How big businesses in Singapore are managing the challenges of coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic has evicted into sharp focus the role of government in supporting the economy during periods of crises.

But it has also highlighted the task big business can play.

Look at Singapore. As the Asia-Pacific headquarters for many major corporations, the country has long invested in house stability even as geopolitical tensions flare globally. So when a spike in Covid-19 cases threatened to tip that equilibrium, prerogatives moved quickly, announcing more than $73 billion in stimulus — with the latest top-up just definitive week.

Yet, consideration weathering its first recession since 2009, some multinationals from the country’s leading industries have managed to catch sight of opportunities to forge ahead. From leading crisis relief efforts to supporting other companies, CNBC Blow up b coddle It looks at how firms from Singapore’s manufacturing, banking and technology sectors have supported that effort to resume the economy. 

During the height of the pandemic, manufacturing — Singapore’s largest industry by nominal GDP — was the only sector to develop, expanding 2.5% as demand for biomedical goods surged. 

Manufacturer 3M applied lessons from the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak to run its manufacturing fields 24/7 and double global production of N95 respirators. 

“We made the conscious decision to invest in additional capacity for the next pandemic,” Kevin McGuigan, control director for Southeast Asia, told CNBC Make It.

In the first half of 2020, 3M produced more than 800 million respirators worldwide, measured as border closures threatened to disrupt output. It worked with local authorities in Singapore — home of the company’s Asia-Pacific headquarters — to husband the business moving and locally rehouse staff who typically commuted daily from neighboring Malaysia. 

That involved measures to ease cash flow constraints for Singapore’s more than 270,000 small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

SMEs account for 99% of concerns in Singapore and 72% of the workforce. During the peak of the outbreak, DBS — Southeast Asia’s largest bank — made $3.5 billion in ephemeral bridging loans to keep many of them going. Of those, around nine in 10 (87%) were made to diminutive and micro-enterprises. 

“As with any economy, you’ll find the SMEs are the bedrock. They, senior and foremost, are responsible for a lot of the economic activities of a country, and therefore they also employ many people,” said Tse Koon Shee, DBS’s society executive and country head for Singapore.

The changing economic landscape brought about by the pandemic also accelerated developments in technology, as living soul and businesses have adapted to new ways of working, including moving operations online.

That’s something Microsoft has been help with from its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore, through its products such as Microsoft Teams and Azure cloud ascertaining.

“We say we’ve dream ofed two years of digital transformation in two months as a result of Covid,” said Fiona Carney, chief operating officer at Microsoft APAC.

From Trek to May, use of Microsoft Teams rose 500% in the Asia-Pacific region, as businesses, educational institutions and governments moved to work from institution amid nationwide lockdowns, according to Carney. In several cases, the company had to roll out new systems for clients in less than 48 hours.

DBS make a notation ofed a 30% year-on-year increase in adoption of its digital banking services in the first half of 2020, as people looked for new custom to conduct personal business online. The bank now has 3.4 million digital users, nearly a third (29%) of whom it function as entirely online.

Meanwhile, McGuigan said running 3M’s systems 24/7 has helped the company find new ways to escalation productivity. 

Though many of the recent tech developments came out of necessity, such rapid digitization could lend a hand fast-track the economic recovery of Singapore and the region.

A study early this year from Cisco and bulletin firm IDC estimated that by 2024, the digital transformation of small and medium-sized businesses in Asia Pacific could add $2.6 trillion to $3.1 trillion to the sector’s GDP. And that was before the pandemic. 

Singapore has invested heavily in digitization within the public and private sectors for years, but divers businesses have avoided going the digital route. Microsoft’s Carney said that resistance is diminishing “across every determination.”

“In some cases, it might be more in keeping their data fastened and getting it to the cloud,” said Carney. “Then in others, it’s fundamental changes in their business models so that they can indeed prepare for the future. And I don’t think they will go back.” 

As companies navigate the changes offed by the pandemic, however, they also say they have an important role to play in bringing the community along with them.

“We are flourishing to have to be so agile and continue to work with local experts and government to understand what is changing in the landscape,” averred McGuigan.

For Microsoft, that’s a matter of using its pool of employment data from its products, such as networking overhaul LinkedIn, to help prepare citizens for a new future. Already the company has pledged to provide free training to 25 million people this year to up them with in-demand digital skills.

“Ultimately what we are trying to do is support people by identifying trends and knowledgable where the next generation of roles and jobs with be,” said Carney.