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Singapore: Businesses negatively impacted by Covid-19 drop to 32% as sentiments rebound: SBF poll
BUSINESS sentiments in Singapore rebounded in 2021, with the proportion of companies that reported being negatively impacted by Covid-19 halving to 32 per cent, from 63 per cent a year ago.
Nevertheless, of those that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic, nearly 7 in 10 said they expect to take more than a year to fully recover.
Only a quarter of the companies in this group were confident that they could bounce back in the next 6 to 12 months.
These were among the findings from the Singapore Business Federation’s (SBF) latest annual National Business Survey, which was released on Wednesday (Dec 8).
The survey was conducted between Jul 26 and Oct 1 this year with 1,096 respondents across all key industries.
It found a jump in the number of businesses which believed they could sustain their operations in the coming year, with nearly 8 in 10 firms saying they were confident of tiding over the next 6 and 12 months respectively.
Only a minority of those surveyed – 13 per cent – believed the Singapore economy will take a turn for the worse in the next 12 months, while nearly half were confident that the situation will improve.
However, this optimism was not reflected in the companies’ sentiments towards the international markets.
Most businesses were either neutral or dissatisfied about the current global and South-east Asian business climate.
Manpower cost was the most cited business challenge, named by 48 per cent of respondents.
Demand uncertainty and travel restrictions came in second and third place respectively, with 48 per cent and 47 per cent of companies citing them as top business challenges.
Businesses identified rising manpower costs, the need to attract and retain younger workers, as well as stricter policies limiting the supply of foreign workers as among their key manpower challenges.
To address these, businesses said they would enhance recruitment efforts to hire locals, increase wages of jobs to attract locals and invest in technology or redesign job roles to reduce manpower needs.
When it comes to digitisation, the survey found that while businesses were keen to adopt new technologies to stay competitive, many reported being held back by the high cost of adoption as well as the need to keep staff constantly updated.
Among those polled, 52 per cent cited the high cost of tech adoption as a challenge, 30 per cent cited upskilling while another 30 per cent cited cyber security risks.
As for how the government could assist businesses, the respondents said they would like to see support in their digitalisation efforts (43 per cent), and be given financial support (38 per cent) as well as human capital development support (37 per cent).
Amid a pandemic which has seen virtual meetings become the norm, businesses still cited travel as a key driver for doing business overseas.
Almost 7 in 10 companies said travel out of Singapore was important for doing business abroad, while nearly three-fifths said travel to Singapore was important.
Source: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/government-economy/businesses-negatively-impacted-by-covid-19-drop-to-32-as-sentiments-rebound-sbf