The Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCCI) is making its own set of recommendations for Budget 2024 after surveying 636 respondents from June to August in 2023.
The respondents were mainly senior representatives (including C-suites) from local businesses. Majority of them – or 94% of the respondents – were from small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Following the responses, the SCCCI has made six recommendations that are all aimed at helping local businesses, mainly SMEs. The recommendations came from issues business owners face such as rising costs, lack of skilled local manpower, challenges when it comes to transforming their businesses and so on.
As such, the SCCCI is recommending that the government:
- help businesses ease their costs,
- help growth-oriented SMEs access lower-cost financing,
- help businesses build green capabilities,
- strengthen SkillsFuture’s programmes for a stronger workforce,
- provide incentives to catalyse and grow SMEs and
- support SCCCI in launching its Trade Association Services Centre to undertake industry-wide initiatives.
“We received feedback that businesses foresee rising business costs, shortages of suitable manpower, inflationary pressures, geopolitical uncertainties, and a slowdown of global and regional economies,” says SCCCI president Kho Choon Keng.
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“[The] SCCCI plans to partner [the] government to launch a “Trade Association Services Centre @ SCCCI” to broaden and deepen our assistance to local trade associations in their industry transformation and development efforts,” he adds. “In addition, we have set up a joint steering committee with our Malaysia counterpart to help our member companies leverage on each other’s complementary strengths to harness growth opportunities in sustainability, renewable energy, digital economy, food security, and in Southeast Asia.”
