Opening Speech by 2M Indranee Rajah at 74th FIABCI World Real Estate Congress 2024
May 28, 2024
Introduction
Good morning to everyone.
It is a pleasure to join all of you at this 74th FIABCI World Real Estate Congress.
This prestigious event brings together real estate professionals and related industry practitioners from all over the world. So I would like to extend a big welcome to all of you! I hope you’re enjoying your time in Singapore and that you will have many opportunities to get out and about, and enjoy your time here.
If you have seen some of Singapore, then what you would have seen is a modern city with a lot of valuable real estate. While that may be synonymous with Singapore today, I want to take a moment to remind everyone that it wasn’t always like that. Today, I would like to share with you the Singapore Story – to explain where we came from, where we are now, and where we would like to be.
The Singapore Story
When we began our journey as an independent nation in 1965, Singapore had a very small city centre with some colonial buildings and a busy port but the rest was largely overcrowded shophouses, rural villages - or kampongs, as we would call them - and secondary forest.
The pioneer generation of leaders, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his team and successive generations Mr Goh Chok Tong and Mr Lee Hsien Loong and their teams brought Singapore from Third World to First in the span of just a few decades. Today it is a modern metropolis with some of the most iconic buildings in the world and home to more than 5 million people.
Beyond hard infrastructure, these generations developed excellent systems of education, housing, healthcare, and transport by international standards.
Most importantly, however, they established values of governance which we continue to uphold, including:
Integrity, incorruptibility, competence, a commitment to improving the lives and livelihoods of our people and a forward planning mindset.
This will continue to be our approach even as we write the next chapter of our Singapore story.
As you know, former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has recently passed the baton of leadership to our new Prime Minister, Mr Lawrence Wong.
Mr Lawrence Wong is Singapore’s 4th ever Prime Minister and the first to be born after independence. He and his team are popularly referred to as the 4th Generation or 4G leaders. Most of us in his team were also born after 1965.
The 4G team is determined to take Singapore forward. We have big plans for Singapore’s future, which includes developing a vision of the city together with Singaporeans, built on the dreams and desires of our citizens.
To that end, the 4G conducted the Forward Singapore Exercise, where we engaged over 200,000 Singaporeans to understand their aspirations for Singapore’s future and to refresh our social compact.
Specifically with regard to city building, we embarked on the Long-Term Plan Review, where we engaged over 15,000 Singaporeans and distilled what they told us into long term strategies for Singapore’s development for the next 50 years beyond.
We are now undertaking the Master Plan Review, in consultation with Singaporeans, to translate those long-term strategies into real, tangible plans that will be implemented over the next 10 to 15 years.
A City of the Future
Let me share some of these plans.
We will rejuvenate our city centre and housing towns. Some major moves include:
The development of the Jurong Lake District, the largest business district outside of the Central Area with a planned commercial quantum of 15 million square feet, with a district-level cooling system, supporting amenities and enhanced transport connectivity with an interchange of three rail lines.
Ambitious urban transformation plans. For example, in Paya Lebar, an area in the northeastern part of Singapore, we will be relocating an existing military airbase and developing a new town with 150,000 homes. This will give us the opportunity to reimagine the future of sustainable living while at the same time honouring the site’s aviation legacy.
By 2030, the existing port operations in the city will move out and be consolidated at a megaport located at Tuas, over to the West. This will free up space for us to develop the Greater Southern Waterfront where future generations can live, work, and play overlooking our southern waters.
90% of Singaporeans own their own homes, of which 80% is public housing. This is made possible by a combination of personal savings, a national savings system known as the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and housing loans. We are determined to remain a nation of homeowners and will continue to support Singaporeans' aspirations to own their own homes.
We are committed to launch 100,000 new HDB flats between 2021 and 2025.
We are on track to meet this commitment and have launched more than 67,000 new flats as at February 2024, with more in the pipeline.
We are also working to ensure Singapore remains resilient in the face of climate change.
We will create a ‘Long Island’ of reclaimed land along the east coast, to protect against rising sea levels. It will effectively act as a buffer against rising sea levels. This will give us more land for multiple uses and also help us to create a new freshwater reservoir.
We are also constructing sea walls and polders as defences against a potential rise in sea level.
My colleague, Senior Minister of State, Dr Amy Khor, will provide more details on efforts to make our Built Environment more sustainable and resilient to climate change.
At the same time, we are greening Singapore to mitigate climate change and the urban heat island effect.
We will transform Singapore into a City in Nature, by bringing nature and its benefits closer to Singaporeans.
For example, we are intentionally setting aside land for greenery and integrating it with developments. By 2035, we will set aside another 1000ha of green spaces, of which 200ha will be new nature parks that buffer our nature reserves.
We are also connecting our green spaces with more nature corridors and park connectors. Our aim is for every household to be within a 10-minute walk to a park by 2030! We also encourage lush and accessible greenery in our high-rise urban developments through a mix of requirements and gross floor area incentives for the provision of greenery within developments.
Our future city will be connected and convenient.
We are aiming for a car-lite future, where Walk-Cycle-Ride are the main modes of transport. We increased our Walk-Cycle-Ride mode share for peak period journeys from 71% in 2016 to 74% in 2022, and are working to increase it further.
The key to a car-lite city is a sustainable, inclusive and extensive public transport system.
We are opening the fourth stage of the Thomson East Coast Line next month. Together with the upcoming extensions for the Circle Line, Downtown Line, and North East Line, these efforts will bring us closer to our target for 80% of households to be within a 10-minute walk of a train station by the 2030s.
Our extensive rail network is complemented by over 5,800 public buses, to connect commuters to key transport hubs and destinations.
We are also expanding our network of cycling paths.
From 2022 to 2024, the cycling path network grew from about 500km to 600km.
We are on track to meet our target of 1,300km of cycling paths by 2030.
These are just a sampling of the many plans we have for our city. All of them will improve liveability and make Singapore more desirable as a city, an economic hub, a home and a place to visit. This in turn will make our real estate more attractive and more valuable.
Partnership and Collaboration
How will we get to this city of the future that we envision?
The key to achieving our goals is partnership and collaboration.
The Singapore Government is working closely with the Built Environment sector, to transform the industry. There are many different aspects to this, one of which is digitalisation and innovation.
For example, we were the first in the world to introduce electronic plan submissions. Our CORENET digital platform enabled project teams to make such submissions to regulatory agencies. This revolutionised regulatory submissions for building works when it was launched more than 20 years ago.
The BCA was the world’s first government body to accept 3D Building Information Modelling, or BIM, submissions in 2009.
Such efficiencies benefit the built environment sector. For example, Singapore is amongst the fastest countries to issue construction permits in several World Bank Doing Business surveys since 2010.
We are now using CORENET to enhance collaboration amongst Built Environment industry stakeholders, as well as between industry and Government.
In December last year, we soft-launched CORENET X to further revolutionise our regulatory approval process.
Currently, different consultants make submissions to the various agencies, and agencies process these submissions in silo.
CORENET X acts as a one-stop digital shopfront for the industry to make integrated regulatory submissions for building works.
This requires stakeholders across different disciplines to collaborate upstream and coordinate their designs upfront. Regulatory agencies will also provide a consolidated response to each submission, thus saving time and costs.
We are also working with our real estate sector to ensure Singapore continues to be a clean and trusted financial centre for businesses and property transactions.
This is especially so in the area of anti-money laundering and countering terrorism financing. Properties are high value assets, so it is not surprising, tainted funds will seek out high end properties.
You may be familiar with the billion-dollar money laundering network that the Singapore authorities busted last year. The laundered money was used to buy and rent valuable properties. The case was cracked because we have a strong detection and enforcement system. But that said we readily acknowledge that there is always room for improvement.
We have set up an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC), which I chair to look at our national AML strategies from a whole of government perspective. The IMC has made good progress, and we will announce our recommendations later this year.
We are determined to only let in the good money and keep out the bad. We welcome genuine investors and businesses but not money launderers or illegal activities. We will strengthen the system to achieve this goal.
Today’s money launderers and terrorists use complex webs and sophisticated methods. To counter them we need a whole of country effort. Real estate agents and salespersons are part of our first line of defence. They play a vital role in helping spot suspicious transactions and bringing them to the attention of the authorities.
So, I ask for your support and collaboration on this important endeavour. Please look out for the IMC Report when it is released.
Conclusion
To conclude, we are now even as I speak, busy writing the next chapter of our Singapore story. We build on the foundations that have been laid by earlier generations, and we hope to create our own legacy for the next.
We will build a city of the future, a Singapore that will be a hub of activity for the region, a safe and secure hub for global businesses, an attractive investment destination, an endearing home, and a showcase of sustainability.
I hope that the real estate sector will partner us and be part of this exciting journey.
I wish you all the best for the rest of this congress. Thank you very much.