Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat
Singapore
“(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last month, I spoke with Teochew residents in my constituency and they asked me, (In Teochew): "Zuo-ni buay sai toi teochew hee?" (做呢唔使睇潮州戏?") Which means: why can we not watch Teochew movies? Mr Speaker, I have three questions.”
“Thank you, Speaker. Residential rooftop solar generates clean energy and reduces household dependence on imported natural gas and provides a hedge against energy price shocks – benefits that EVs, which add demand to the same gas-dependent grid, do not provide. I note that the Minister of State has mentioned the Green Mark scheme.”
“To the extent that there is a court jurisdiction as was the case in Hangzhou in China, I think that there can be made a point to determine whether something is substantively AI-driven redundancy or not.”
“But more than that: no growth where the gains are captured disproportionately by capital and the burden of adjustment falls on labour. Universal access, so intelligence is not rationed by wealth. Strategic engagement, so we are not price-takers in our own future.”
“I would like to ask two clarifications of the Minister. First, why does he believe that the SkillsFuture course enrolment is a reliable proxy for seriousness? I have some of my residents who have gone for some of these AI courses; they are not very complimentary on the content of these courses.”
“The deepest lesson of the last decade of skills policy, here and abroad, is this: the state cannot substitute for the firm as the principal in a worker's training. We have spent 10 years and considerable public money trying.”
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“Sir, there is a gap in how we administer Lasting Power of Attorneys (LPAs) and deputyship under the Mental Capacity Act. The professional donee framework is too limited, relying too much on named individuals. Section 12(1)(b) requires personal welfare donees be individuals. Organisations are allowed only for property and affairs. The Office of Public Guardian's (OPG's) own list of registered professional deputies illustrates the consequence. Six social workers and one accountant from TOUCH Community Services are listed individually: same address at Bukit Merah Central, same email, same phone number. They function as an organisation, but the law forces the appointment to be personal. When that social worker leaves, the donor must pay to appoint a replacement. In deputyship cases, the cost comes from the incapacitated person's own assets. It seems wrong to make the donor pay for a gap in the law. There is also a practical issue with personal appointments. LPAs are made years or decades before activation, meaning individual donees may have retired, emigrated or died. There is considerable uncertainty whether donees appointed years ago can take up the appointment. Australia's states have addressed this through Public Guardian offices, providing continuity for personal welfare decisions, regardless of staff changes. They charge modest fees and provide the option of being donees of last resort. I ask, will MSF consider amending section 12 to allow accredited organisations to serve as personal welfare donees? Beyond that, could Singapore's Public Guardian serve as donee of last resort, as Australian states have done? Will OPG also issue guidance on what happens when a professional donee falls off the register?”
“It is whether the school opens the door or closes it. That 13-year-old boy did everything he could. He trained for six years. He earned his place in a secondary school that was strong in tennis. He showed up for the trial. And the system told him: there is no room. He is now in his prime developmental years and he is playing a sport he did not choose, while the sport he loves slips further away with each passing term. His mother told me: "I will always wonder whether, if the school had been more open, my son might have improved and eventually earned a place on the team. It is something we will never have the chance to find out." We have an opportunity to make a system that is genuinely open, to extend to CCAs the same generosity of spirit that has guided every other recent reform of our schools. Sir, I so move.”
“Holders could lead developmental CCA sessions under periodic supervision by fully certified coaches. Two further changes are needed to align the system's incentives with its stated developmental purpose. Review the LEAPS 2.0 Achievement domain. When bonus points depend on competition results and school representation, schools have a structural incentive to limit CCA places to students who boost competitive outcomes. Replacing competition-based indicators with measures of growth, effort and consistency would realign LEAPS to its developmental purpose. And require MOE to collect and publish socio-economic data on DSA applications and outcomes – household income quartile, participation in paid preparatory programmes. When my hon colleague Ms Eileen Chong asked for this data, the Minister said that MOE does not collect it. I would respectfully suggest that this is a question worth answering. If DSA in sports systematically advantages families who can afford years of private coaching, then it is not a merit pathway. It is a wealth pathway with a merit label. It is a core concern of the Workers' Party that wealth does not compound unfairness or widen social gaps through our education system – points eloquently elaborated over the years by my hon colleagues Mr Gerald Giam and Assoc Prof Jamus Lim. Speaker, let me return to that family. That resident also has a younger daughter, at a different school. Her primary school runs recreational sports CCAs. No trials. The girl had never held a badminton racket in her life, but she signed up for badminton because she was curious. She was allocated her first choice. She is learning. She is happy and she belongs. Two children in the same family. Two completely different experiences. The difference is not talent or effort.”
“Third, build the infrastructure to keep these doors open. If we ask schools to offer a developmental tier alongside competition, we need people to run it. Today, every coach on a school field must hold full National Registry of Coaches (NROC) membership. Since July 2024, provisional membership has been discontinued. A new coach must now complete SG-Coach Theory, a sport-specific Technical Level 1 course, Foundational Sport Science and Standard First Aid certification. These are appropriate standards for competitive coaching. But we should consider whether a lighter certification pathway, suited to teaching fundamentals rather than competitive technique, might widen the coaching pool. Parent volunteers, older club players, retired coaches, polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education sport graduates who complete coaching practicals but cannot coach in schools without full certification, even full-time National Servicemen with sporting backgrounds could contribute meaningfully at the developmental level if the credentialing framework made room for them. Norway's 9,500 sports clubs are almost entirely volunteer-run. Three-quarters of all coaches are unpaid volunteers operating under a tiered credentialing system. A country our size sustains developmental coaching across every sport because its framework makes room for volunteers, not only professionals. CoachSG's own framework already includes an Exploration stage with a Community Coach programme. I propose that CoachSG create a new NROC tier – an Assistant Coach or Recreational Coach credential, completable in eight to 16 hours at nominal cost, covering maybe Safe Sport, first-aid, values-based coaching and inclusive session design.”
“This ensures that commitment is meaningful. Second, open doors beyond the school. We need systematic cross-school access. The Strategic Partnership CCA (SP-CCA) programme today serves 232 students from 86 schools across four sports. I welcome the expansion. But a programme of this scale serving 232 out of roughly 40,000 Secondary 1 students each year is a proof of concept. I propose three concrete steps. One, to double SP-CCA from four sports to eight sports within two years. Two, publish a sport-by-sport availability map, showing which sports are offered at which schools, so that gaps are visible and planning is data-driven. Three, publish a five-year SP-CCA expansion roadmap with clear targets and invite schools to form voluntary geographic clusters of four to six schools, pooling CCA offerings, so students can cross-attend. If tennis is only available at 30 schools, it should be an SP-CCA candidate. The boy in my ward, the one who trained for six years, would have had a path. This also creates natural opportunities for the kind of social mixing across school types that the hon Member David Hoe has spoken about. We should also recognise sport pursued outside school. SportSG already runs ActiveSG Academies and Clubs – affordable, structured programmes in football, basketball, tennis, athletics and other sports, designed for children and youths. Could students participating in a structured external programme – ActiveSG, a National Sports Association, or a registered academy – be eligible for CCA recognition, subject to verification by the school? And at primary level, could we double or triple the Junior Sports Academy intake – this fully Ministry of Education (MOE)-funded, non-competitive, multi-sport programme – given demand already exceeds supply?”
“So, the gap is not between what we know and what we do not know. It is between what our institutions endorse and what our CCA system requires. Let us close the gap between rhetoric and reality. Sir, I propose reform in three areas. First, open every door within the school. Extend the primary school pilot to secondary schools. Let trials determine who makes the competitive squad, not who gets to participate. Every student should be able to join at least one of their top CCA choices. Where a CCA conducts selection trials, these trials should sort students into a competitive squad and a developmental programme – not into participants and the excluded. Students in the developmental tier train on fundamentals, fitness and game understanding, with the opportunity to trial for the competitive squad each year. This is not a radical idea. It is how Singapore American School and Hwa Chong already do it. Schools should also survey incoming Secondary 1 students on their CCA preferences and publish the aggregate results. If 60 students want badminton and a school caps it at 20, that gap should be visible. Where demand consistently exceeds supply, schools should adjust. Some may move quickly, splitting sessions or expanding squads within the year. Others may take two to three years to reallocate resources from persistently under-subscribed CCAs. Either pace is fine. What matters is having a credible adjustment mechanism. And because CCA choices at 13 years old are often made under constraint – a student allocated their third or fourth preference or a student who discovers a genuine passion through a developmental tier – I propose that students be allowed to change CCAs at the end of Secondary 1 or end of Secondary 2 without penalty under LEAPS.”
“A companion meta-analysis supported it: the predictors of junior elite success were the precise opposite of the predictors of senior world-class success. Many talent promotion programmes select youths based on current performance, which is often a result of biological maturation – early puberty, relative age effect – being born earlier in the selection year and early specialisation – high volumes of sport-specific practice at a young age. These advantages typically diminish or reverse by adulthood. It further recommended that since current performance is a poor predictor of future potential, selection should consider "side-entry" athletes and prioritise those with sustainable development patterns, such as moderate main-sport practice combined with other sports. Also, that programme success should be measured not by junior medals, but by how many athletes transition to senior international excellence. This matters because our CCA system – trials at age 12, a four-year lock-in, LEAPS points tied to competitive results – is structurally an early-selection model. It may produce results in the National School Games. But a system optimised for junior results, by the best available science, is not selecting for true adult world-class performers. I would like to highlight Singapore's National Youth Sports Institute (NYSI). NYSI's Junior Sports Academy exposes Primary 4 to 5 students to four different sports over two years. NYSI's Head of Sport Science has stated publicly that broad-based sporting experience produces equal or better outcomes through cross-transfer of skills. NYSI even hosted a dialogue with one of the principal authors of that 2025 Science study, Prof Arne Gullich, in 2019, to discuss these principles.”
“When a tennis CCA has 20 spots and half are reserved for DSA students, the remaining places must absorb the entire non-DSA cohort – through trials and leftover places. That boy in my ward trained for six years and earned his school place on merit. But the system had already given away half the seats before he arrived. The question is straightforward: who has access to the preparation that DSA awards? Competitive sport at age 12 requires years of coaching, tournament entry fees and parents with the time and means to support it. In 2024, a basketball coach was investigated by the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau for allegedly charging parents $30,000 to $50,000 per child to secure DSA placements. That is not an isolated bad actor – it is a market responding to a system where the stakes are high and the pathways narrow. Does early selection identify future talent? Sports science is settling on this question and it is not a close call. In December 2025, a study was published in major journal Science, synthesising the developmental histories of over 34,000 top-level performers – Olympic athletes, Nobel laureates, elite chess players, classical music composers – and had a central finding: young standouts and adult world-class performers are largely different people. Approximately 90% are different individuals. Early specialisation produces early results. But adult world-class performance is predicted by the opposite pattern: limited early discipline-specific practice, extensive multi-disciplinary engagement and gradual initial progress. World-class athletes averaged involvement in two other sports over nine years during childhood.”
“Hwa Chong's track and field programme – the first school to win all four divisions at the National Schools Championships in a single year – requires no prior experience and welcomes anyone with a passion for the sport. It fields athletes across every event category: sprints, jumps, throws, walks, cross-country, pole vault. A 2008 report on the National Schools Championships observed that while a rival school matched Hwa Chong in first-place finishes, Hwa Chong's depth across the field – finishers in every event accumulating points – was what secured the divisional title. Broad participation is not the enemy of competitive excellence. At Hwa Chong, it is the competitive strategy. Internationally, the pattern holds at scale. Durham University fields 16,000 students across 550 teams, 75% of its student body, and it is the top-ranked team sport university in Britain. In the United States, eight million high schoolers play athletics; at the college level, over two million play club sport alongside half a million National Collegiate Athletic Association varsity athletes. The base of the pyramid and the peak are not in competition. They are the same structure. Norway's sports federation has codified this. Its Children's Rights in Sport provisions, adopted in 1987, guarantee every child the right to choose whichever sport they choose to participate in. Selection determines competitive squads, but no child is excluded. That system, in a country of 5.6 million people, our size, has produced 445 Winter Olympic medals, more than any country on earth. I also want to turn to DSA, because DSA and CCA are entangled. DSA now covers 141 of 148 secondary schools. Sports is the largest talent category.”
“For popular CCAs, sports, performing arts, schools conduct trials and auditions. Students who do not pass are asked to remove that CCA from their choices. Some fail multiple trials. They are allocated to whatever remains. This is not unreasonable on its own. Resources are finite, but consider what makes CCA different from everything else in our education system. CCA is compulsory. Students must participate for four to five years. Under LEAPS 2.0, that participation is graded and those grades translate into bonus points for post-secondary admission. We have spent the last decade making the rest of our system more open. Mid-year exams removed, PSLE T-scores replaced with broader bands, streaming dissolved into subject based banding. Each reform carries the same signal: less sorting, more room. CCA has not received that same attention. In 2020, the Ministry piloted the removal of CCA selection trials across eight primary schools. The pilot seems a success. Today, about two-thirds of primary schools operate without trials. When I asked the Minister about this on 12 February, the reply confirmed the results but did not address secondary schools where LEAPS 2.0 applies and stakes are highest. There is a model already operating in Singapore – in our international schools. At Singapore American School, students who miss the competitive team are not turned away. They join a developmental programme and continue training. No student is excluded. It is an established system, on Singapore soil, showing that open participation and competitive excellence reinforce each other. This principle is not foreign to local schools.”
“Speaker, I wish to discuss our co-curricular activities (CCA) system. A resident in my ward shared her son's story with me. He started playing tennis when he was seven. His primary school did not offer tennis as a CCA, so his parents arranged training outside – once a week with a private coach, twice a week in a small group programme. Both parents work full-time. For six years, he trained largely on his own. He never had a chance to play alongside peers of his age. His dream all through primary school was simple: to join a secondary school with a strong tennis team and finally be part of one. He applied through Direct School Admission (DSA) to his dream school. The school took a handful of boys, all top ranked players in their age group. He was not selected for DSA. He did not give up. He worked hard for his Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) and earned his place on merit. Then came the CCA trial for tennis. He made it to the final round but was not selected. At this school, trials are conducted before students submit their CCA choices. He was advised not to list tennis. The school explained that there was no room, space constraints, grading considerations. So, the boy chose rugby. It is one of the few CCA with vacancies and open to beginners. Rugby trains three times a week. With that and a heavier Secondary 1 workload, he had to give up competitive tennis. He can still hit a ball on weekends, but he cannot train seriously. His mother told me it was heartbreaking to watch her son give up the sport he loves, not because he was not good enough, but because the system would not give him a chance to become good enough. Mr Speaker, I believe this is a system problem, not a talent problem. Each January, Secondary 1 students submit a ranked list of CCA preferences.”
“So, we will air-condition community centres for adults, but close schools for the kids. International schools and independent schools have air-conditioned classrooms. Neighbourhood schools have ceiling fans. The children who can least afford the learning penalty are paying it. Capital cost, less than $100 million for all classrooms, under 1% of the MOE's budget paid once. On running costs, 130 schools already have rooftop solar under Solar Nova. Expand it to all schools and offset the additional electricity partially. I am not asking to switch on air-conditioning all day. Set a target temperature, switch on when the thermostat exceeds it. MOE headquarters (HQ) already runs a similar system, centralised air-conditioning with automatic start times and cut-offs. Just extend it to our classrooms. Sir, two questions. Will MOE establish indoor temperature standards for classrooms? And will MOE commit to a timeline for a phased programme – beginning with primary schools – to install mixed mode air-conditioning in all classrooms? Interfaith Learning for Social Cohesion”
“Sir, last year, I asked the Minister about thermal inequality in school classrooms. Research shows that each temperature degree of temperature increase cuts learning by 1% to 2%, hitting lower-income students hardest. The Minister acknowledged that. He listed measures, cool paint, faster fans, physical education (PE) attire, mixed mode air conditioning for halls. For classrooms, continue to explore. If an unfair learning gap is forming, can we afford to wait? Every MOE school is already air-conditioned: computer labs, science labs, libraries, lecture theatres, staff rooms, admin offices, all air-conditioned. The Ministry is now installing mixed mode air-conditioning in school halls, so the electrical infrastructure is there. The condensers are there. The maintenance contracts are there. The only rooms without air-conditioning are the classrooms where 420,000 children spend most of the day. We should extend aircon to the rooms that matter most. A primary school teacher told me by 11.00 am in the morning, classrooms are unbearably hot. Fans just circulate hot air and create noise that drowns out teaching. Children cannot sit still. They ask to go to the toilet just to escape the heat. Teachers cannot teach effectively in that heat either. A National University of Singapore study in Building and Environment found cognitive performance in Singapore's fan ventilated classrooms drops 9% in slightly warm conditions and 18% in warm conditions. There is no temperature standard for classrooms. To avoid thermal inequality, we should set one. In 2023, the Government's Mercury Taskforce designated community centres and sports halls as airconditioned cooling spaces for the public. But for schools, reduce outdoor activities, relax dress code, send children home.”
“Will the Minister disclose how the quantum safe budget breaks down between QKD and PQC, and when Singapore will set a PQC migration deadline?”
“Sir, Singapore, sits outside global consensus. In January 2024, the cybersecurity agencies of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden jointly assessed Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Their conclusion: QKD is not yet sufficiently mature and can only serve niche use cases. They said: "Migration to post quantum cryptography (PQC) has priority over the use of QKD". PQC first is not just an American position. The PQC algorithms were built by European researchers. The back-up algorithm is entirely French. Eighty-two candidates from 25 countries went through eight years of open cryptanalysis. Germany published PQC migration guidance in 2020, four years before standards were finalised. Australia's deadline to cease classical public key cryptography is in 2030; Japan, 2035; 18 EU states signed a PQC commitment last November. QKD was not mentioned. PQC is software – it deploys on current infrastructure. Apple shipped PQC to 1.3 billion devices with an iOS update. Google enabled it for 3.4 billion Chrome users. Cloudflare has protected 20% of global web traffic since late 2023. No new fibre, no specialised hardware. A software update. Without PQC, adversaries harvest today and decrypt tomorrow. Singapore's position is the opposite. We are expanding the National Quantum Safe Network with dedicated QKD fibre, yet have no PQC migration deadline. Only Singapore and China are scaling QKD as national infrastructure rather than treating it as a niche research pilot. Our flagship quantum spin-off sells QKD back to the Government that funded it. I ask why the balance between QKD and PQC appears opposite to every comparable nation. Many quantum researchers in Singapore are sceptical. They deserve accountability.”
“Thank you, Sir. Thank you, Minister, for a comprehensive overview. I had filed this as a Parliamentary Question later, but I thought I would raise it today. First on capabilities, as we modernise the SAF, what is the Minister's assessment of the introduction of weapon types not previously present in Southeast Asia, specifically modern ballistic missiles, following Indonesia's acquisition of the KHAN from Türkiye? Does our current modernisation roadmap address this? Another group of clarifications on NSF compensation. Senior Minister of State Zaqy said we should not erode the social compact and the ethos of service by casting NS as an employer-employee relationship. But SAF Regulars serve the same mission and they are paid market rate salaries and CPF, so it does not erode their ethos of service. I do not think duty and compensation are incompatible at all. The fact is that people who have no choice get paid less than people who do. The Senior Minister of State also framed accommodation, food, equipping as part of the compensation package. I would respectfully disagree. I think these are just simply operational necessities for the SAF. The army feeds soldiers because hungry soldiers do need to fight. It houses them because you need them in camp at 5.30 am, and it gives them equipment because you cannot send someone outfield in civilian clothing. It is less than 1% of the defence budget. Why can we not find it to pay our soldiers fairly?”
“Senior Minister of State Heng Chee How replied that NS is a duty, not employment, but SAF Regulars serve the same duty with market salaries and full CPF. If duty and employment were mutually exclusive, we could not have a professional army. By their second year, NSFs are fully trained and operationally deployed, manning posts, running day to day operations, performing similar tasks as Regulars. They should be paid accordingly. Raising second year NSF allowances to the new Local Qualifying Salary (LQS) of $1,800 with employer CPF would cost approximately $150 to $200 million a year, under 1% of a $25 billion defence budget. I ask the Minister: will the Ministry commit to at least the LQS of $1,800 for second year NSFs? Recognition and Support for NSmen”
“Last year, the United Kingdom (UK) launched the Cyber Direct entry scheme, a fast-track pathway for civilians into military cyber roles. Basic training cut to one month, fitness and medical standards waived, no formal qualifications required, demonstrated skills sufficient, starting salary over $40,000 pounds, with up to $25,000 in additional skills pay. The first cohort of 30 entered operational roles in late 2025, helping defend UK networks against 90,000 attacks over two years. Will MINDEF consider a cyber direct entry pathway for DIS, allowing mid-career industry professionals to serve in military cyber defence with adapted entry requirements and competitive compensation? Cyber Guardian shows what DIS achieves when it mobilises whole-of-Government. The next step is to draw from whole of industry. Second-year NSF Allowance - $1,800 Local Qualifying Salary (LQS) Sir, in December, TikTok user @ruggerbud47 calculated how many McSpicy burgers his NSF allowance could buy and compared it to previous batches at the same rank. The answer: fewer. Despite nominal increases, NSF purchasing power has fallen. Every NSF watching it understood it instantly. In Budget 2026, the Government announced it will raise the local qualifying salary to $1,800. Every worker earning that amount receives Central Provident Fund (CPF) as a matter of law. A second-year NSF corporal in a combat vocation earns $1,035 a month with zero CPF. If $1,800 is the floor for every worker in Singapore, surely it is the floor for every soldier. In 2024, my colleague Mr Gerald Giam proposed raising NSF allowances to at least the local qualifying salary of $1,600 with CPF contributions.”
“Sir, in February, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) disclosed that all four of Singapore's major telcos had been breached by UNC3886. Does the DIS have the talent pipeline fight the next breach? DIS was established three years ago. The Defence Cyber Command was inaugurated last March. MINDEF has programmes to grow talent from within – the Sentinel Programme for youths, the Cyber Work-Learn Scheme for Full-time National Servicemen (NSFs), the enhanced expertise deployment scheme for national servicemen with relevant civilian skills. These are genuine efforts and I acknowledge them. But the expertise to detect zero-day exploits in network firewalls to identify custom root kits, like MOPSLED and REPTILE, to trace state sponsored command and control infrastructure routed through commercial cloud services, this is predominantly in the private sector at firms, like Cloudstrike, Mandiant, Palo Alto Networks. The response operation Cyber Guardian required coordination across six agencies precisely because no single entity, including DIS, had sufficient depth alone. The Minister acknowledged last September that military and civilian cyber threats are increasingly blurred. I agree. But if the threat landscape is blurred, the talent pipeline should be too. Our programmes train soldiers to become cyber defenders. We do not seem to have a dedicated pathway for cyber professionals to become soldiers. The barrier is structural. Military service carries entry requirements designed for conventional soldiering – fitness standards, ten weeks of basic training, rigid career tracks and compensation that cannot compete with industry. These are appropriate for infantry, but perhaps counterproductive for recruiting a 40-year-old penetration tester.”
“Thank you. One clarification for Senior Minister of State Siow. The Senior Minister of State said that the GST concession is because the service charges are "variable and may be waived or reduced", which it may very well be, but then there is nothing stopping a coffee shop from charging 0.1% service charge to charge GST exclusive prices, which it did in 2022. So, that is not consistent with what IRAS subsequently did, which was to enforce it and clarify the rules because it updated its guidelines to state that the pricing exception does not apply to businesses that levy a nominal service charge without a genuine business reason, other than to avoid displaying GST inclusive prices. So, what determines nominality, if that is the standard for qualifying for concession? F&B businesses and hotels need certainty too. And that IRAS has to police this at all suggests that the concession creates more complexity than it resolves, which brings us back to the question of whether it truly serves consumer interest.”
“Second, estimate the actual cost to hotels and restaurants of modifying their menus and ordering systems. Let the evidence, not assumptions made three decades ago, determine whether this concession still serves any public interest or whether it simply allows businesses to advertise artificially low prices at the expense of consumer clarity. Support SMEs”
“GST Price Display - Hotels and Restaurants Last year, my colleague, Louis Chua, asked whether the administrative concession allowing hotels and restaurants to display prices excluding GST and service charge was still relevant. The Minister replied that he did not think consumers would be confused. But in 2022, IRAS had to clamp down on restaurants that were imposing nominal service charges – as low as 0.1% – specifically to exploit this loophole and avoid displaying GST inclusive prices. These establishments were gaming the system to advertise lower prices while adding the charges at the end. If consumers were truly not confused by this practice, why did IRAS need to take enforcement action? The real problem is that this exemption creates a perverse incentive. Restaurants that impose a service charge can advertise prices almost 17% lower than what customers actually pay. It is a competitive advantage that comes at the expense of price transparency. IRAS justifies this concession by saying it helps restaurants manage pricing differences between dine-in and takeaway orders. But this rationale does not hold up. It is just as easy to display a full price and subtract a 10% discount for takeaway as it is to display a lower price and add a 10% service charge for dine-in. The arithmetic is identical, only the direction changes. And this takeaway rationale cannot explain why hotels also enjoy the same exemption. There is no such thing as a takeaway hotel room. In an age of electronic menus and ordering systems, it is anachronistic to cite the cost of printing paper menus as justification for denying consumers basic price transparency. I urge IRAS to conduct a proper public feedback exercise. First, assess consumer demand for clear display of GST-inclusive prices.”
“Sir, on property tax valuation for owner-occupied homes. A constituent I visited is a retiree in his home for decades – asset rich, cash poor. His landed home is one of the most basic in the area. His neighbour tells a different story – rebuilt into a multi-storey house; three units, three entrances, three tenants and a very high rental yield. Under the Annual Value (AV) system, his property tax is set by comparable rentals, including his neighbour's. His neighbourhood gentrified around him while he stayed put. A retiree who never rented and never will is taxed as a landlord. In February 2024, the same concern was raised – how the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) assesses AV for asset-rich but cash-poor owners. The response was that IRAS considers "improvement works last done." But his problem is not his property's condition. It is his neighbour's rental income. The AV system yokes an owner-occupier's tax to his neighbours' self-interested actions. Sir, there is a better method. Capital value – based on sales, not rentals. It would better reflect the position of owner-occupiers who derive no rental income. The Government rejected this, citing fewer sales transactions and greater price volatility. Why does this reasoning not apply to the Chief Valuer's other function? When the Chief Valuer prices state land for Build-To-Order flats, the methodology references resale flat transactions – this was confirmed by the Government in November 2025. Can the Minister explain this inconsistency? Will the Government consider capital value for owner-occupied property tax?”
“Thank you, Speaker. I, of course, respect the Prime Minister's prerogative to characterise my views on R&D as somewhat one-sided. So, I would like to offer him the opportunity for a fuller defence in light of, perhaps, three groups of facts. First, since 1991, the first National Technology Plan to RIE2030, the nominal amount committed is about $125 billion, of which I think there are indeed few visible commercial outcomes. Mirxes in 2025 was the first and only billion-dollar IPO. I do not recall any other commercially significant companies out there. Even if we were to give it to the Government that it is an MNC-driven strategy, the first phase of the Biopolis project was not a big success. For all the MNC R&D offices for these pharmaceutical companies – in 2010, we had the departure of Eli Lilly; in 2013, we had the departure of Pfizer; in 2014, the departure of GlaxoSmithKline; in 2016, the departure of Novartis. So, I do not really quite see where, perhaps, he is having his different view from. My second clarification is whether he will consider putting on a policy investment bank function or, rather, reconstituting it, given that it has been missing since Mdm Ho Ching took over Temasek in 2002.”
“And it shifts R&D accountability to where it belongs, not on public servants approving a grant, but on the system retaining value. You may be very proud of your Ehime No 28. But unless you take preparatory measures, unless you design for the upside, one day you will find your R&D being sold as a Hong Mei Ren mandarin. Incubated in Singapore, harvested in Zhejiang and Hong Kong. Thank you, Speaker.”
“Some say we should adopt golden shares, IP retention conditions and protected technologies. Domestic manufacturing requirements tied to public funding. My view is the necessary and plausibly sufficient policy to adopt is an IP conditionality regime, designed for a small open economy. Legislate that IP developed with public R&D funding cannot be permanently transferred offshore without prior approval from a designated authority – enforceable domestically against Singapore-domiciled entities and individuals. Ultimately, we will be judged on the competitiveness of our ecosystem. An SGX that rewards R&D. Special Economic Zones that can scale up manufacturing at lower cost. Company-driven R&D manpower policies. Risk capital from a consolidated policy investment bank, like Bpifrance. Trade architecture that companies actually use, not headline ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement numbers or scarcely used Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), but reduced non-tariff barriers and the ability to incorporate once in Singapore and operate across key Southeast Asian markets. When companies reach a certain size, the siren song of redomicile will prove irresistible for many. The competition shifts to building a growth-capital ecosystem deep enough and catalysing a Southeast Asian market large enough that staying makes more sense than leaving. So, sunset such an IP conditionality regime once the ecosystem is strong enough. This will crowd-in private R&D and take the burden of sustaining our headline R&D numbers off the Singaporean taxpayer. Yes, fewer R&D startups may form under these IP conditions. But I say, it is better to have fewer startups with real upside capture than sexy headlines, nice public relations pieces in CNA and nothing to show from it.”
“I said I would return to the question of protecting value. Money, speed and a market can build a pipeline. But pipeline alone is not enough if the value leaks out. Three countries have dealt with this question, and they are not peripheral economies. They are among the most successful R&D ecosystems in the world. Israel protects at inception. Under the Law for the Encouragement of Industrial Research and Development, the Israel Innovation Authority attaches binding conditions to all public R&D funding. IP developed with public grants cannot be transferred outside Israel without explicit prior approval. Unauthorised transfer is a criminal offence. No known prosecution has occurred, but the deterrent is powerful. Taiwan protects through structure. Industrial Technology Research Institute spun off Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in 1987, by transferring fabs, equipment, technologies and 98 professionals to a new Taiwanese entity – with significant government ownership. The critical feature was not any single restriction but a system: government ownership stakes in spin-offs, personnel who were Taiwanese nationals, incorporation in Taiwan, government funding giving the state structural leverage over deployment. South Korea designates core protected technologies. Under the Industrial Technology Protection Act, South Korea designates more than 70 technologies across 13 fields as National Core Technologies – semiconductors, displays, batteries – and requires prior approval for any export or merger and acquisitions involving these technologies. Maximum prison sentences for overseas technology leakage reach 18 years, with punitive damages at five times actual losses. Singapore needs equivalent mechanisms for conditionality.”
“If yes, renew. If not, exit. Traditional organisations – banks, established corporates – can afford strict income rules. There is enough local talent. But deep-tech startups need radical fluidity and the visa regime most suited to them should follow the company, not the person. We should also aim to make visa decisions snappy. It is fine to say no to people. But let us have the courtesy to do it fast, within a matter of weeks. Let us not waste our companies' time. Third, a market and offtake. Money and speed are necessary, but insufficient if no one is buying. The system must be designed for offtake, structured so that when R&D produces something, there is a buyer on the other end. Singapore hosts regional headquarters, not global ones. Decision-making centres remain in New York, London, Paris and Shanghai. Regional postings run three to four years. When the regional executive who championed an innovation pilot rotates home, continuity goes with them. Corporate incentive structures often reward launching initiatives, not seeing them through, creating structural discontinuity. Tax incentives should require backing from both regional and global headquarters. If there is no interlocutor in New York or Shanghai who has signed off, no incentive. This ensures a direct link to decision-making and prevents projects from being forgotten when executives rotate home. Beyond that, we should attach strategic buyer offtake commitments to grants. Require multinational corporations (MNCs) to pilot, evaluate or procure from at least one local startup or SME, as part of grant conditions. And the Government itself must practise innovation procurement. Europe and China give SMEs quotas of contracts to help them gain scale, so we must do the same.”
“But if the first attempt feels like pulling teeth, they drop out, and the compounding of iterated learning across business formation is lost. Speed is not just about money, it is about people. MOM uses income as its proxy for talent: the Tech.Pass at $22,500 a month, the ONE Pass at $30,000. This may work for hot fields. It seldom works for deep tech, which due to their call-option nature, are unfashionable before they are fashionable. A strong biotech engineer in Thailand earns a quarter of Singapore wages. To bring them here, a startup must triple their salary – not because their skills are worth less, but because MOM's threshold demands it. That is startup cash burnt on regulatory compliance, not R&D. We are asking founders to choose between the talent they need and the runway they cannot afford to lose. The assumption that salary equals value breaks down where it matters most. Deep tech talent is scarce, specialised and often transient. An 18-month engagement with a materials engineer or a combustion engine specialist can redefine a company's trajectory. The visa framework should reflect that reality. I propose a segmented approach: a company-driven deep tech visa, tied not to income, but the company's credentials. A monthly review committee of mixed Singaporean and international entrepreneurs evaluating deep tech companies. There are perhaps 50 to 80 serious deep-tech companies formed here each year. Companies meeting the criteria enter a special segment: flexibility for three to five visas in Year One, with annual portfolio reviews assessing whether the company is growing. Easy entry, progressively stricter requirements on each renewal, all strictly performance-based. Is the company growing? Are Singaporeans being hired and trained alongside foreign specialists?”
“We had this in the early years with DBS and Temasek, but both have since drifted from that mission and today, no institution fills the gap. The WP has argued before for an Export-Import (EXIM) Bank. The French example shows a mandate wider still – innovation investment, SME lending, export credit, strategic equity, all under one roof. It is often said that we have a lot of capital in Singapore, but we have the wrong type of capital for R&D commercialisation. Capital tied to Government and corporates. Excessive obsession with business metrics way too early. Startups forced to jump through a thousand hoops for small cheques. Family officers largely uninterested in our R&D ecosystem. My colleague Jamus Lim has proposed requiring a modest domestic allocation as a condition for family office tax incentives, which I support. What does success look like 25 years from now? A flywheel, where private capital is sophisticated enough to understand deep tech. Patient capital writing experimental cheques, less metric-obsessed early on. This is the ecosystem that we should be building towards. Second, speed. Funders and regulators need to understand that two extra days of approvals or one month of delayed cash flow is life and death for a startup. You do not understand what it takes if you have not tried it yourself. Fast capital deployment does not just save companies. It trains a generation of entrepreneurs who will not waste 60% of their time fundraising. We should make peace with the fact that roughly 80% of bets on startups made in good faith will back a losing venture. That is the power law in action. The real gain is often the entrepreneur's second and third startup.”
“Under Francois Hollande and economic advisor Emmanuel Macron, in 2012, France merged four fragmented investment bodies – one for SME loans, guarantees innovation, one for venture capital, one for strategic equity and one for regional equity – into a single entity, Bpifrance. Export credit insurance was added later in 2017. It now employs about 3,500 staff, centralising innovation investment, economy-wide strategic investment, SME financing, loan guarantees, export support and regional business development. The diagnosis that prompted Bpifrance's creation was plain. Despite strong science and underlying dynamism, France's entrepreneurial culture was weak, risk-averse and fearful of failure. Bpifrance also organised learning expeditions and export programmes to help French companies internationalise. It became the anchor investor across French tech, not just deep tech. Its 10-year assessment found that 80% of French startups that raised funds between 2013 and 2021 received Bpifrance support, and two thirds of French venture capital funds have Bpifrance as a limited partner. Bpifrance deliberately accepts below market returns, targeting 7% annually rather than 10% plus to take risk that private investors will not, training a generation of entrepreneurs and building an ecosystem from scratch. I believe we need an equivalent policy investment bank – an institution outside the civil service, incentivised to take risk and freed from line-item accountability, staffed with ecosystem builders, not risk-averse civil servants. We need to take a portfolio approach, thinking in 10-year cycles, 10-year cohorts, 10-year mandates. They need the right incentives.”
“All of this matters. But there must be an honest reckoning with 30 years of limited commercial outcomes and value leakage. The R&D ecosystem needs three things: money, speed and a market. First, money. I tried to count Singapore's Government-linked startup funds. I stopped at 20. There are eight sub-schemes under the Startup SG umbrella alone. SGInnovate, Xora Innovation under Temasek. Vertex Holdings with seven sub funds. The National Research Foundation, A*STAR, the Infocomm Media Development Authority and the Monetary Authority of Singapore run their own programmes. This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, each was created for a reason. Each has a logic, but the aggregate effect is a landscape so fragmented that no single entity has the mandate, the capital concentration or the institutional authority to make the kind of large, decisive fast bets that define successful deep tech commercialisation elsewhere. The SG Growth Capital merger of SEEDS and EDBI is a step in the right direction, but the deeper question is whether we have the institutional courage to truly consolidate to give one to two entities the capital, the mandate and critically, the permission to fail, at scale, rather than spreading accountability so thin that no one is responsible for ecosystem outcomes. The pruning must go deeper. France has a public investment bank called Banque publique d'investissement (Bpifrance), a single institution combining innovation investment, SME lending, loan guarantees, export credit insurance and strategic equity stakes. In 2024, Bpifrance deployed 60 billion euros. Its officers proactively contact companies with programmes. It is commercially viable, with a 2024 net income of 900 million euros.”
“But the question is not whether we are spending enough, it is whether the system converts that spending into commercial outcomes for Singapore. Why does the system produce these two outcomes: (a) a limited pipeline of commercially viable R&D companies; and (b) a failure to take advantage of successes when they come? The structural flaw is that agencies like the Economic Development Board (EDB) and the Statutory Boards are structured as grant givers, not as investors or ecosystem builders. If you are a grant giver, your job is to mark the market, to benchmark, to do due diligence against market rates. If you mark the market, you are then subject to the audit process, every decision scrutinised against whether you followed the benchmark. If you are a civil servant in that position, there is absolutely no reason to stick your neck out. Zero incentive for upside, only downside risk from audit. So, of course, you end up with super conservative civil servants who say, "I do not want to do any innovation." You end up with long meetings where senior officials agonise over $5,000 or $10,000 because they are worried about compliance. Worse, annual key performance indicator cycles force officers to judge five- to seven-year bets on a 12-month horizon. So, promising ventures get culled before they can prove themselves. Meanwhile, you miss the forest for the trees. To take an ecosystem approach to funding so that the day-to-day operational environment for R&D startups is the best that it can be. To design policy to capture R&D upside. Our agencies are structured to avoid losing money, not to make it. That is why 30 years of spending has not produced 30 years of results. I agree with the Prime Minister that R&D is a core imperative. Productivity gains, moving up the value chain.”
“On that day, Mirxes, a microRNA cancer diagnostics biotech company incubated over many years of Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) research at Biopolis IPO-ed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), raising HK$1.09 billion with China-linked cornerstone investors. Finally, a billion-dollar IPO. Coincidentally, also about 15 years of effort, like the Japanese breeding the Ehime No 28. But the story is more complicated. Mirxes listed in Hong Kong, not Singapore, because the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has no equivalent to the HKEX pathway for pre-revenue biotech. Its cornerstone investors were Chinese entities holding over 40% of the IPO. Its manufacturing now is in Zhejiang province. Its growth market is in China. So, the initial science came from Singapore, but commercialisation leaked offshore. If this is success, then what does failure look like? This is not the fault of the Chinese. They optimise rationally within the realities of the system. This is our failure to capture value, our responsibility to anticipate, to get it right, to make sure Singaporean taxpayers reap the rewards of tens of billions ploughed into R&D. Mirxes highlighted two facts. First, the system does not produce a strong pipeline. That Mirxes is the only billion-dollar IPO or commercially significant R&D company after 30 years of continual investment tells you something. Second, even when a success emerges, the system is naively vulnerable to value chain leakage. To lose a one-billion-dollar IPO may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose more is carelessness. I will return to this later. Sir, I welcome the Budget's commitment to $37 billion under RIE2030 and the expansion of Startup SG Equity into growth capital. These are steps in the right direction.”
“Speaker, last week was the Lunar New Year. I had the pleasure of sampling a Xiangshan Hong Mei Ren mandarin orange. The texture was extraordinary, the vesicles of the orange were very sweet, the skin almost paper thin. It has been described as eating jelly, or jelly growing on a tree; 12% to 15% sugar content, low acidity, no floating skin. It inspired me to investigate its history. The Hong Mei Ren was once called the Ehime No 28, developed over 15 years at the Ehime Prefectural Fruit Tree Experiment Station in Japan, and prized for its jelly-like texture and ultra-premium positioning. But due to the lack of intellectual property (IP) protection, it was lost. A handful of stem cuttings were carried to Xiangshan county in Zhejiang province in China in 2001. Today, the Hong Mei Ren has expanded to over one million mu (亩) over 15 Chinese provinces, dwarfing Japan's 300 hectares over a hundred fold. Fifteen years of breeding, gone. Just like that. It was one of the most consequential agricultural IP losses in modern Japanese history, alongside the Shine Muscat grape and strawberry leakages. That reminded me of something closer to home. It is well known that our research and development (R&D) ecosystem over the last 30 years has not produced impressive commercial outcomes. Tens of billions of spending since 1990, more than 30 years. Where are the deep tech commercial successes? The report card of significant commercial outcomes, high value initial public offerings (IPOs), globally competitive companies is bare. That is what I would have said up to 23 May 2025.”
“I thank the Minister of State for her clarification. May I ask, what is the extent of the MediSave coverage for dental subsidies? And if so, can they be expanded?”
“Financial hubs are not natural phenomena. They are built. The British built the Euro dollar market through deliberate policy – forbearance, defence, direct participation, implicit guarantees – at a moment when sterling was in decline and the world's reserve asset was looking for an offshore home. Our financial centre was built too on deliberate pillars: rule of law, institutional trust, regulatory predictability. For decades, that was enough. Today, not anymore. Hedge funds we incubated are opening in Dubai. Family offices we courted are diversifying there. Dubai's financial centre doubled its hedge fund count to over a hundred in a single year. They moved on gold, years ago. They will move on the next thing before we have formed a committee to study it. It is not the nature of the standards, but the structural bet. Singapore won a windfall when Hong Kong shut itself down during COVID-19. That was luck. And luck is a depreciating asset. Jobs, institutional knowledge, relevance – those are the stakes. Rule of law, institutions, trust – these are necessary conditions. They are no longer sufficient ones. Other cities have learned to offer versions of the same, combined with speed we have not matched. Gold is not the whole answer. But it is the question: can Singapore still see a structural shift in the global financial system and build for it, or have we become the kind of country that convenes a review after the opportunity has passed? Because that is the real risk. That the instinct is lost. That this country becomes mediocre. Because once you become mediocre, derivative, content to be a fast-adopter, there is no bottom to that market. Thank you, Sir.”
“The conventional instrument is a long-dated forward – locking in a price to sell gold years from now. The problem is that if gold moves from $3,000 to $5,000, the mark-to-market between counterparties swings accordingly, and that exposure sits unsettled for years. The result is large, volatile collateral calls and significant counterparty credit risk. An interest rate swap solves this by separating the hedge into two components. The price exposure is hedged with short-dated instruments that settle frequently, so credit exposure resets regularly and never accumulates over years. The cost-of-carry component is hedged via the swap, which is long-dated but insensitive to the spot price, keeping its mark-to-market small and stable. The combined position achieves the same economic result as the forward, but with a fraction of the counterparty exposure. That means smaller collateral calls, lower capital requirements for banks – and a more efficient market overall. Reviving a GOFO-equivalent benchmark would restore the infrastructure needed for a functioning gold interest rate swap market – giving producers and banks a cleaner, less capital-intensive way to manage long-dated gold exposure, including non-dollar currency pairs. This would give banks the pricing infrastructure to build gold financing capabilities here. Even if gold's share of reserves stabilises rather than continues to climb, the infrastructure I describe is not wasted. Sovereign vaults, verified warehouse receipts and derivatives architecture serve any asset class where custody, provenance and financing matter – critical minerals, rare earths, tokenised commodities. Gold is the use case with the most immediate demand, but the platform outlasts any single price cycle. Sir, in closing.”
“And in our warehouses or vaults, we need strong verification standards, to be able to financialise a wide net of gold collateral, the LBMA-approved and those outside the LBMA system alike. Digital warehouse receipts issued under Singapore standards should be legally enforceable claims. Fourth, our own standard. The LBMA sets the global Good Delivery standard. It is valuable. We should emulate it. Create a Singapore Bullion Standards Authority. Launch an Asian Good Delivery standard accepted by major exchanges. Competition between standards is healthy. We should aim to make our standard inter-operable with LBMA, possibly as a custody wrapper on top of LBMA. To illustrate: within the CME Group, gold receives different treatment depending on standard. COMEX warrants are valid collateral for customer accounts, while London LBMA bullion is not. We would be selling liquidity: the guarantee that gold with the Singapore custody stamp can be used as collateral, that banks will lend against it, that it trades on major exchanges. Beyond custody: liquid markets for price discovery and financing against verified collateral. We can be a multicurrency hub for gold financing – swapping it for US dollar, renminbi, or other currencies of choice. Fifth, we should revive the GOFO, the Gold Forward Offered Rate, and the derivatives architecture it enables. GOFO was the benchmark interest rate at which banks lent gold. The LBMA published it daily until 2015, when it was discontinued – not because the market no longer needed it, but as collateral damage from the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) scandal. Its main practical use was enabling interest rate swaps on gold. Consider a gold producer hedging future production over five years.”
“If 73% of central banks expect to increase gold holdings, Singapore should be among them, not amongst the sellers. MAS reserves held in Singapore vaults create the base load that foreign participants need to see. The Euro dollar market had central banks providing 20% of net demand. We should do the same. Third, Refining, Sourcing, Verification. It is one thing to have custody, but to have trusted custody requires the above. Recasting connects markets. Western central banks hold 400-ounce bars. Yet, Asian retail buys kilobars. To connect these markets, you need recasting capacity. You need refineries. Singapore has only one. Dubai built multiple refineries with no mining industry. We should expand refining capacity and establish direct relationships with miners in Africa, Australia, Indonesia, and strengthen existing ones with the bullion banks. Precious metals streaming – providing upfront capital to miners in exchange for future production at agreed prices – is one proven vehicle for building those relationships. Assaying builds trust. Tungsten has nearly identical density to gold – counterfeits exist. In 2020, China's Kingold was accused of pledging gilded-copper "gold" as collateral for 20bn yuan in loans, turning "gold receipts" into a major credit-fraud event. Robust verification through X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) and ultrasound should be part of the chain, if possible, non-destructively to preserve provenance, but if necessary, destructively by recasting. Not just "is it stored?" but "is it real?" Singapore should build a reputation for rigorous verification that makes our warehouse receipts bankable.”
“MAS' own disclosures confirm this: gold holdings fell by 849,000 troy ounces from January 2025 to January 2026. So, could the Government confirm whether this is true? If so, why does it hold such a contrarian view relative to most global central banks? Does it have a framework for thinking about gold's role in tomorrow's reserve system? Sir, let me describe what an industrial policy in gold would look like, in five elements. First, a Sovereign Guarantee. The core asset Singapore can offer is not location or tax rates. It is legal predictability – the credible commitment that asset treatment follows established judicial process, not executive discretion. We have already done it once before. In January 2020, Singapore enacted the International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) (Bank for International Settlements) Order. It states that property and assets entrusted to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), quote, "wherever located, by whomsoever held and in whatever format, are immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation or any other form of seizure, taking or foreclosure, by any form of legal process." That is the gold standard, forgive the expression, for custody protection. The question is: why only BIS? Singapore should consider a Reserves Custody Protection Act, or an amendment to the MAS Act, establishing that custody arrangements are governed by Singapore law and due process, immunising it from executive discretion. The principle is legal certainty. We should be a top choice for jurisdictions seeking diversified custody. Sovereign guarantees are best implemented via sovereign vaults in the same vein as the Bank of England, rather than outsourcing capacity to private parties, as Zurich has done. Second, a Sovereign Anchor.”
“SPDR Gold Shares recorded S$309 million in net inflows in the first half of 2025 – the highest of any Singapore-listed Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The Singapore Mint launched its Lion Bullion line in September, explicitly citing strong investor demand. Private vaults are expanding: The Reserve opened last year with capacity for 15,500 tonnes. The market is here. And so is the chance. In that same Parliamentary Question I posed to the Ministry of Trade and Industry in January, I asked why our framework for metal warrant financing is under-utilised. The response from the Ministry framed it in terms of the base metals, by referring to the London Metal Exchange (LME) ecosystem, which handles the six primary base metals – copper, zinc, aluminum, nickel, lead, tin. But not gold. I had in mind gold, not base metals. Gold operates through the LBMA – different rules, different warehousing, different settlement – and requires purpose-built architecture. Singapore's gold infrastructure, with respect, is minimal. We have one LBMA-approved refinery – Metalor, Swiss-owned. Central Provident Fund members investing in gold through SPDR Gold Shares will see that gold held in London and New York vaults. What is puzzling is that Singapore also seems to be on the other side of the trend. The World Gold Council's central-bank gold statistics for May 2025 state that year-to-date 2025, Singapore was the second-largest net seller at 10 tonnes, behind Uzbekistan, and that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) sold five tonnes in May. Keep in mind that this was when gold, averagely, was about US$3,300 per troy oz. Gold today trades at US$5,000 per troy oz, 50% higher than where MAS was sold it, if this report is true.”
“So, why not COMEX gold warrants? They had the moment – and did not act. So, there is no appetite, not yet, to backstop gold in New York. Deep markets, but no lender of last resort. Asset holders must also weigh the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tail risk. The executive powers used to impose tariffs in February 2025 could be turned on foreign-held assets. Today, only the US can offer a sovereign repo on gold as they have the reserve currency. So, if they do not backstop gold, financialisation will likely not proceed on single sovereign rails. Dubai is closest to what we could build. Aggressive infrastructure: vaults, multiple refineries, direct African sourcing and the natural catchment of India. It is estimated that Dubai handles upwards of 15% of global physical gold trade. In 2023, the United Arab Emirates overtook the United Kingdom to become the world's second-largest gold trading hub. Dubai offers proximity to supply and demand, but also to Gulf conflict dynamics. Singapore offers a trusted node to multiple parties. Dubai has captured volume partly through more permissive sourcing standards. That is not our game – our competitive advantage is rigor and any visible compliance failure on money-laundering would destroy the credibility we hope to sell. But this is not zero-sum competition. The shift to gold is large enough for multiple hubs. And the market interest already exists. Deputy Prime Minister Gan said in response to my January Parliamentary Question about critical minerals financing, that the Government will act "when there is sufficient market interest." Well, the interest is here. In the second quarter of 2025, gold investment in Singapore surged 37% year-on-year.”
“It is the home of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), which controls the global "good delivery" standard. This certificate is important for liquidity amongst major financial centres. In February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the G7 immobilised $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves within weeks. The LBMA suspended all six Russian refiners from the Good Delivery list. The message: custody and market access are conditional on political alignment. Central banks have responded. In 2024, India repatriated 100 tonnes of gold from the Bank of England to domestic vaults – its largest movement since 1991. Germany, Hungary, Turkey and the Netherlands have done the same over the past decade. The repatriation trend is accelerating. The case of New York is a puzzle. In the lead-up to Liberation Day in April 2025, as tariff fears spiked, the exchange-for-physical (EFP) basis, which is the spread between New York COMEX futures and London over-the-counter (OTC) gold, blew out to $60 per ounce – the widest since the 2020 COVID-19 panic. This led to COMEX vaults in New York hitting a record 43 million ounces. For a moment, most of the world's financialised gold was in New York, rather than its typical home in London. New York had custody over both today's reserve asset and tomorrow's, simultaneously. Consider the counterfactual. A US Federal Reserve (the Fed) gold repo window, accepting COMEX gold warrants as collateral. Strong financing terms could have made New York the permanent home for monetary gold, since much of it was already in COMEX vaults. Now, it is true that the Fed conventionally runs repo backstops on Treasuries, agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). But that is already an expanded listing over pure Treasuries, pre-2008.”
“It is custody risk – the question of whether your reserves are still yours when the politics turn; and the emerging reserve asset seeking an offshore home is not dollars. It is gold. Two forces are driving this shift. First, access to funds has become conditional on political alignment. In 2022, Western nations froze over $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets. We rightly condemn the invasion of Ukraine, but the knock-on effect on Western financial centrality is real. Trust in those systems has diminished. Second, market participants are pricing in US asset risk in a way they did not before the 2020s. Some call it a "Sell America" dynamic. Central banks are responding with their feet. Gold purchases have exceeded 1,000 tonnes annually for three consecutive years, more than double the 2010 to 2021 average. The World Gold Council's 2025 survey shows 73% of central banks expect fewer US dollar holdings over five years; 95% expect to increase gold over 2025 to 2026. What makes this structural is the price insensitivity. There are few good alternatives for a reserve asset. Central banks bought at $2,000 an ounce, at $3,000 an ounce, at $4,000 an ounce. And gold crossed $5,000 in January. These are sovereigns seeking safety over returns. But if gold is becoming a reserve asset, it will need to be financialised. Later, I will describe what that means in five pillars. First, let us assess some major gold hubs of today. London, New York and Dubai. London is the central gold pricing venue and is one of the world's major custodians for the world's central banks, via the Bank of England vaults. It offers unmatched liquidity for gold, especially for the 400 oz "large bars" used by central banks.”
“That is quite an act to follow but I will try. Speaker, an industrial policy in finance may seem a contradiction in terms, but it is not. The most consequential 20th century financial industrial policy was built by the British on the then undisputed reserve asset – the United States (US) dollar. Once, in 1933, the US imposed Regulation Q, capping interest rates that American banks could pay. By the late 1960s, the ceiling was 4%, while three-month Treasury Bills approached 7%. Dollars held offshore, especially in London, escaped this cap. This offshore dollar market became known as the Euro dollar market. The British did four things. First, deliberate forbearance. Choosing not to regulate offshore dollar deposits. Second, active defence. When G-10 central banks proposed international regulation in the 1970s, the Bank of England blocked it. Third, direct participation. Central banks provided official deposits of 20% of net market and currency swaps with domestic banks. Fourth, after the 1974 banking crises, the G-10 Basel communiqué constructed an implicit lender-of-last-resort guarantee. The result: London became the global centre for dollar financing. By the mid-1980s, there were more Euro dollars than dollars. The Euro dollar market increased the appeal of dollar holdings, deepening the liquidity for American borrowing. This privileged position, London held for many decades. What is instructive is that the British reinvented London's proposition amidst the decline of sterling. Nostalgia is not a strategy. They re-positioned for their emerging present. Today, we have another emerging present. Then, interest rate caps created a push factor for the world's reserve asset to move offshore. Today's push factor is not yield.”
“Thank you, Speaker. I have three supplementary questions. The Economic Strategy Review (ESR) mid-term update factsheet uses the phrase "good jobs" six times without defining it. My first supplementary question is, what is the issue with creating a job quality framework like the OECD has done? Second is, I thank the Senior Minister of State for mentioning the different factors that he tracks. Our wage share of gross domestic product (GDP) remains lower than many OECD countries – I believe it is in the mid-40s, where OECD countries are in the 50s. So, will the Government track this, to define this as part of their definition of a "good job"? My last supplementary question, the ESR also says it will uplift and transform roles like electricians and care workers. But a commitment that cannot be proven true or false, is not really an accountable commitment. So, would the Ministry set clear benchmarks in terms of pay, progression and working conditions, so that Parliament can actually determine if uplift has occurred?”
“Thank you, Speaker. One supplementary question. It has been represented to me – and these are the facts, as I understand them – that a young married constituent with young children, unemployed and living in a rental flat, was denied ComCare because he did not follow up with e2i. But he has WhatsApp records that e2i messaged him on 15 December, asking him if he was still looking for work and he replied "yes" on the same day. He followed up on 24 December, asking about jobs with hours compatible with sending his children to school. And as far as I can tell, e2i did not respond to either messages. The SSO rejection letter arrived before anyone asked him for evidence of his engagement. So, without pre-judging things, my question is, does SSO take e2i's or other employment partner agencies' word, unconditionally, before rejecting an applicant for non-engagement? Is the applicants given a chance to present their side?”
“Thank you, Speaker. Two supplementary questions. Firstly, since 2005, Japan has employed diet and nutrition teachers, professionals who hold both a nutritionist qualification and teaching licence in schools to create menus, oversee food safety and teach nutrition in the classroom. Will the Government consider making similar nutrition and safety roles accredited professionals? That is my first question. The second supplementary question: I quote The Straits Times on their reporting of the River Valley Primary school case, "Some parents told ST that their children had noticed the chicken on the pizza tasting a bit strange. A few parents said their children were fine after consuming the pizza as they had picked the chicken off. A pupil told his mother that the chicken did not smell good but he ate it anyway and had diarrhoea the next day." So, can I just ask what is the status of the investigation into the chicken? If it was the chicken, how did it make it past the food hygiene officer?”
“What will the Government do if price increases —”