Public sector made marked progress over past two years: Report

SINGAPORE — The reliability of MRT train services was the blot on the copybook for the public sector, which otherwise made substantial progress over the past two years in areas ranging from healthcare, housing, counter-terrorism and retirement adequacy.

The biennial Singapore Public Sector Outcomes Review, which takes stock of how the public sector and Singapore have fared in a broad range of areas of national interest, was released on Friday (Dec 9).

Compiled by the Ministry of Finance with input from all ministries, the 66-page report singled out the management of train delays as an area where more can be done, even though there has been an improvement.

Last year, trains clocked 133,000 train-km, on average, before encountering a delay of more than five minutes — 40 per cent more than the 93,000 train-km recorded in 2014. “We can do better, both in terms of achieving a higher mean distance travelled before encountering a delay, and minimising the number of service delays lasting more than 30 minutes,” the report said.

On healthcare, the report said that based on a survey conducted by the Ministry of Communications and Information, the proportion of pioneers who felt assured of the affordability of healthcare costs went up from 77 per cent in 2014 to 87 per cent last year, following the rollout of the Pioneer Generation Package.

Nine in 10 pioneers received subsidies for their visits to specialist outpatient clinics, polyclinics, and clinics under the Community Health Assistance Scheme, between September 2014 and December last year.

In terms of housing, home ownership has remained at about 92 per cent over the past four years. The debt servicing ratio of new four-room public flats in non-mature estates — which form the bulk of new flat supply — went down from 25 per cent in 2014 to 22 per cent last year. 

“This is an indication that public housing has become more affordable for first-time home buyers due to recent policy changes, such as the increase in housing grants,” said the report.

Meanwhile, the overall law and order situation in Singapore remains under control, even though the crime rate went up 3 per cent to 611 per 100,000 population last year compared with 2014, due to the rising number of online commercial crimes.

On the economy, the report noted that productivity growth remained modest amid a subdued global economy. Nevertheless, there were some bright spots in the country’s productivity drive — for example, in finance and insurance, as well as manufacturing.

The number of innovation and productivity improvement projects supported by Spring Singapore doubled to 22,000 last year compared with 2014. When fully implemented over the next three years, the projects are expected to bring in about S$6.9 billion and create some 19,000 jobs, of which three out of four are projected to be skilled jobs.

The number of people going for skills training dipped last year, from 36 per cent to 35 per cent of the resident labour force, amid  softer economic conditions, despite a concerted push for it as part of the Republic’s restructuring efforts.

The proportion of the workers getting trained had been on an upward trend, climbing from 26.9 per cent in 2011 to 36 per cent in 2014, before going down last year.

Past industry surveys had showed that small and medium enterprises, in particular, were reluctant to send employees for training.

Results from the annual SME Development Survey released last month showed that 85 per cent of the SMEs surveyed felt “hindered in their efforts to upgrade the skills of their workforce”. They cited obstacles such as having a lean workforce, which made it hard for them to let workers take time off for training, and other more-pressing priorities.