SINGAPORE — The Republic’s push for greater productivity remains a slow and uneven process, particularly in sectors such as construction and services, but restructuring must continue even though it has hampered — and will continue to hamper — economic growth, said Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam yesterday.

“Progress has been slow overall in the three years since 2010. But if you look at the sectorial level, changes are happening … and they will eventually be reflected on macro-level statistics,” Mr Tharman told reporters during a visit to local food processing company QB Food Trading.

Meanwhile, Singapore must accept that economic growth will slow down during the restructuring. “We have to get used to a lower path of (economic) growth,” he said. “The real challenge is to raise productivity.”

The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) last month narrowed its full-year gross domestic product forecast to between 2.5 and 3.5 per cent, from 2 to 4 per cent previously.

The comments came as overall productivity in the second quarter declined by 1.3 per cent, MTI data showed. But the ministry’s surveys have found export-oriented sectors, such as manufacturing and wholesale trade, saw much better productivity growth between 2010 and last year, compared with domestic sectors, such as construction, retail and food services.

“Industries are transforming themselves — some are taking the initiative and gaining market share, while others are losing out. That’s what restructuring is about at the end of the day. Our job as the Government is to provide as much support as we can to the progressive firms,” Mr Tharman said.

Mr Tharman — who chairs the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council — was visiting QB Food to examine its recently-implemented cheese-cutting and packing line.

The S$1 million productivity project, which was supported by SPRING Singapore’s Capability Development Grant, has helped the company increase its cheese production volume by 60 per cent per day while reducing manpower by about half. This has allowed QB Food to meet growing demand without expanding its workforce, said Mr Kim Quah, one of its directors.

“Sales of our cheese products have improved by about 30 per cent since the project was completed in June. We are now also now exploring Middle East markets to export our cheese,” he added.