In late January, IMDA unveiled a suite of resources to guide Singaporean enterprises towards sustainability. From a playbook that introduces digital technologies helping businesses boost sustainability to a carbon calculator for cloud services, these tools furnish businesses with pragmatic, quantifiable mechanisms to integrate environmental stewardship into their digital architecture.
Limited financial resources, technical capacity, and time – these are often cited reasons holding small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) back from kickstarting their sustainability journey. Last year, a survey of 560 SMEs by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and the Sustainability Alliance (SA) found that more than half of them could not justify making sustainability a priority, and another three-quarters reported a lack of knowledge to turn sustainability into concrete action plans. 70% even said that they felt a lack of governmental support.
In line with these findings, the latest data from the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) also shows that only 27% of SMEs have adopted at least one digital sustainability solution, a figure that pales in comparison to the 80% of medium and large enterprises that have done so. Amid escalating costs and tight operating margins, it is unsurprising that smaller enterprises leave sustainability as an afterthought. Recognising these pressures, governmental bodies are now trying to lower the barriers to entry by providing resources to make them more accessible to businesses in Singapore.
