubled from 2008, according to official data released Thursday.
Average annual disposable income for Beijing's city dwellers rose 8.1 per cent to US$3,915, while for rural residents around the capital, the figure reached US$1,755, up 11.5 per cent on the previous year.
Average living standards in Beijing still lag behind those in southern Guangzhou and Shanghai, where per capita GDP reached US$11,900 and US$10,529 respectively in 2008, according to latest official figures.
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