Skilled workforce struggles to be more productive: MAS chief

This is despite economic recovery and improvement in manufacturing and financial services.

Bloomberg reports that sustainable economic growth is estimated at 2-4%, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon told delegates at the UBS Wealth Insights Conference Monday in Singapore. Manufacturing is resilient and financial services are “doing well,” he said.

However, the challenge on the labour supply side is whether Singapore can raise productivity given that its workforce is already well-educated and skilled, Menon said.

Earlier in a speech, Menon outlined risks to the global economy, using the analogy of the fable ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ to warn of possible risks. While he was optimistic about the outlook, with even a slowdown in China in 2018 not sharp enough to wreck the gains, he said “three grumpy bears” threaten to derail the positive momentum: inflation, trade protectionism and financial instability.

Read the full report here.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia