Government Targets for Grooming SMEs into Globally Competitive Companies

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) whether the economic promotion agencies have set targets for the number of SMEs to be groomed into Globally Competitive Companies within a specific period of time; and (b) if so, what are these targets and time periods.

The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Teo Ser Luck) (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): In its 2010 report, the Economic Strategies Committee set an aspirational goal of having 1,000 Singapore enterprises with revenues above $100 million by 2020. This is an increase of 470 from the base of 530 such enterprises in 2007. The goal of reaching 1,000 such companies reflects the objective of developing a strong base of globally competitive companies to create a vibrant corporate ecosystem in Singapore, and grow the external wing of our economy.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song (Non-Constituency Member): I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I just wanted to ask the Minister of State what are the current schemes that the Government is putting in place in order to achieve this target of 1,000 companies, and are there any benchmarks on these schemes to achieve those targets?

Mr Teo Ser Luck: For companies to grow to $100 million revenue in size, they have to do a few things - expanding their base revenue and creating new revenue streams. At the same time, they have to look at the type of sectors they are in and which kind of markets they should target, overseas especially because Singapore, being a smaller market, may not be sufficient for them to grow to that certain size.

There are a few schemes through which we help them. First is that they have to strengthen their company, especially the internal processes, and new technologies, so that it is scalable for the companies to grow to a large size of $100 million. We have a Capability Development Fund that helps them to tap on that to apply technology, human capital development and also productivity improvements. Today, there are more than 1,000 companies or enterprises that tap on these funds. We hope that more companies can come forward to do it; more companies can tap on these funds. This is for the internal processes.

The other schemes to help them is the one to expand their revenue base of going international, internalisation, going overseas and all. IE Singapore has several trade missions that we bring companies overseas and assess the market. But at the same time, for companies that cannot go for these overseas trips or are unable to, say, set up base overseas, we have a scheme that helps them to assess the market through information and resources that we have gathered there, and then provide them with the data when they are locally based here.

For example, schemes like the Market Readiness Assistance, it provides a broad-based informational, advisory and financial support for SMES in order to assess whether they should go international. Secondly, of course, we have the Global Company Partnership Scheme. We identify some potential good companies and, I would not say hand-hold them, but we go in-depth into their operations and we work with them together to assess opportunities oversea and create revenue streams.

To date, we have assisted more than 27,000 companies, of which 80% are SMEs, to internationalise, and this is an increase of 16,000 companies in 2013. We can see that more and more companies are going overseas. Hopefully, we can reach our target of 1,000 companies by 2020.