MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

MR MAH BOW TAN Minister for National Development

1. MND will contribute to strengthening our economic competitiveness by optimising land use, adopting a lighter regulatory touch, and upgrading the construction industry. MND will play its part in keeping public housing affordable and responsive to changing needs. In addition, we will ensure that other aspects of a quality living environment like a resilient supply of safe food and sufficient avenues for green recreation will be met effectively.

Land Use Policies

2. Given Singapore's size, good land use planning is critical to ensure that we can meet competing demands for land as well as put in place a quality living environment.

3. MND will strive to optimise the use of our existing land. For example, we will explore new land use zonings to give businesses more flexibility to change the use of their land to respond quickly to changing business needs and market demand. We will study introducing a greater variety of lease tenures in Government land sales, to meet changing business needs and foster experimentation with new development concepts. We are also exploring releasing a site of significant scale in the New Downtown area for the integrated development of a business and financial centre.

4. To meet the increasing demand for land, MND will also continue our land reclamation programme from our territorial waters.

5. An orderly property market is important for economic growth. MND will continue to improve our land sale process, in order to release a steady supply of state land, and avoid causing big fluctuations in property prices.

Going for a Lighter Regulatory Touch

6. In keeping with our ongoing efforts to make Singapore an attractive place to do business, MND will continue to reduce and simplify our rules and regulations on development control, and allow greater flexibility in building designs. We will also move towards greater self-regulation for architects and professional engineers.

Meeting our Housing Needs

7. We will maintain a high level of home ownership by a wide cross-section of Singaporean households, and build strong community ties through our public housing policies. These are cornerstones of our national strategy to foster social cohesion. MND will continue to ensure that public flats are priced affordably to enable at least 90% of Singaporean households to be homeowners.

8. MND will make public housing more responsive to the needs of the people. New flats will be built to order to enable Singaporeans to choose a flat according to their budget, preferred location and design. We will offer new flats in the more established estates to Singaporeans through regular balloting exercises. We will also make flats available on a walk-in selection basis to those who need a flat urgently. We will explore greater private sector participation in the design and development of public flats to inject competition and provide Singaporeans a wider choice of public flats in terms of designs, layout and finishes.

9. MND will also continue to rejuvenate older HDB estates through the Main, Interim and Lift Upgrading Programmes and Selective En-Bloc Redevelopment Scheme. This will help households to remain in their existing estates and help preserve the community ties built over the years. The pace of upgrading will depend on the budget surplus that the Government can generate.

10. For the longer term, MND will review the structure of the HDB so that it continues to fulfil its fundamental objective of home ownership for Singaporeans. We will review our public housing policies to keep our public housing expenditure in line with economic growth, and to take into account the need for a balance between expenditures on housing, and other areas such as health and education.

Moving Construction Ahead

11. MND will review our policies to promote consolidation and raise productivity in the construction industry, as well as develop new competitive strengths in areas such as project planning and design, IT applications and pre-fabrication technology.

Ensuring a Resilient Supply of Safe Food

12. Our high dependence on food imports makes Singapore vulnerable to imported food borne diseases and disruption in food supply. MND will step up efforts to diversify our food sources. We will help our food importers broaden their network of sources, stimulate the development of new sources of supply and offer consultancy services in safe food production techniques so that more sources can meet our food safety standards and supply to us.

13. MND will also continue to ensure high standards of food safety by upgrading our diagnostic capabilities and systems. We will work with the Ministry of the Environment to integrate and strengthen our food safety control system to ensure the safety of both processed and unprocessed food.

Meeting Demand for Green Recreation

14. Our policy of greening Singapore will grow in importance in the years ahead as we become more urbanised and densely populated. MND will enhance our Garden City ambience creatively by promoting vertical greening, sky-rise gardens and more distinctive streetscape greenery. We will develop a variety of parks, open up selected nature areas and build up the island-wide park connector network linking our green areas, inland water bodies and the coast. We will also move from just providing green infrastructure to actively engaging the community to develop and organise park-based recreational activities for residents. To preserve our natural heritage, we will establish an inventory of nature areas, and ensure that adequate studies are done before development.