Speech by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade and Industry and Minister-in charge of Entrepreneurship at the ASPRI LIUP Enterprise Capability and Markets Development MOU signing on Tuesday, 2 October 2007 at 10:15am, Suntec Singapore

Mr James Goh, President of the Association of Process Industry Distinguished guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning.

Thank you for inviting me to be part of this happy occasion.

New Growth, New Opportunities

The process industry plays a critical role in driving the growth of Singapore’s manufacturing sector, especially the chemicals and biomedical sciences clusters. Last year, the chemicals sector recorded a manufacturing output of S$75 billion, making it the largest contributor to our manufacturing output.

The International Energy Agency expects global refinery spending to increase from US$215 billion to US$300 billion over the next five years. Over the next 10 years, we also expect some 60 per cent of the world's petrochemicals growth to take place in Asia. As a result, investments have been flowing into the region. For example, ExxonMobil recently announced that it would build its second multi-billion dollar cracker plant in Singapore. Shell has already started work on its new cracker plant project. When fully operational, these two investments would significantly boost Singapore's petrochemical output and bring Singapore’s ethylene capacity to over 4 million tons.

The Government is also committed to enhance our infrastructure at Jurong Island in response to this growing demand. This includes the S$700 million underground Jurong Rock Cavern to boost oil and chemical storage, and the recent announcement that Power Gas has been designated to build and operate the LNG terminal on the island. All these add to new growth opportunities for our local supporting companies in support services and facility management.

The biomedical sciences cluster is yet another fast-growing segment of the manufacturing sector. Singapore is host to eight of the world's top pharmaceutical companies that have set up 24 chemical-based pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities here. Biomedical manufacturing grew 30 per cent in 2006. Correspondingly, demand for engineering services and support is rising with the biomedical sciences cluster.

ASPRI LIUP

This morning’s ceremony marks an important milestone for our process industry. I am heartened to note that ASPRI has decided to spearhead a fresh Process LIUP to develop your members’ capabilities. It is timely that ASPRI has taken the lead to work with the various stakeholders to position the industry for the future. I commend ASPRI for this wonderful initiative. You have set a great example of mobilizing industry players towards collective competitiveness. Other associations should emulate ASPRI’s approach to teamwork and capacity building.

As an industry association, ASPRI is also taking advantage of the Local Enterprise and Association Development, or LEAD programme, to build new capabilities for the association. ASPRI also worked with NUS and ST Electronics to develop a project management tool. This integrated project scheduler, which was mentioned by James Goh a minute ago, would help engineering service providers improve their planning by identifying bottleneck situations and giving quick information updates to ensure on-time project delivery.

Besides taking full advantage of LIUP and LEAD, ASPRI has also embarked on introducing a new safety standard, business capability upgrading, supervisory training programmes, and market development efforts for its members. In fact, today’s announcement of the international exhibition and conference for the process industry to be organized by ASPRI in 2008 would add to the thought-leadership Singapore in the chemical and bio-medical industry in the region.

Conclusion

In closing, let me once again congratulate ASPRI for the many new initiatives it is undertaking to position the industry for the future. I am confident they will succeed. May I wish the association and the process industry many successes in the years ahead.

Thank you.