Name: How big businesses in Singapore are managing the challenges of coronavirus | Make It International
Uploaded: 2020-08-24T19:05:52.000Z
Duration: 9 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Modal verbs - B1

Think of Singapore and you might think of a bustling financial center.

But when the coronavirus hit in early 2020, that image came to a standstill.

Singapore, like much of the world, was sucked into the throes of the pandemic,

forcing businesses to shutter and life to go on hold.

Staying closed was not an option for long, though.

As the Asia Pacific headquarters for many major corporations,

ensuring business continuity is critical.

I'm taking a look at how key industries are supporting that drive to revive the economy.

Even before the pandemic hit Singapore shores, the Southeast Asian island nation was positioning

itself as a strategic business hub, in a world increasingly fraught

with trade tensions and supply chain concerns.

But when a spike in Covid-19 cases led the country into an eight-week lockdown,

authorities moved quickly to cushion the impact, unveiling more than $73 billion in stimulus

as the country weathered its first recession since 2009.

Although the crisis hit the country hard, it has presented opportunities for manufacturing

and services firms, which are key components of Singapore's economy.

In 2019, the manufacturing sector alone contributed 20.9% of Singapore's nominal GDP.

The services industry, which includes sectors such as business, information and communications,

finance and insurance, made up close to 70%.

At the height of the pandemic, manufacturing was the only sector to grow,

Multinational manufacturer 3M was among the companies to lead response efforts,

turning its manufacturing lines 24/7 and doubling its global production of N95 respirators.

We were able to leverage learnings from SARS.

And so, we made the conscious decision to invest in additional capacity

In having that, it helped us a tremendous amount, to be able to respond very quickly.

In the first half of the year, the company produced over 800 million respirators globally,

including from its plant in Singapore, which was in the crosshairs

of a White House administration trying to prioritize supplies for the U.S. market.

During that period, Malaysia closed its borders due to the pandemic,

affecting 3M's Malaysian workers who commuted daily to Singapore.

The company had to work closely with Singaporean authorities to temporarily rehouse

its Malaysian staff in Singapore, as the border closure threatened to affect output.

With the movement control order circuit breaker, we had some of them make the conscious decision

– which again, I think shows how our employees have stepped up – to say,

'I'm going to stay away from my home and my family and live in a hotel.'

And they've been living in a hotel since late-March and they're still here,

As the economy reels from the pandemic, central banks have been working with private lenders

That includes measures to ease cash flow constraints for the thousands of

small and medium-sized businesses, or SMEs, in the country.

As with any economy, you'll find the SMEs are always the foundation,

They, first and foremost, are responsible for a lot of the economic activities

of a country, and therefore they also employ many people.

SMEs account for 99% of businesses in Singapore and 72% of the workforce.

During the peak of the outbreak, DBS — Southeast Asia's largest bank — provided $3.5 billion

in temporary bridging loans to keep many of them going,

with an emphasis on vulnerable, micro-enterprises.

So all in all, about 8,600 loans have been approved, about $4.9 billion,

of which about 7,500 loans — about S$2 billion —  are for the micro and smaller SMEs.

The shifting economic landscape has also led many businesses to quickly adapt to new ways

of working, including moving much of their operations online.

That's something Microsoft has been helping with from its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore,

through its products such as Azure cloud computing and Microsoft Teams.

We've seen two years of digital transformation in two months as a result of Covid.

While these developments happened out of necessity, Singapore has been investing heavily

in digitization efforts in the public and private sectors for years.

Accelerating the digitalization of these SMEs could lead to a faster economic recovery.

A recent survey of more than 1,400 SMEs in Asia Pacific found that many companies

are still in the early stages of their digital transformation or indifferent to it.

It is estimated that by 2024, the digital transformation

of small and medium-sized businesses in Asia Pacific could add $2.6 trillion

to $3.1 trillion to the region's GDP — and that was before the pandemic.

I think across every industry we have seen a shift of focus.

In some cases, it might be more in keeping their data secure and getting it to the cloud.

In others, it may be more around collaborating and how do they keep

their employees and their customers connected?

And then in others, it's fundamental changes in their business models

so that they can actually prepare for the future.

It's not just companies rebuilding for a new digital economy, either.

Those fundamental changes have also altered people's behaviors, prompting many of them

to look for new ways of conducting personal and professional business.

That means businesses have to empower employees to find new ways of working.

Teams usage went up by 500%, so just to show you the amount of

dependency for people to be able to continue to work together, it's huge.

And we've really had to work hard to get these things deployed quickly.

In some cases, over the course of 48 hours.

For DBS, that was a case of expanding its digital banking system to enable more people

I have seen a 30% year-on-year increase in digibank adoption.

And as we look into the profiles of those, a reasonable percentage of those

were actually our senior citizens, 62 years and above.

The bank now has 3.4 million digital users, 29% of whom conduct their finances entirely online,

which it says indicates the transition toward a new economic landscape.

As we speak, we have about a million customers who are completely digital.

So, we can see that actually the foundation has been built.

This time was actually quite necessary or helpful to shift behaviors.

And actually, those behavioral shifts were quite natural and quite automatic.

But the work for businesses adapting in a new normal doesn't quite end there.

As Singapore's economy embarks on a path of recovery, companies also have an important

social role to play in bringing the community along with them.

We are going to have to be so agile and continue to work with local experts and government

to understand what is changing in the landscape.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How big businesses in Singapore are managing the challenges of coronavirus | Make It International

conscious

pandemic

prioritize

purpose