SINGAPORE — Economic and job growth numbers in recent years indicate that the pace of economic restructuring is not fast enough, even though businesses are already feeling the pain of transformation, Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday.

“If you can look at it at the macro-level, we’re not doing it as far as we should. Our (economic) growth in the last five years was 5.2 per cent … Last year, we generated 134,000 jobs,” said Mr Lim during the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s (MTI) Committee of Supply (COS) debate.

“If you look at the way the economy is still growing, the jobs we’re still generating and the labour force is still growing — one could argue that we’re slightly behind the curve,” he added.

Mr Lim was responding to Ang Mo Kio GRC Member of Parliament (MP) Inderjit Singh, who yesterday urged the Government to relook the current rate of economic restructuring amid concerns voiced by the business sector.

During the Budget debate on Wednesday, Mr Singh also cautioned that recent moves to raise productivity, restrict foreign labour supply and increase wages were “happening together and too fast”, hurting firms already grappling with high costs and labour shortage.

Despite the Government’s intensive efforts, productivity growth was flat last year, falling short of the official target of 2 to 3 per cent growth annually. “On the whole, our productivity number isn’t shaping up as much as we like. So again, it indicates that we’re not restructuring as fast as we should,” said Mr Lim, adding that the current pace is balanced.

However, Mr Singh said it was a matter of judgment and he urged the Government to “get a good pulse on the ground”. “What we feel is the middle path may not be what the ground is feeling,” he added.

Amid the economic restructuring, the state of the small-and-medium-enterprise (SME) sector came to the fore during the MTI’s COS debate, with several MPs raising concerns about the plight of SMEs and the effectiveness of schemes to help them raise productivity.

In response, Minister of State (Trade and Industry) Teo Ser Luck said the SME sector has continued to grow at a relatively steady pace, with the net formation of about 14,000 new SMEs each year, from 2010 to 2012.

He added that the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme has gained traction among SMEs.

“There were 45,000 PIC claimants in 2012, a 25 per cent increase from 2011. More than three-quarters of these claimants were small and micro-enterprises,” he said.

“In fact, micro-enterprises have shown the greatest rate of increase among PIC claimants, increasing by over 40 per cent since 2011.”

Nominated Member of Parliament R Dhinakaran and Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Yee Jenn Jong also asked whether real estate investment trusts (REITs) are driving up rental costs at their commercial properties, further hurting SMEs.

Mr Teo replied that REITS currently own only about 13 per cent and 16 per cent of retail and industrial rental spaces, respectively.

He said: “REITs are not necessarily the leading players in the rental market ... We will continue to monitor the rental market … and we will intervene if we see evidence of collusion or abuse of market dominance by any player, including REITs.”

To create more transparency in the rental market, the Government is also looking into publishing more comprehensive shop rental data later this year, he added.