SINGAPORE — Compared to five decades ago, Singapore now faces a tougher time in charting the course for the future, said Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong yesterday.

With just an entrepot port then, Mr Goh said the Government chose to attract investments; and to do so by removing labour strikes, having a “disciplined, hardworking people”, and incentivising multi-national companies to come here. “You could see the direction for the economy,” he said.

“Today, the economy is matured, we try and write a story for the next chapter of the economy, not that easy to write,” added Mr Goh, as he gave examples of how policy-making is similarly more difficult today on both the education and housing fronts.

Speaking at the start of Government feedback unit REACH’s fifth Contributors’ Forum, themed Embarking on a New Chapter in the Singapore Story, Mr Goh said it was for younger Singaporeans to write the next chapter for Singapore together. “I have written my chapter,” the former Prime Minister added.

Noting that Singapore today has “a new wave of immigrants”, who hail from countries different from where its old wave of immigrants came from, Mr Goh also posed two questions to the participants.

“Should we be a global city, or should Singapore be a regional centre? Should we have more cosmopolitan values in the society — because that’s what we are, we’re very cosmopolitan — or do we revert back to just being mainly Singaporean, meaning Chinese, Malay, Indian, Eurasians?”

The annual closed-door forum saw 170 participants engage with Mr Goh, Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim and REACH Chairman Amy Khor.

Mr Goh, who set up REACH’s predecessor — the Feedback Unit — when he was Deputy Prime Minister in 1985, also told participants: “The Government must reach out to the people in order to understand, in order to take your pulse.”

“But the people must also reach out to the Government,” Mr Goh added, reiterating a point he made in a speech last month when he called for trust between the state and citizens to be reinforced as Singapore is at a turning point where policies needed to be updated or overhauled amid a more competitive global landscape.

In her opening address, Dr Khor said the next chapter of the Singapore story will be written not by the Government alone, but by the community at large. Singaporeans will also need to come forward to play a more active role, while the relationship between the people and the Government will also need to be re-imagined and reinforced, so that Singapore can thrive even in adversity, she added.

Dr Khor assured participants that feedback received by REACH “do(es) not end up in a black hole, but have in fact been instrumental in shaping and enhancing our policy-making decisions”. She said: “The Ministry of Manpower’s recent announcement of the Fair Consideration Framework to encourage a level playing field and push employers to consider Singaporeans fairly for jobs and development opportunities would no doubt have been influenced by the feedback given.”

But Dr Khor added: “Policy formulation often takes time and the results of your feedback may not always be immediately obvious.”

And even as all feedback is considered, it is not possible to take all feedback on board, she added, given trade-offs in policy-making to accommodate divergent views and priorities.