We need industry-specific measures and a high level of coordination by industry players, backed by the consensus that this is a restructuring which cannot be further delayed. In this sense, my view is that just raising the lowest wages across the board is an overly blunt and arbitrary instrument. While we do need to address inequality, we should focus not simply on national wage and productivity levels, but on restructuring specific domestic industries.
But I also think it is somewhat disingenuous of Prof Lim’s detractors to simply use scare tactics like ‘investors will flee’ or ‘we will have a drastic economic decline’ to reject his proposals out of hand. Critics of the plan – many of whom have access to economic modelling capabilities – should run their models and share with everyone their findings.I suspect that the cost impact will not be that high, given that only the lowest wage levels will be affected, and most multinational corporation investors – except perhaps the foreign bar and restaurant operators – will have only marginally higher operating costs. There are other reasons not to favour Prof Lim’s proposals than the potential cost increase for businesses.
In fact, those critics who invoke the foreign investor scare tactic are doing a great disservice to all Singaporeans, and particularly our own Government. Full story
