Minister in the Prime Minister’s Offi ce (Singapore) and NTUC Secretary-General (SG) Chan Chun Sing joined fellow panellists, Vice President and Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation Doris Leuthard, and former Minister for Corporate Affairs of India and President of the Rajastan Pradesh Congress Committee Sachin Pilot in a plenary discussion on ‘Economic growth: What Governments can, should and should not do’.
The annual symposium sees international leaders from both public and private sectors coming together to debate issues of management, politics and civil society. This year’s theme ‘Growth – the good, the bad and the ugly’, casts the spotlight on economic development.
The highlights of SG Chan’s conversation:
Approaching Growth
Is growth an end or the means? The test beyond Gross Domestic Product is this: does it give hope? Does it uplift the human spirit and does it unleash the human potential? The government can play three roles. The first is to lead. The second is to enable. And the third is to safeguard the economy for the next generation. This will depend on the stage the country is in.
Coping with Disruptions
We want to create new capacities for growth to happen. If workers are displaced from their current jobs because the economies don’t need them, it’s no use spending resources recreating the old jobs of yesterday.
What we need to do is to upgrade our workers, invest in their training, invest in their education, health and housing to give them new jobs to grow into. It is about giving them new capabilities, to ready them for new jobs. It is about equipping the current generation of workers with the skills of the future to earn them the salaries of tomorrow.
Structural Unemployment
The issue is not about the total number of jobs, but the fit. This requires an entire society to come together, to mobilise everyone to upgrade their own skills, not just for the person who lost the job, and not for the person trying to fill the new job. Everyone has to move in step. Everyone, together with the government, the trade unions and employers have to play a part to resolve this issue.
Executing Policies
To make good policies, we need to mobilise public opinion. In an increasingly diverse society, we need to bring people together. An average policy well executed is better than a good policy not well executed. If we want to do good for our nation, we should see ourselves as stewards, as political leaders that optimise countries for the long term. If we don’t do this well, we would have done a disservice to our people and we will never be able to unleash the potential of our people and uplift their lives.
Addressing Inequality
We’re not just concerned about inequality but also the issue of social mobility. We are concerned about ensuring that everyone has a fair and equal chance to reach the very top. The measure of success is not just about the Gini Coefficient or so forth, but whether we can uplift the next generation. If we can do that, we have an uplifting society, if we can’t, then we will have groups of the perpetual rich and the perpetual poor which will cause tensions that will rip the fabric of the nation.
