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People cross a street in Singapore's central business district.
SINGAPORE: About 2,000 jobs for professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) will be created in the electronics sector by 2020 as part of the industry's transformation map launched on Wednesday (Sep 20). The roadmap also aims to help companies attract new investments in high-value components and grow the electronics sector to a manufacturing value-add of S$22.2 billion by 2020, said Minister for Trade and Industry (Industry) S Iswaran. The industry's value-add was about S$4.18 billion in 2015, according to SPRING Singapore. "The electronics industry has been, and will continue to be, a key sector of growth for Singapore’s economy," Mr Iswaran said. In 2016, the sector accounted for 4.4 per cent of the country's gross domestic product, generated S$90 billion in manufacturing output and employed about 70,000 workers. The Government had announced plans to develop industry transformation maps for more than 20 sectors during Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat's Budget 2016 speech in March. GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES IN NEW AREAS Looking ahead, Mr Iswaran said mobile devices will continue to drive growth in the sector but new areas like self-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence and healthcare will rely heavily on electronics too. Electronics companies will need to broaden their capabilities and innovate to participate in these new areas, he added. The minister said the emergence of advanced manufacturing will also transform the way electronics companies work and create new jobs for positions like system engineers and automation technicians. “Companies will gain a competitive advantage by adopting new technologies to increase productivity, reduce operating costs and optimise resources,” he said. To support companies, the new Enterprise Singapore and the Economic Development Board will foster collaborative projects between multinational corporations, small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups. Companies are also encouraged to make use of initiatives like the Partnerships for Capability Transformation for knowledge transfer, capability upgrading and joint development of new solutions. Industry and trade associations and chambers will also be roped in to help start-ups and SMEs receive the support they need and better access the infrastructure, Mr Iswaran said. Given the short product life cycles in electronics, Singapore must also be prepared to invest early in building infrastructure to support investments, said Mr Iswaran. For example, he said, EDB and JTC secured AMS Sensors Asia as the anchor tenant for the JTC nanoSpace facility in Tampines Wafer Fab Park, which will support the growth of the country’s semiconductor manufacturing operations. The Government will also continue to help companies improve their manufacturing efficiency and adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, Mr Iswaran said. "We aim to upgrade all of our manufacturing plants in Singapore to be best-in-class compared to their global operations," he added. BUILDING THE TALENT POOL As part of the industry transformation map, a skills framework to equip people with the right skills to enter the industry was also launched on Wednesday. Developed by SkillsFuture Singapore, Workforce Singapore (WSG), the economic agencies, industry stakeholders and the institutes of higher learning, it will provide information on the sector, career pathways, occupations and job roles, Mr Iswaran said. He added that it will identify skill sets required for areas within the sector like robotics, automation, artificial intelligence and data analytics. While four professional conversion programmes to re-skill PMETs for the wafer fabrication and assembly and test sectors have already been launched, Mr Iswaran introduced two new ones on Friday for electronics engineers and electronics assistant engineers. WSG and EDB will also hold a career fair next Monday, offering 600 jobs in the electronics industry, Mr Iswaran said. |
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