Year-In-Review 2023

Find out how we helped businesses transform and grow.

Helping businesses keep growing

In 2023, we helped Singapore companies grow despite a challenging global business environment which saw a manufacturing contraction, higher interest rates and rising business costs.

By intensifying internationalisation, accelerating innovation and driving capability building, our efforts are set to boost companies’ annual revenue by S$16.4 billion. In turn, this is expected to create 21,500 skilled jobs for Singaporeans.

Find out how we supported companies to rise above the challenges.

  • Access new markets
    • Facilitated 460 overseas projects, 18% more than in 2022, which included business matching and partnerships with foreign corporations to help our companies secure deals and expand their presence overseas.
  • Develop new products and services
    • Enhanced avenues for innovation and collaboration, with four new Global Innovation Alliance nodes focusing on emerging sectors such as AI, sustainability tech and clean energy in New York, Mumbai, Sydney and Melbourne.
    • Launched eight new Open Innovation Challenges, which help companies develop new products and services to capture new market demands.
    • Set up a new Centre of Innovation (COI) for Built Environment–Robotics & Automation and expanded the COI for food manufacturing, which aim to bring on board over 800 SMEs in the next two years.
  • Improve cost competitiveness
    • Worked with companies to raise efficiency and cost competitiveness through automation, process redesign, offshoring projects and more.

Our priorities for 2024

Looking ahead, cyclical headwinds such as inflation may ease, but structural challenges arising from trade and investment restrictions as well as resource constraints are likely to persist.

Learn more about our strategies to continue propelling the growth of our companies.

  • Increase our push for enterprise growth
    • To help more companies enter new markets, develop new products and become more cost competitive.
  • Strengthen links between SMEs and large enterprises
    • We will encourage large companies to work with Singapore companies in their supply chain, from exploring co-innovation and process improvements to expanding into new markets together.
    • This will support the transformation of SMEs and large enterprises, as well as help attract new activities and investments into Singapore.
  • Drive sector development and growth through partners
    • To steer capability building and widen access to markets at the sectoral level, we will expand our collaborations with local and global partners such as the trade associations and chambers.
    • This includes introducing new innovation challenges to strengthen sectoral capabilities and launching new market entry programmes for selected industries.

Additional resources

Year-In-Review 2023