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Mr Speaker, I stand in support of the Budget, which seeks to address our immediate challenges and chart our way forward together.
Managing cost of living
Sir, let me first declare my interest as President of the Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE).
This Budget comes on the back of significant global inflationary pressures, at a time when rising cost of living is a major concern for many Singaporeans. The proposed increase in GST will no doubt add to consumers’ concerns. While we understand the need to raise revenue, I am heartened that the Government has decided to delay the GST increase to 2023 and to stagger the increase over two years. Doing so will provide time for the various measures introduced to tackle rising inflation to come into effect.
Enhancing Price Kaki
At CASE, we believe more can be done to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. That is why we launched the Price Kaki mobile application in 2019, to allow consumers to compare prices of household essentials, groceries, and hawker food, make informed purchase decisions and stretch their dollar.
Since its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 80,000 times. CASE will expand Price Kaki this year – with more retailers, more products, and more services – to benefit more consumers. We will increase the coverage of cooked food stalls, from the current 114 hawker centres, to cover an additional 200 food courts and coffee shops island wide. CASE will also increase the coverage of groceries and household essentials from 4,000 to 10,000 items.
Give House Brands a Try
To tackle rising prices, consumers can also consider purchasing house brands for their daily essentials. According to Price Kaki’s data, house brand products can cost 10% to 25% cheaper than brand goods.
House brands can be just as good and have similar nutrition value as regular brands. I would encourage consumers to look beyond the advertising and give house brands a try. The same taste for a much lower cost may come as a pleasant surprise.
House brands set an important price floor for many of our household essential items, and I hope all major supermarket chains can absorb the GST increase for selected house brand essential items.
Mandatory Unit Pricing
But comparing prices alone is insufficient, if a retailer chooses to maintain the price but reduce the quantity of the product. To tackle this shrinkflation, I would like to call on the Government to introduce mandatory unit pricing for supermarkets and grocery retailers in Singapore.
Mandatory unit pricing is already practised in countries such as Australia, Argentina, and Chile. This might have been a logistical and administrative challenge in the past, when price tags were printed on paper placed manually on the shelves. With the wide use of digital price tags today, supermarkets should have no difficulty displaying unit pricing.
As part of our commitment to price transparency, CASE will showcase unit price alongside the retail price for items listed on Price Kaki.
Helping heartland merchants
Sir, COVID-19 has impacted many of our heartland shops and hawkers. While the CDC vouchers have been a major help, more can be done to help our neighbourhood merchants transform their business. Heartland shops are facing immense pressure, as higher prices of goods and utilities are weighing down heavily on their profitability. They are also facing stiff competition from online retailers.
Radin Mas Marketplace @ Lazada
As consumers’ purchasing behaviour shifts to e-commerce, accelerated by the pandemic, I thought it would be helpful to onboard our heartland merchants and hawkers onto a major e-marketplace. This will help them tap on the huge e-commerce potential.
I am therefore glad that Lazada Singapore has partnered Radin Mas to launch the Radin Mas Marketplace @ Lazada, this will be Singapore’s first e-marketplace for heartland shops. Lazada will on-board all interested merchants and hawkers in Radin Mas which number close to 600 and allow them to list their first 100 items on the e-marketplace at no cost. Lazada will also teach our merchants how to better engage with younger customers, such as through livestreaming. Merchants and consumers can also benefit from the occasional promotional campaigns organised by Lazada.
Our heartland shops are an important part of our social fabric. As we transform our economy and chart our way in the post-pandemic future, we must ensure that our heartland shops will continue to remain part of our Singapore Story.
The Three Invisibles
Mr Speaker, to manage cost of living, wages must increase in tandem with rising inflation. However, we need to watch out for these three invisible barriers that stand in our way of raising salaries. They are:
a. Invisible competition for jobs;
b. Invisible skills mismatch; and
c. Invisible threat of burnout.
Invisible competition for jobs
Sir, the COVID-19 pandemic has completely transformed the way we work and has accelerated the Work from Anywhere trend. Competition for jobs can now come from “digital nomads” working from any corner of the globe, as long as the candidate has the right skills, a computer, and an internet connection. There is even a new word recently invented called “workcation”, where people travel and work remotely at the same time!
Countries are now seeking to attract these digital nomads, as they reopen their economies and try to revive their tourism and hospitality sectors at the same time. The Financial Times recently reported that Thailand is offering 10-year visas to attract skilled professionals working remotely. According to Investopedia, Thailand is not alone, with Germany, Mexico, and Norway – just to name a few examples – trying very hard to attract digital nomads.
The manpower minister answered a parliamentary question yesterday on foreign remote workforce employed by Singapore based companies. He highlighted how it is important for Singapore to continually transform ourselves and help our local workforce perform higher value jobs. I cannot agree with him more. But the reality is that digital nomads are competing for higher value jobs. Jobs such as creative professionals, coding specialists and data science analysts.
Simply put, companies today need not hire people based physically in Singapore to fill jobs here, and our PMETs are particularly at risk of being displaced by an invisible competition, sitting by the poolside of a resort in Phuket. While the increase in minimum qualifying salaries for Employment Pass and S-Pass holders is a short-term measure, I urge the Government to study this trend and review if our existing labour policies would continue to remain relevant in the years ahead. Do we need to adjust our policies and economic strategies to account for this invisible global competition for local jobs?
Invisible skills mismatch
According to data from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Singapore had a record high of 98,700 job openings in September 2021, with the number of job vacancies more than double the number of unemployed people. On the ground, however, the Labour Movement has received feedback from PMETs, particularly those in their mid-career, that they find it difficult to land these jobs.
Jobs looking for people. People looking for jobs. What could be the reason for the disconnect? One answer is likely a mismatch in skills. Our NTUC’s career coaches have found that many mid-career PMETs often neglect to go for skills upgrading because they were too busy with day-to-day work schedules sand family responsibilities.
That is why I am glad that the Government is committing $100 million to scale NTUC’s Company Training Committees. The CTCs address the two most common questions that workers have when it comes to training – train what, and train for what – by aligning the training needs with a company’s future business and operations roadmap. I encourage all companies to work with NTUC and partner with us to create and implement training programmes that are suitable to upskill and reskill your workers effectively.
Workplace burnout
Lastly, I would like to touch on workplace burnout, a real but often invisible threat to the wellbeing of our workers.
Over the years, I have been speaking both inside and outside of this House on the importance of maintaining good workplace mental health. I am glad that the Government has worked closely with the Labour Movement on various initiatives, notably the Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-being at Workplaces in November 2020, which provides guidance on after-hours work communications. And for the first time, the Workplace Safety and Health Council will introduce a new workplace mental health category at this year’s WSH Awards.
However, there remains much more to be done. According to a recent NTUC survey of a thousand young working adults, over 40% reported poor work-life balance and work stress due to longer working hours and heavier workload since the start of the pandemic. 42% of respondents felt that there was insufficient mental well-being support at their workplaces. Clearly, our tired working professionals deserve a Right to Disconnect, so that they can have protected time to rest and recharge after work. I urge the ministries and government agencies to lead by promulgating clear directives on after-hours work communications for staff.
Good workplace mental health is good for productivity and business. I hope that the Government can provide grants to encourage more employers to implement Employee Assistance Programmes at the workplace to support its workers with mental health needs.
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, the coming years are fraught with challenges. Rising energy prices, inflation, and a rapidly ageing population are just some of the difficult hurdles that Singapore and Singaporeans will need to overcome.
At NTUC, we believe that Every Worker Matters and the best way to protect them through these challenges is through better jobs and better wages. We will continue to walk alongside our brothers and sisters and help them take advantage of all the help that are available. We will chart our way forward together.
Sir, I support the Budget.
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