SPEECH BY PRIME MINISTER LEE HSIEN LOONG
AT JTC’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER
ON FRIDAY, 6 JUNE 2008, AT 7.45 PM
Mr Cedric Foo, Chairman, JTC
Mrs Ow Foong Pheng, CEO, JTC
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
INTRODUCTION – THE JTC STORY
1. I am very happy to join you this evening for JTC’s 40th anniversary. JTC has played a pivotal role in every phase of Singapore’s economic development. On this happy occasion, it has much to be proud of, and to celebrate.
2. The JTC story started in the 1960s when we first began to industrialise the economy. The development of Jurong Industrial Estate was the vital programme in this industrialisation drive. At that time, Jurong’s terrain was undulating, marshy and jungle-covered. The development cost was massive, but a greater difficulty was to convince industrialists to invest in an unknown location, and workers to move their homes to a remote wilderness. It was a risky venture – Dr Goh Keng Swee who initiated the project openly admitted that should the endeavour fail, it would go down in Singapore history as “Goh’s folly”. But Jurong succeeded beyond all expectations. It attracted successive waves of foreign investment, and Singapore’s industrialisation took off.
3. In the decades that followed, Singapore’s economy moved up the value chain, and so did JTC’s activities. At every stage of development, JTC had to stretch its imagination and dream up new ways to overcome our natural land constraints. Factory buildings gave way to high-rise flatted factories and landscaped industrial parks. In the 80s, JTC, working together with EDB and other government agencies, conceived and built Jurong Island. Few imagined that the scattering of coral reefs and offshore islands could be transformed into an integrated petrochemical complex. But JTC rose to the challenge and made it happen. Jurong Island is now home to leading petroleum and petrochemical companies from around the world, and a key anchor for a thriving chemicals cluster.
4. For 40 years, JTC has been a dynamic and vigorous organisation, constantly upgrading and reinventing itself, and meeting the changing needs of investors. Today, the JTC name is synonymous with Singapore’s reputation for efficiency, reliability and world-class industrial infrastructure.
ADAPTING TO A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT
5. Looking ahead, Singapore and JTC will have to anticipate and tackle new challenges. Countries are vying more aggressively for investment projects than ever before. In Asia, rapidly emerging economies like China, India, Vietnam and the Gulf States are catching up in their infrastructure, their investment climates, and their ability to do what the more established economies like Singapore have been doing, but at lower cost.
6. In the face of this competition, many developed economies have found it difficult to sustain their manufacturing sectors. Singapore faces similar challenges. Nevertheless, we believe that we must keep manufacturing as an important growth engine, providing good jobs for many Singaporeans. For manufacturing to remain viable here, we have to differentiate ourselves from others, competing not just on cost but also on quality. This is why we are making every effort to provide a high-quality business and living environment. We are attracting talent to live and work here, and companies to carry out a broad range of knowledge activities – from R&D and product design to marketing and regional management.
7. JTC’s role is to support these new activities and businesses, and help keep our manufacturing sector competitive and vibrant. It must therefore continue to provide first-class service to customers, deliver creative and integrated solutions to meet the changing needs of industries, and coordinate seamlessly with the various government agencies so that investors can operate flexibly and efficiently, with minimum red-tape. At the same time, JTC must keep on pushing the limits of possibilities, to try out new ideas, and seek opportunities beyond known frontiers.
8. I am glad that JTC is evolving its mission in response to these new challenges and demands. In particular, JTC will be sharpening its focus to fill market gaps and maximise its effectiveness. The private sector is now more capable of developing industrial projects. For example, private developers like Boustead, Mapletree, Soilbuild and United Engineers have built up considerable expertise in flatted factories and business parks, and are well able to meet industry demands. JTC will therefore sell off much of its existing facilities in these market segments, and leave them to the private sector. Hence it is divesting its ready built industrial facilities to Mapletree at the end of this month.
9. This will free JTC to focus on its core functions of master-planning industrial estates, allocating land for industrial use, and preparing the land ahead of time with the right configuration of infrastructure and utilities. JTC’s priority is to meet the industrial land and infrastructure needs of existing and emerging industry clusters, be it the chemical companies at Jurong Island, the pharmaceutical players at Tuas Biomedical Park, or the new aerospace hub at Seletar.
10. JTC will also continue to be the bridge between industrialists and government agencies. JTC’s contributions are not always visible to the public eye. But behind every major manufacturing project, there is always a team of JTC officers helping to see through the implementation. For example, last year we were able to secure REC’s commitment to build the world’s largest solar manufacturing complex in Singapore. This was partly due to JTC’s ability to prepare 100 ha of contiguous land in record time and to modify land boundaries to meet the company’s needs. When ExxonMobil required a contiguous site for its second world-scale cracker complex, JTC had to realign Jurong Island Highway and divert several live pipelines. 25 companies were affected by the diversion and JTC worked with each of them to ensure minimal disruption to their operations. This paved the way for Singapore to land the multi-billion dollar deal.
11. Besides these core activities, JTC will have to grow new capabilities to deliver strategic infrastructure and cutting-edge solutions to sustain our competitive edge. It is implementing special projects which the private sector is not able to handle, either due to scale, risk or technical complexity. One example is the creation of an integrated work-live-play environment in One-North for the life sciences, ICT and media sectors. When fully developed, the areas around the Biopolis, Fusionopolis and Media Park will be integrated with vibrant lifestyle offerings and amenities, catering to the demands of knowledge workers in these industries.
12. JTC is also creating more usable space to maximise our economic potential. Land will always be scarce in Singapore, but with human creativity and ingenuity, we can find new ways to do more with the limited amount we have. One way is to go underground. The Jurong Rock Cavern, an underground oil storage facility in Jurong Island, will free up space for productive activities on the surface. Such underground caverns could potentially be used not just for storage, but also for other purposes like power plants, data or logistics centres. Another idea is to think beyond our land into the sea. JTC is studying the use of “Very Large Floating Structures” – huge floating concrete platforms the size of several football fields. Studies have already confirmed the technical feasibility of such structures, which can be created for storage facilities, industrial space and other purposes.
CONCLUSION
13. In a rapidly changing world, we cannot anticipate all our future needs. Our best-laid plans will have to be modified and updated as new challenges emerge. Hence JTC must remain dynamic and nimble, keeping an eye on business trends, and responding promptly to new threats and opportunities. I commend the management and staff of JTC – both past and present – for your dedication and hard work, and hope you will continue to build on your achievements and scale new heights of excellence, both for the Corporation and for Singapore. I wish you all a happy 40th Anniversary.