These four strategic directions will be supported by investment in physical and social infrastructure, stronger industry-specific coordination effort through the Industry Transformation Maps as well as more effective governance including through more comprehensive consultation and partnerships with stakeholders. Even if the latest strategic review is less specific of the underlying macro-economic model and the logic of growth, it would seem from the on-going discourse that productivity oriented thinking is still an important conceptual model driving (or at least strongly influencing) the planning efforts and coordination of government policy. This is particularly seen from the budget statement in 2017, where it was explicitly stressed that achieving growth necessitates pressing on productivity. This model of the GDP growth equals productivity growth was also directly stated in the Committee of Supply debates in 2016 by the Minister of Manpower. Finally, the importance of productivity, manpower and added-value indicators is explicitly seen in the target setting exercise as part of setting the Industry Transformation Maps and is also retained as an important part of the stated KPIs of the lead ministries – the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Manpower. 3.3.3. Conclusions
Overall, despite the decision to limit the growth of immigrant labour, which is a very notable change in the economic strategy recently, the government continues to openly rely on the same, growthaccounting inspired economic governance model, with a particular emphasis on productivity growth. Nevertheless, risks to this growth model are recognised, including the slowing down of international trade; subdued demand in the largest markets and growing competition for higher value-added manufacturing, for example coming from China. Also there are risks felt as regards the potential transformation of economies due to enhanced adoption of digital and automation technologies, arguing for the need to develop capabilities that would help to adapt as soon as such changes start materialising.
3.4. Policy implementation bodies Besides long-term economic national targets set by the aforementioned committees, the policy work in Singapore is further guided by three further levels: - Annual budget, announcing main policy interventions, regulatory changes and distribution of budgetary resources; - Annual expenditure plans, expenditure reports and performance monitoring frameworks at the ministerial level, in particular the two important ministries dealing with industrial and workforce issues – Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM); - Annual reporting by the thematic agencies, responsible for the implementation of policy interventions – i.e. statutory bodies like EDB, Spring, SSG/WSG, A*STAR and IE. In order to analyse policy implementation capacity, it is important understand the links between these other levels bodies to the broader framework of the economic development logic as well as the coordination of their activities. Therefore, below an overview of the objectives, planning and reporting structures of these bodies is presented analysing reporting documents available at the public domain.
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