LOCALLY-PRODUCED GOODS (Regulation of standard)

Mr Ang Nam Piau asked the Minister for Finance whether he will consider setting up machinery to regulate the standard of locally-produced goods, so that they can compete successfully with foreign goods in the overseas and local markets.

Mr Tang See Chim (for the Minister for Finance): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Government exercises continuous vigilance over the quality of industrial products. The Industrial Research Unit of the Economic Development Board, which is a member of the International Standards Organisation, provides a wide range of information on major international standards and has facilities for testing to these standards. Local manufacturers are encouraged to make maximum use of these facilities.

There are two aspects to standards. One of these is to ensure protection of consumers particularly in matters of food products, drugs and safety equipment. In these matters, there is existing machinery for quality control, for example, control over quality specifications for monosodium glutamate (commonly known as gourmet's powder) and the compulsory testing of safety helmets and of flourescent lamp ballast.

The other aspect is that of quality excellence. This depends on the aims of manufacturers to achieve the highest quality possible in excellence regardless of the minimum standards acceptable to others. Thus, the standards imposed upon themselves by certain companies have come to be accepted internationally as household words for excellence, such as "Rolls Royce" quality. Such high standards cannot be legislated for but must be desired and worked towards.

Successful competition does not depend on this alone. Appropriate price, quality value for that price and assurance that this quality is regularly met, are important. Promptness in delivery is equally important. But even more important for success at home and abroad is aggressive marketing. This demands extreme alertness to changing market conditions and to consumer tastes, a constant search for new markets and dynamism and courage in the capture of such markets.

Singapore's pre-eminence as a trading centre now rapidly moving towards industrialisation gives us a wide market and equally wide opportunities to satisfy a wide range of demands both in price and quality.

Given the same qualities of flexibility, agility and dynamism with which our trading community has succeeded in the past to adjust to changing trading patterns, there is no reason why our industrial community cannot also succeed with made-in-Singapore goods locally and in export markets.