DPM Heng Swee Keat at the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce Awards 2025

Ms Dawn Tan, Chairwoman, Singapore International Chamber of Commerce or SICC,
Mr Wong Joo Seng, Deputy Chairman, SICC
Board Members of SICC,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Good evening!

First, thank you for inviting me.

I have read and interacted with our finalists to learn about your interesting and innovative work.

Each of you is already a winner - my heartiest congratulations to all the finalists! Your effort is inspiring and exemplary.

I am glad to hear that since 2018, the winners have been featured on a Channel NewsAsia programme to inspire a wider audience. I think this is an excellent move.

As Dawn mentioned earlier, these awards were first launched in 2015, during SG50, in support of the Government’s Partnerships for Capability Transformation, or PACT, programme.

I commend SICC for promoting innovation, particularly collaborative innovation, over this past decade.

Starting out with two categories, you now have expanded to five, reflecting the evolving and dynamic nature of innovation.

SICC’s commitment to bringing businesses together, and connecting local and foreign enterprises, has been longstanding.

SICC has just turned 188 – what a role model for active ageing and healthy longevity!

The Chamber was founded in the 1830s to advocate for Singapore to remain a free port, facilitating trade flows between East and West and supporting the development of an open, inter-connected global economy.

This was around the peak of the first Industrial Revolution, when a proliferation of new technologies led to a surge in manufacturing output, particularly in Western economies.

The economist Adam Smith’s insight on the division of labour, specialisation and free markets laid the foundations for what we know today as modern industry, supply chains and globalised trade.

The division of labour, leveraging on economic complementarities and global competitive forces that drive efficiency and innovation, has spurred higher growth in trade and economic growth, especially in developing economies.

For example, between 1970 and 2023, the exports of goods and services worldwide grew from 12.8% to 29.3% of global GDP.

In that same time period, global GDP per capita rose about 16 times from roughly US$816 to more than US$13,000.

In low and middle-income countries, the improvement was even more impressive.

GDP per capita grew almost 29 times – from US$196 in 1970 to more than US$5,600 in 2023.

Now, the brief facts and figures that I have just outlined show that the global division of labour has been a key driver of progress for all countries.

I was in Doha back in 2001 for the launch of the WTO’s Doha Round of trade negotiations.

Unfortunately, in these 24 years, the Doha Round has made no progress.

Instead, we are regressing – with trade wars growing in intensity, even among countries with Free Trade Agreements.

Tariffs are being weaponised to pursue non-economic objectives, and trade and other economic agreements are being upended abruptly.

While the logic and evidence of free trade is clear, the politics of trade dominate policy direction.

In fact, at the university where I studied economics, the Economics Faculty was referred to as the Department of Political Economy.

It is a fitting recognition that economic rationality is circumscribed by political calculations.

For Singapore to maintain our success and prosperity, we must stay open and carve a role for ourselves in global supply chains, including in new and emerging areas.

Today, trade remains at over three times our GDP.

Our network of 27 Free Trade Agreements enables our businesses to enter markets far larger than Singapore’s domestic market. I am glad that we had the foresight to pursue this policy.

For our SMEs, in particular, these FTAs help to unlock opportunities for them to be part of foreign companies’ supply chains, and in growth regions like ASEAN, Asia and even Latin America.

We continue to grow by establishing collaborations and complementarities with businesses around the world.

Management guru Peter Drucker once wrote that organisations make strengths productive and weaknesses irrelevant.

His basic point is each individual has strengths and weaknesses.

Through collaboration, executives could build complementary strengths for stronger organisations.

And the same can be said for businesses, economies and countries.

Given Singapore’s limitations in land and population size, we cannot realistically produce everything we need on our own.

By working with partners from around the world, our enterprises can tap on a broader bench of expertise, and tap on collective strengths, to unlock growth.

For the Singapore economy to stay competitive, we must stay open.

The work of SICC and other chambers – in building bridges between foreign and local enterprises and sustaining support for free trade and investment is very valuable.

That was how you started in the first place 188 years ago. And as we go forward into Industry 4.0, your focus on collaborative innovation will be most useful.

In the coming years, I believe science, technology and innovation will drive the future of economic growth. There are several reasons.

The first is demographics – the global workforce is shrinking – due both to ageing populations and declining birthrates.

The UN projects that by the mid-2030s, people aged 80 and above globally will outnumber infants.

By 2080, 55 years from now, the number of people aged 65 and above globally will outnumber those aged below 18.

In Singapore, around one in four Singaporeans is expected to be 65 years or older by 2030 –25% of our population. Just 15 years ago when I was still young in 2010, the figure was around 10%.

Now the second is rapid technological advancements.

In particular, advances in AI are disrupting business models, companies and even entire industries.

With AI’s potential to magnify and entrench competitive advantage, competition over technology is also increasingly taking on geopolitical dimensions.

The third reason for the importance of technology and innovation is the need for businesses to address climate change.

For us in Singapore, a low-lying island state, climate change is existential.

Some studies project that the global economy could face 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090, unless global climate action is stepped up urgently and at scale.

For enterprises, sustainability is not just about a responsibility to society, but about the long-term viability of your business, the stability of your supply chains, and consumption patterns.

Harnessing technology and innovation, to build new products, solutions and systems, and to do it at scale will be critical.

So let me take this opportunity to commend SICC for expanding the SICC Awards to new categories like “Best Technological Collaboration”, “Most Sustainable Collaboration” and “Most Scalable Collaboration”.

I also appreciate that the SICC Awards provides not only a platform to compete, but also to share their ideas with one another, and with others.

Dawn earlier mentioned about building a “learning component” to these awards.

Doing so enables the spirit of innovation behind the collaborations we recognise this evening to also inspire others in the business community.

To borrow a social media term, let us make innovation viral.

I have spoken on the importance of staying open to globalisation, and harnessing technology and innovation.

Putting these together, it means we need to achieve scale to make an impact.

Building on SICC’s initiative in recognising and promoting collaborative innovation, to achieve greater impact, we must scale this further – within Singapore, and across borders.

I believe that a central pillar of Singapore’s future economic strategy, and our future economic value, is to position Singapore as a Global-Asia node, connecting the world to Asia with a very clear focus on technology and innovation.

We must continue to work with innovation nodes around the world to deepen innovation, to find new growth sectors and tackle common challenges.

Businesses, both foreign and local, and across all sizes and scales, can make useful contributions in this area.

The Government has initiated several schemes to encourage collaboration across sectors, borders and even regions.

One way is by building purposeful partnerships between businesses and our Research, Innovation and Enterprise or RIE ecosystem to harness innovation and solve targeted problems. I am glad to see a few of this year’s finalists featuring such cross-sector collaborations!

The National Research Foundation, EDB, and A*STAR and other agencies have supported the establishment of various Corporate Labs between industry players and our universities and research institutes.

Over the years, we have set up more than 20 such corporate labs including with SICC member companies like ST Microelectronics and ExxonMobil. I invite others who are keen to also consider a similar tie-ups.

During this year’s Budget Debate a few weeks ago, I announced that we are developing new RIE Flagships and Grand Challenges as part of the next bound of building our research ecosystem and driving Singapore’s future growth.

These platforms will pull together research and translational capabilities across our universities, research institutes, public agencies and the private sector to create value in new economic sectors and to address real-world problems and needs.

The first Flagship will focus on semiconductor and microelectronics R&D and the first Grand Challenge will look at healthy and successful longevity.

We welcome SICC members who are engaged in these domains to work with us on these platforms. We will be announcing more Grand Challenges and Flagships in the years to come.

Another way that we are fostering collaboration is by facilitating stronger connectivity between larger firms, SMEs and startups.

Since 2017, Enterprise Singapore has supported innovation partnerships between large corporates and smaller enterprises through Open Innovation. Over the year, more than 350 matches have been catalysed through this platform.

SICC members like Olam and Shell, for example, have been matched with SMEs and startups from Singapore and overseas to develop new solution in sustainable agriculture and clean energy distribution.

A third way is by connecting innovators more closely across borders, with one another as well as with investors and partners, to jumpstart collaborations.

Strong networks with other ecosystems provide enterprises with local insights and partnerships to make the most of new opportunities.

In this regard, Enterprise Singapore’s Global Innovation Alliance or GIA connects Singapore startups and enterprises with established innovation hubs worldwide, facilitating market access and cross-border R&D collaborations.

So far, the GIA has empowered more than 600 startups with market access across 24 cities, and catalysed cross-border research with over 40 countries.

We also host the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology or SWITCH to strengthen linkages between our enterprises and those globally and to deepen our innovation capabilities, particularly in deep tech.

SWITCH offers good opportunities for enterprises, including SICC members, to network and better understand the latest developments in emerging technologies like climate tech, advanced manufacturing, and AI.

I encourage SICC members to attend the 10th edition of SWITCH taking place this October.

And Chambers like SICC, with your diverse membership and networks, also play a role in strengthening Singapore’s position as a Global-Asia node.

In this regard, let me make a suggestion to SICC – to consider introducing a new, sixth category to your awards to recognise collaborations that are “Best Cross-Border Innovations”.

So in conclusion, let me sum up the three main points I wish to leave you with this evening.

First, Singapore must continue to stay open and continue to find new complementarities with partners in the global economy to preserve and enhance our value proposition going forward. In a world that is more contested, more fragmented, that will be our value.

Our success has been built on being an open and interconnected place to do business, going back to when SICC was founded. And our prosperity will continue to be intertwined with our active engagement with the global economy.

Second, science, technology and innovation will be critical drivers of economic growth in the years ahead, and we must learn to harness these optimally. I say this with some bias, of course, because I am also Chairman of our National Research Foundation.

And third, by working together among Government, academia and businesses, we can serve as a Global-Asia node catalysing collaborative innovation in impactful ways.

I commend SICC once again for your dedicated effort to recognise and encourage collaborative innovation.

Let me thank the panel of judges for your contributions and service.

And I also join Dawn in encouraging more SICC member companies to take part and submit nominations for future rounds of these awards.

As we celebrate 60 years of Singapore’s independence, let us all work together to build further on the good work of those who came before us – to leave a better, brighter Singapore for the generations who follow.

I mentioned to some of the finalists earlier that when I was Finance Minister during the COVID pandemic, I was glad to be able to support our people and our businesses with five Budgets.

As part of this, I had to see our President and seek her approval to draw on our past reserves.

Almost every country in the world ended up spending considerable resources on COVID support, and I dare say that I was probably the only Finance Minister who did not have to borrow a single cent.

I always tell young people that this is legacy of our founding generation, who saved and invested wisely for a rainy day. It was this prudence and discipline that allowed us to draw on our reserves during a period of crisis, without burdening future generations with debt.

This spirit – of thinking long-term and acting in a way to save future generations rather than to burden them – is something I hope we maintain.

In the spirit of building on the work of those before us, let me also recognise former SICC Chief Executive Victor Mills.

Victor, who completes his last day with the Chamber today, gave many years of distinguished leadership and service to the Chamber. So thank you very much Victor!

And I wish incoming Chief Executive Bita Seow and your team all the very best. Victor has set a high standard – so your challenge is to climb even higher! And heartiest congratulations to all finalists and winners.

And I wish everyone a pleasant evening of celebration and exchanges.

Thank you.