You have to think long-term: Ng Kok Song

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, newly retired Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) group chief investment officer Ng Kok Song spoke of the challenges of managing Singapore's foreign reserves. Mr Ng, who now advises GIC in the role of chair of global investments, also discussed the issue of accountability in terms of how the reserves are managed. Here is an edited transcript of the interview

The Straits Times, 2 Mar 2013

You have been at GIC for 26 years and in reserves management for 42 years. How do you feel now that you have retired?

I first started out in 1970 at the Ministry of Finance in a small department called the department of overseas investments. When I first started our country had very little reserves: a few hundred million dollars.

We now have a situation where in a financial year, the Net Investment Returns Contributions are a significant part of the annual government budget. This contribution enables the Government to tap the returns for the benefit of Singaporeans.

Does the weight of managing the reserves put pressure or stress on you and your GIC colleagues? How did you feel during difficult times or crises?

The GIC would be able to handle this (pressure) better if there is a better understanding between the government and the public as to how we could collectively enable the GIC to manage this money in the best interests of Singapore.

We know that our reserves will earn better returns if we are able to take a long-term view.

Singaporeans (need) to agree that the GIC should be evaluated on a long-term basis and that is why in our annual report we put the emphasis on long-term returns and we define it as a 20-year rolling real rate of return.

Because once you have this long-term investment horizon, then from time to time, the markets are going to present you with opportunities to make good long- term investments at very attractive prices.

But those are situations where the markets are very, very stressed. In the short term the market could still go down and if then you say, "look you shouldn't have invested, why didn't you wait", you are focusing on short- term results.

7 in 10 say employers not quite supportive of flexi-work: poll

By Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia, 1 Mar 2013

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents in a survey by the labour movement here say their employers are not quite supportive of flexi-work arrangements.

The union says legislating flexi-work may be inevitable as more workers aspire for greater work-life balance.

In the survey posed to 5,720 people, the respondents were asked if they are happy.

Six in 10 said they are happier after getting married and nearly 8 in 10 said they are happier after they became parents.

But 43 per cent also said they do not have enough time for their family. Four in 5 said they hardly have any personal time.

Most said their employers are not quite supportive of flexi-work arrangements.

About 6 in 10 said they do not have supportive colleagues.

The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) said this is indicative that a lot of companies here may be just paying lip service to work-life balance. It added that legislation may be the way to go.

Animal welfare panel calls for stiffer fines, jail terms

By David Ee, The Straits Times, 2 Mar 2013

BIGGER fines, longer jail terms and screening of pet buyers were among a slew of recommendations submitted to the Government yesterday by a panel set up to review animal welfare laws.

The 11-member panel, chaired by MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC Yeo Guat Kwang, sent its widely anticipated report to the National Development Ministry yesterday after gathering public feedback and deliberating for a year.

It proposed introducing tiered penalties that take into account the intent of someone found guilty of ill-treating animals.

The current maximum penalty is a fine of up to $10,000 and/or a one-year jail term, but repeat or malicious offenders could soon be fined up to $50,000 and/or jailed for three years. They would also be barred from keeping pets for up to a year.

Those caught neglecting pets the first time would face the current penalty but would also have to perform community service with animal welfare groups.

Harsher penalties would be extended to pet shops and farms, which could be fined up to $100,000 and banned from operating for up to a year.

Animal abuse convictions should also be reported by the media and on social networks to act as a deterrent, the report added.

But Mr Yeo stressed that the panel, which also comprised animal welfare activists and industry representatives, sought preventive - not just punitive and deterrent - measures.

Driverless cars can rev up Singapore economy

Country has what it takes to lead transformation worldwide

By Daniel James Morton, Published The Straits Times, 2 Mar 2013

AS A long-time admirer of Singapore, my bold yet feasible proposal is that Singapore deploy the first city-wide driverless car network. This will spawn a trillion-dollar Self-Driving Economy that dwarfs the current $2 billion vehicle tax revenue.

Further benefits include improved mobility, greater safety, more energy independence, international prestige, new services and enhanced social unity.

The country's strong government institutions and advanced economic development provide the competitive advantage to initiate this transformation. Singapore can lead this change worldwide at no cost and derive a financial windfall larger than any existing industry in the country.

The rate at which the transformation towards the driverless economy occurs is a decision - a business decision. The transformation is no longer an engineering challenge but a financial equation. The personal lives of drivers and non-drivers will be improved. The Singapore Government need only enact legislation to give birth to the Self-Driving Economy (Car 2.0).

Driverless cars receive little media attention and are portrayed as futuristic gadgets. After decades of research, the engineering target has been reached: The driverless car is safe and affordable. It may not be perfect, but it is better than the human alternative with drivers who text, call, sleep, drink, get distracted, get lost, lose their eyesight and hearing.

Just as motor vehicles proved their superior safety over the horse, and airplanes went from apocalyptic to nearly flawless, driverless cars will be commonplace. In time, error-prone and slow responsive human driving will become uninsurable.

A handful of initiatives globally are testing driverless cars, yet they lack support from all the actors in the ecosystem required for disruptive transformation.

Singapore can lead the way towards the adoption of ubiquitous driverless mobility.

Take a virtual tour of the Army Market

Heritage Board aims to capture present-day Singapore for the future
By Melody Zaccheus, The Straits Times, 1 Mar 2013

STALL owners in the Beach Road Army Market are hoping that a high-definition virtual tour of the once popular complex will stir the interest of the young and bring the crowds back.

Business has been slow since the centre was shut for a two-month renovation last year, they said, and they are pleased that they will have a presence on the Web.

The tour will be launched on the National Heritage Board's (NHB) website today.

Few know that the 38-year-old market had re-opened in late November last year after it underwent the renovation, said shopkeeper Madam Lau Lian Hoe, 64, in Mandarin. "They still think the market has been shut down for good."

The Army Market, a one-stop destination for army supplies, is the first to feature in the NHB's new series - Walking Through Heritage.

The board's director of heritage institutions Alvin Tan said the aim is to create a databank of virtual heritage tours to capture present-day Singapore for current and future generations.

Tougher action to clean up public food places

Operators face cleaning shutdown on hitting 12 demerit points instead of 24

By Ian Poh, The Straits Times, 1 Mar 2013

THE National Environment Agency (NEA) is toughening up its enforcement of cleanliness at public food places, after a jump in complaints about filthy conditions.

Also, the number of tickets its inspectors issued for lapses has doubled in a year, rising from 131 to 236 for dirty toilets last year, and soaring from 28 to 49 for pest infestation. Messy tables are also a common complaint.

So from today, privately run foodcourts, canteens and coffee shops will have six demerit points slapped on them when NEA inspectors spot cockroaches or rats in the establishments.

When their operators chalk up 12 demerit points in a year, the place will be shut down for up to three days for a good and thorough cleaning. Previously, the punishment was meted out when they hit 24 demerit points.

Besides demerit points, the 2,300 or so operators of these places also face fines for every lapse in cleanliness or hygiene.

The tougher measures are "aimed at encouraging operators to place greater emphasis on the overall hygiene standards of their premises, as part of our concerted efforts to ensure food safety for Singaporeans," said NEA's director-general of public health Derek Ho yesterday.

On its part, the NEA will track more closely food outlets notorious for not keeping their toilets clean and/or their premises free of pests. Its inspectors will check on them at least six times every three months.

Declining populations make peaceful neighbours: Lee Kuan Yew

By Lee Kuan Yew, Published The Straits Times, 1 Mar 2013

WHEN a nation's population is growing it is usually accompanied by a sense of optimism, which is then followed by a desire for expansion. This was the case in both Germany and Japan when World War II broke out.

In 1931 Japan's population was 64.5 million and occupied 145,882 square miles of land. (Its total fertility rate, or TFR, reached 4.1 by the late 1930s.) Japan cast its eye on Manchuria, seeing it as a source of limitless natural resources and as a buffer between itself and Russia, and invaded in September 1931.

China's population was 492.1 million and occupied an area of 3.7 million square miles. But it was not a united land, which made it weak. Japan carried out skirmishes against China during the ensuing years, but in the middle of 1937 the conflicts escalated into full-scale war.

By the end of October 1938 China's Kuomintang government had retreated south to Chungking, and by 1941 Japan had captured all of China's coastal cities and large tracts of the neighbouring countryside, as well as northern and southern French Indochina.

In July 1941 the US government issued an ultimatum to Japan: withdraw from Indochina or the United States would impose an oil embargo on Japan. Remember that in 1941 the US had a population of more than 130 million and a far more powerful industrial base than Japan had.

Nevertheless, on Dec 7, 1941 Japan took a huge gamble and without warning launched more than 350 fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves from six aircraft carriers, attacking American naval vessels at Pearl Harbour. (Fortunately for the US its aircraft carriers were out at sea and escaped the surprise attack.) Japan simultaneously invaded the whole of South-east Asia in order to gain control of the Dutch East Indies' oil.

Inevitably, the US rebuilt its navy, and during the Battle of Midway in June 1942 sank most of those six Japanese aircraft carriers and their support vessels.

Why we invent in Britain but build in Singapore: James Dyson

By James Dyson, Published TODAY, 28 Feb 2013

For the past 15 years, Dyson’s highly-skilled engineers have been developing a tiny revolution in our laboratories. It is a new motor a third the size of a traditional one, but which can spin 100,000 times a minute — five times faster than a Formula One engine. Making 6,000 adjustments a second for optimal performance, the Dyson digital motor can supercharge prosaic machines.

At Dyson we invest heavily in our ideas and develop all of our technology in Britain: All our research takes place in Malmesbury where we employ 850 world-class design engineers and scientists — about a third of them recent graduates.

Our new motor performs like no other — and because we are developing it in our own laboratories, with our own people, no one else can get their hands on it (despite trying!).

This is not only good for Dyson, but also for Britain. The intellectual property is owned here and all the profits will flow back to the United Kingdom where we pay more than 85 per cent of our global tax.

But last week, Dyson opened a new £150 million (S$281.4 million) motor manufacturing facility in Singapore.

Why?

Savvy governments understand the need to support advances like our new motor and to create incentives for companies to develop them. They also value the highly skilled workforce able to develop them — 40 per cent of graduates are engineers, versus 2 per cent in Britain. They realise that the more successful the company, the more they export, bringing more revenue into the country and employing more people.

More HDB multi-storey car parks to house rooftop gardens

By Bryant Chan, The Straits Times, 28 Feb 2013

MORE than 100 multi-storey carparks with rooftop gardens are under construction, the Housing Board announced yesterday.

The new facilities will allow residents to plant their own flowers and vegetables, and give them access to foot reflexology paths and study corners.

Around another 100 of them have already been built, creating roughly 20ha of skyrise foliage across the island.

Meanwhile, the HDB also intends to plant 9ha of rooftop greenery in existing multi-storey carparks and housing blocks over the next few years.

Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan praised the latest project.

Writing on his Housing Matters blog, he said similar schemes in Dover Crescent and Jurong East had encouraged a sense of community among residents.

Community gardening is one of a number of innovations introduced over the past 50 years as part of a campaign by the Ministry of National Development.

Another is the Prefabricated Extensive Greening system, which enables rooftop plants to thrive without irrigation for long periods.

Yahoo chief's 'off the cloud, back to cubicle' order rankles

By Maureen Dowd, Published The Straits Times, 28 Feb 2013

WASHINGTON - When Marissa Mayer became queen of the Yahoos last summer, she was hailed as a role model for women.

The 37-year-old supergeek with the supermodel looks was the youngest Fortune 500 chief executive. And she was in the third trimester of her first pregnancy. Many women were thrilled at the thought that biases against hiring women who were expecting, or planning to be, might be melting.

A couple months later, it gave her female fans pause when the Yahoo CEO took a mere two-week maternity pause. She built a nursery next to her office at her own expense, to make working almost straight through easier.

The fear that this might set an impossible standard for other women - especially women who had consigned "having it all" to unicorn status - reverberated.

Even German family minister Kristina Schroeder chimed in: "I regard it with major concern when prominent women give the public impression that maternity leave is something that is not important."

Almost two months after her son, Macallister, was born, Ms Mayer irritated some women again when she bubbled at a Fortune event that "the baby's been way easier than everyone made it out to be".

"Putting 'baby' and 'easy' in the same sentence turns you into one of those mothers we don't like very much," columnist Lisa Belkin chided in The Huffington Post.

Now Ms Mayer has caused another fem-quake with a decision that has a special significance to working mothers. She has banned Yahoos, as her employees are known, from working at home (which some of us call "working" at home). It flies in the face of technology companies' success in creating a cloud office rather than a conventional one.

Ms Mayer's friend, Ms Sheryl Sandberg, of Facebook wrote in her new feminist manifesto, Lean In: Women, Work, And The Will To Lead, that technology could revolutionise women's lives by "changing the emphasis on strict office hours since so much work can be conducted online". She added that "the traditional practice of judging employees by face time rather than results unfortunately persists" when it would be more efficient to focus on results.

Many women were appalled at the Yahoo news, noting that Ms Mayer, with her penthouse atop the San Francisco Four Seasons, her Oscar de la Rentas and her US$117million (S$145million) five-year contract, seems oblivious to the fact that for many of her less-privileged sisters with young children, telecommuting is a lifeline to a manageable life.

Hong Kong unveils its Budget 2013

HK 'may not be able to make ends meet'

Finance chief hints at wider tax base as population ages, health costs rise

By Li Xueying, The Straits Times, 28 Feb 2013

HONG KONG - Hong Kong, faced with a greying population and a shrinking workforce, "may not be able to make ends meet" in future, warned its financial secretary. But Mr John Tsang stopped short of saying that it is considering widening its tax base - a politically controversial move here.

"There is room, perhaps, to broaden the base. But thorough consideration is necessary," he said at a press conference, after announcing the government's Budget for the year.

Instead, a new working group will look at "more comprehensive planning" of its public finances. The Straits Times understands that it will examine what other governments are doing to boost public coffers - for instance, the Australian government's Future Fund which invests budget sur- pluses and Singapore's move from civil service pensions to the Central Provident Fund.

Presenting the first Budget under Mr Leung Chun Ying's administration yesterday, Mr Tsang painted a dire picture of Hong Kong's demographic challenge.

By 2041, there will be just 1.8 adults supporting an elderly person aged 65 and above, down from 5.3 in 2011.

"I expect that the growth of government revenue will drop substantially if our tax regime remains unchanged," he said. "Meanwhile, expenditure on welfare and health care will soar. We may not be able to make ends meet."

Asked if the government was reviewing the tax regime - such as introducing a goods and services tax (GST) or a more progressive structure, Mr Tsang recounted how a government proposal for a GST in 2006 was dropped after widespread opposition.

Legislated framework would mean higher costs for SMEs: ASME

By Monica Kotwani, Channel NewsAsia, 28 Feb 2013

The Association for Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME) has said any framework that legislates SMEs to hire Singaporeans will result in increased costs and red tape.

ASME's president, Chan Chong Beng, made the statement on the sidelines of a Fair Employment Practices seminar on Thursday.

But Mr Chan acknowledged that there is an urgent need among SMEs to restructure work processes in order to survive, in light of the government's tightening of restrictions on foreign labour.

For many small and medium enterprises, Mr Chan said further tightening of the foreign labour inflow has been a "bitter pill to swallow".

"Companies that are not doing well today and are still looking for workers will really have to look into the future of their business, or whether they should re-look their productivity, their work process," he said.

"And you know the government is not likely to U-turn on foreign workers and in fact it is tightening," he added.

He said that in restructuring their work practices, SMEs can bust the misconception that productivity increase is only dependent on the use of technology and machines.

However, Mr Chan said legislating a fair employment policy is not the way to go.

He was commenting on possible new measures to ensure fair hiring practices here which could include requiring companies to advertise job vacancies to locals, before they can apply for a foreign work pass.