PM: Govt 'has drawn lessons from planning inadequacy'

LOH CHEE KONG Today Online 16 Jan 15;

SINGAPORE — For a Government known for its foresight, the fact that it did not build up its infrastructure quickly enough in anticipation of a population growth driven mainly by an influx of foreign workers still gnaws on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who cited this as a regret in his 10 years or so leading the country. But lessons have been learnt: In future, policymakers have to be prepared for a wide range of outcomes and “insure ourselves”, he said.

“We have to plan in future less conservatively and try to be less precise in our prognostications,” said Mr Lee, adding that the external environment has a huge bearing – apart from government policies - on how the country shapes up in the next decade.

It is precisely with this approach that the Government put up the Population White Paper last year, with a 6.9 million population planning parameter for 2030 which was, however, misunderstood by the public as a target. “We do not want 6.9 million as a target but I want to have infrastructure… I want to get myself ready. If unexpected things happen, I can be prepared,” Mr Lee said. “That is the attitude which the Government needs even more, and so does the population. And when things turn out not quite right, well, we accept that that is the way the world is.”

Nevertheless, he could understand the public’s “strong emotional reaction” to the White Paper. On hindsight, the Government could have done better in communicating the White Paper if it had “a bit more time to prepare the ground - to explain it, to soft-sell, and prepare people to understand what is the issue”, he said.

In 2013, Mr Lee first admitted that the Government did not have 20/20 foresight, resulting in the problem of inadequate infrastructure. He brought up the issue again, when he was asked if he has any regret during his tenure as Prime Minister. “At the time we thought we were doing the right thing - pacing it, measuring it out, building it when we needed it and not spending resources until we needed to spend them,” he said. “It turned out that things did not pan out the way we expected.”

The Government has since taken steps to rectify the situation, ramping up public housing, tightening the inflow of migrant workers and improving public transportation.

On what he was most satisfied with, Mr Lee cited the continued emphasis on education, with a slew of far-reaching initiatives rolled out over the years. “Right from the beginning, at my first National Day Rally, one of my themes was on the young. We were talking about schools - Teach Less, Learn More and getting people to get the maximum out of their education,” he recounted.

Acknowledging the work of “successive capable, strong Education Ministers supported by competent and passionate professionals”, Mr Lee added: “We have followed through on that in many ways.” He cited the Government’s investments in schools, Edusave and building up the Institutes of Technical Education, among other initiatives. The polytechnic and university sectors have also been enhanced, with more university places being created for Singaporeans. Beyond formal education, there are also opportunities to develop skills relevant to the future and pursue lifelong learning.

Addressing criticism that the education system heaps too much pressure on students and parents, Mr Lee said: “If parents were unconcerned about their children’s education… we would have another set of problems… But we also would like people to have a holistic education. It is not just grades.”

The Ministry of Education has sought to re-emphasise character education in recent years, to reduce the fixation on academic grades. Mr Lee said: “Collectively, we put too much emphasis on tuition. We think that if we hothouse our children, it will make all the difference. I am not so sure.”

He added: “I can understand the concerns of the parents who want to give their children the best but we also want to give the children the time and the space to grow up. Have a certain steady attitude towards how the children are doing in school. If you get the top marks, that is good. If you did not quite get the top marks, it is not the end of the world. If you get into the school you prefer, well, congratulations; if you did not… keep on trying your best.”

Looking back on a decade as Prime Minister, Mr Lee said an important personal lesson is the need for the country – from the public, right through the Civil Service, ministries and the Cabinet - to work together. More than ever, the Prime Minister needs to depend on a strong team, he added. “That has been much more so than I expected. I would say for my successor, it would be even more so because the problems will be even more complex.”

'Slower growth but S'pore can still prosper'
LOH CHEE KONG Today Online 16 Jan 15;

SINGAPORE — The days of 5 to 6 per cent economic growth are behind Singapore, but the Republic can prosper if it responds well to a global environment that will be in constant flux with new technologies and competitors emerging, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. And part of the response, he added, lies in raising productivity – a national effort that must continue even though it has yet to bear fruits.

In 2010, the Government set an ambitious target of achieving 2 to 3 per cent productivity growth per annum over the decade. Since then, the lack of progress in the country’s productivity drive has led to businesses and economists casting doubts on the Government’s strategy.

On whether it was time to relook the approach, Mr Lee said: “We have to persevere, it is not something that can happen quickly, but something which we have to continue working on. We have the schemes, we have the emphasis… There is no alternative to this.”

Mr Lee did not mince words in expressing dismay at the progress of the productivity drive in his recent New Year message - he had described the productivity performance as disappointing and warned that incomes would soon stagnate if there was no improvement. Nevertheless, he acknowledged during the interview the scale of the task, which is tough “because you are asking companies to change the way they are doing things”.

“They have to learn new skills and they may need a new organisation - they may not be able to operate as one little shop,” he said. “You may need to franchise or join together, you may need to change altogether and instead of having one waiter per table, you have self-service and the waiter just comes at the beginning and pours your coffee for you.”

The economy was a recurring theme throughout the 70-minute interview, and Mr Lee said that internationally, it is recognised that Singapore is a developed economy “so it is not possible to grow 5 to 6 per cent per year anymore”.

“If we can (grow) 2 to 3 per cent per year for the next five years, we are doing well. Domestically, we have to get used to what that means. Three per cent (growth) per year means your wages will go up correspondingly, gradually year to year - maybe not every year but over four, five years you will see improvements if we are successful in our policies.”

For its part, the Government will try to keep costs down and is also doing more to help the low-income groups.

Mr Lee noted that for the middle-income, efforts to keep the tax burden considerably low, for example, are succeeding when compared to Hong Kong and Australia.

This, he said, means that “what you earn, you keep, rather than I spend on your behalf. If we can maintain that, then we can improve our lives progressively. If we cannot maintain that, we go to zero growth - I think we have a problem”.

With the outlook still murky for the major economies of the United States, China and Japan, Mr Lee said the global economy would be uncertain for a long time to come. “The global economy is never going to be certain, I mean, when everybody thinks that things are going swimmingly well, that is when you should get very worried that we are not paying attention to some danger and we are about to crash into something pretty soon,” he said.

“That was the situation before 2007 and everybody thought things were well, markets were brilliant and all making money and then you ran into a serious disaster.”

PM Lee on his achievements and regrets, after a decade at the helm
Channel NewsAsia 16 Jan 15;

SINGAPORE: As the nation gears up to celebrate its 50th anniversary this year, Singapore should take the occasion to take stock and focus on its vision for the years ahead, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in an interview with Singapore journalists earlier this week.

In his first such interview since reaching the milestone of 10 years at the helm, Mr Lee touched on a broad range issues, such as the evolving political landscape, the challenges facing Singapore and Singaporeans, and his vision for the country.

ON WHAT HE IS PARTICULARLY SATISFIED WITH

"I would say putting a lot of emphasis on education. Right from the beginning, my first National Day Rally, I remember one of my themes was on the young. And we were talking about the schools - 'teach less, learn more' - and getting people to get the maximum out of their education.

"We've followed through on that in many ways, investing in the schools, Edusave, resources for the principals, making sure every school is a good school, developing tertiary education, building up the ITEs. I've now opened all three of them - the East, the West and most recently, and the best of all, I think is the Central campus.

"We've expanded our polytechnics and upgraded our polys and they are now a very attractive option for many young people.

"We've expanded university education. SUTD was one manifestation. It means a lot more young people are getting into our universities now and we are expanding the numbers further and opening up new paths with UniSIM, with SIT (Singapore Institute of Technology), and we are talking about beyond formal education, skills future, lifelong learning.

"I think it is not a single decision, but it is a continuing, consistent emphasis over a long period of time and successive capable, strong Education Ministers supported by competent and passionate professionals. I think that is very important to our future."

ON HIS GREATEST REGRET

"In retrospect, it's easy to say that we should have been building up our infrastructure a lot faster; that we should have got our trains running; that we should have got our HDB flats built more.

"At that time, we thought we were doing the right thing, pacing it, measuring it out, building it when we needed it and not spending resources until we needed to spend them. It turned out that things didn't pan out the way we expected and I think in the future, we have to plan less conservatively, and try to be less precise in our prognostications.

"You want to predict what's going to happen."

ON THE POPULATION WHITE PAPER

"I think there was a strong emotional reaction when we put out the White Paper. In retrospect, if we have had a bit more time to prepare the ground, to explain it, to soft sell and prepare people to understand what it is that is the issue and what we are trying to do, we should have done better. But that's water under the bridge.

"I can understand the reactions of people because they are not reacting on the basis of reading a paper and then trying to take a dispassionate, almost academic approach, to what should be done. They are reacting on the basis of their direct context - colleagues at work, people on MRT trains, public places where foreign workers may gather - and they have a reaction, to say things have changed.

"I am not surprised there is some such anxiety among Singaporeans. I think we have worked hard at this. We have calibrated the policies, we have slowed down the inflows, we have tightened up on foreign workers. In fact, it is causing employers a lot of pain.

"We will continue to adjust to get the balance as right as we can, but I don't think we are able to relax because we have to continue in a sustainable way. But neither are we able to say: 'We go to zero and let's do away with all these people. We don't need them to build our trains, we don't need them to make houses. We don't need them to serve us noodles in the middle of the night when we go down to the hawker centre.' I think that is not practical.

"People ask me: 'Next year, what is the growth?' Or 'Ten years from now, what will Singapore be?' The answer is what I can guess, but actually a lot depends on what we do, a lot depends on how the world goes. We have to be prepared for a wide range of outcomes and insure ourselves."



ON HIS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

"I think it makes me a lot more conscious in pitching what I want to say, to ask myself: How will I distil this down in a form which somebody can digest on Facebook or Instagram? On Twitter it is very hard. It's 140 characters, I can just put a bit, but please click on this bit.ly to read more.

"But on Facebook, you can say a bit more, on Instagram, if you choose the right picture, the picture can tell a lot of stories. So it makes me a lot more conscious of the way I boil down my messages down into small chunks, and also the timing and the sense of the messages. You cannot always be putting out long, learned dissertations on some cosmic issue or other.

"There are times when you have to be light-hearted. There are times when you see a beautiful sunset, you share it with people and hope that they enjoy it with you. When you catch an owl somewhere in the Istana, maybe somebody is interested to see the owl. It's something unusual and personal. And I think that is helpful.

"But it's necessary, through Facebook, Instagram or whatever the next new thing is coming - I've not gone into Snapchat yet - to have not just light banter, but really some serious response, serious content as well."

ON COST OF LIVING

"In 1984, when I entered politics, nobody brought up the issue of cost of living. At that time, people were a lot less well-off than the people now, but nobody really felt they didn't have enough money. Or at least, they did not view this as the most important issue of their lives. This was because everyone believed their lives will improve and tomorrow will be better as long as they continued to work hard.

"Right now, our lives have indeed improved, and this applies even for low-income families. They live in better environments and their children have more opportunities to get a good education. But everyone still feels they don't have enough money. Why is that so? This isn't just a statistical problem and it also isn't just about the Consumer Price Index.

"This is about different lifestyles and people's aspirations. It's about people seeing what the average standard of living should be and everyone aspiring towards that. It's about them feeling the need to accomplish what they want in life and yet feeling that they can't because they don't have enough money. So they think they have a problem with the cost of living. It's not easy to solve."

ON OCCUPY CENTRAL

"We're all considered Asia's four new dragons, and we've all experienced a period of rapid growth. But in the last 10 years or so, we've been moving in different countries. Hong Kong is a part of China, but what is Hong Kong worried about? Housing prices, whether young people can afford their own houses. If they can't find a place to stay, they don't even have to think about starting a family.

"They're worried about China, not just in terms of competitiveness, but also whether the massive China society would overwhelm Hong Kong's uniqueness. So Occupy Central is about electoral issues against the backdrop of Hong Kong's political and societal context.

"As for Taiwan, I believe most Taiwanese want to maintain the status quo and its political position. Taiwan's economy has run into some problems in the last decade because their growth has been slower, and young people there want to find jobs and upgrade themselves. Graduating is not a problem as they have many universities and many of them are graduates.

"But many graduates are not satisfied with the jobs they've had to do. Some drive taxis, some do small businesses, while others have had to come to Singapore to work. Why? It's because their economy has not had a clear direction to move towards.

"If they move towards China, they're afraid of over-relying on China. Yet they can't completely move away from China because China's draw is huge. If they let foreign workers in, they're afraid it'll change their society. But if they don't, their economy can't progress. So their young people have reasons to worry, and this was reflected in their recent elections.

"We have our challenges. In terms of housing, Singaporeans may feel that we are not building them fast enough, but regardless, it's not difficult if you want to buy a house. In China, Hong Kong or Taiwan. If you ask a young person when he intends to buy a house, he may think you're trying to make fun of him. It's because they just can't imagine buying a house unless they're very rich.

"In Singapore, you have to buy a house before you get married, so it's completely different. In terms of jobs, our economic development has been quite good in the past 10 years, so we have enough jobs. Once you graduate from polytechnic or university, you can basically find suitable work. Maybe you're hoping for higher pay, but to find a job at least is not a problem. And about 90 per cent manage to find proper work within six months, and these are good jobs.

"Everyone wants higher pay, better jobs, shorter hours - I'm hoping for these too. But with work, there'll be tradeoffs. We need to import foreign workers and new immigrants if we want economic development, so we have a different set of challenges. We need to achieve a balance.

"So I think all three societies have different situations. We learn some of their lessons, but we also need to understand that we are Singapore. Singapore is different from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan."

ON FUTURE ELECTIONS

"I think it must change. I'm not sure which way it will change. We are in a very unusual situation where there is a clear consensus for the ruling party, for the People's Action Party.

"There's desire for alternative views, but basically Singaporeans want the PAP to govern Singapore. And if you ask the opposition party, whether it's the Workers' Party or SDP (Singapore Democratic Party), nobody says: 'Vote for me, I will form the Government, I will be the Prime Minister, I will run this place better'. Nobody.

"So in that situation, for the Government to continue to maintain support and to be able to carry the consensus of the population over the long term - I think it's very important. Will it remain the present situation exactly today? I don't think so. How will it change? I cannot say.

"It depends on voters. It depends on how the new MPs and ministers we bring in bond with the people. It depends on what situations we run into. If we run into a turbulent situation, I think people will be very worried about the dangers and there will be a flight to safety. If you are in a peaceful and prosperous environment, people will say: 'This is the way the world is, why do you need the Government? We can prosper without the Government.'

"So there is no safety net, no certainty that what we have now is going to continue. And each election is a very serious contest for who is going to form the next Government."

ON THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION

“I think there’ll be quite a few (new candidates). You have already seen some of them, so you can do an estimation.

“(The number of Group Representation Constituencies) will be decided by the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee. But at the last General Election, the average number of MPs assigned to each GRC went down, and there were a few more SMCs (Single Member Constituencies). I am satisfied with that.

“In principle, every MP should be able to contest on his own to keep his constituency. I think every MP should be prepared for this because they won't be able to know whether the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee will carve out an SMC from their GRC. The objective of having GRCs is to ensure we will have minority representation in Parliament. I think this is still necessary, so we definitely will not change the GRC system.

“There is no institution that can guarantee it will never be overturned. Even if you don't hold elections, there may still be revolutions. So in Singapore, if everyone just assumes the Government will not be unseated and votes as he wishes, I think that is a very dangerous assumption."

ON HIS SUCCESSOR

“It's very possible (my successor) is already in the current Cabinet line-up, but it's not an absolute because I want to bring in a group of new candidates with strong leadership potential in the next election. I believe we should be able to find my successor from the previous two elections or the next one.

“Times have changed, and his background would also be different. He would need some time to establish his authority, to let Singaporeans know his character, his working style and his leadership abilities. In other countries, it's quite rare to find a Prime Minister that has had many years of experience before leading a country.

“But he may not be a stranger.”

ON THE NARRATIVE FOR SINGAPORE

"I think that for the next phase, the narrative cannot be a single word, nation-building. It has to be that we live in Singapore, we have a home, this is a place which is quite special, if you travel, you would know it's very special. Not just if you travel to developing countries and backward areas.

"If you travel to developed countries, you would know that this is a place where you don't find the same kind of multiracial mix, you don't find the same kind of opportunities as you would in Singapore and many places.

"I think we can make this something really outstanding for ourselves and our children. And for Singapore, as well as for the individual, we have to work at it ... it's not easy, but we have the resources, and if we can work at it, it will be better.

"Better to do what? Better for you to fulfil what you want to do in life. We accommodate one another, we are not just so many individual human beings but a society. In Singapore we get on together, and I think we can have a good future, a bright future."

- CNA/ly/ms