Singapore, with its reputation as a safe and reliable financial hub, has the opportunity to come up with solutions to cater to the growing demand for resilience among businesses, said the country's permanent secretary for finance.
«After the shock of Covid-19, businesses, even entire nations, will place a premium on resilience,» Tan Ching Yee, Singapore permanent secretary for finance, said.
Tan said that Singapore has a chance to cement its role as one of the new hubs or centers that are critical to the continued success of businesses. «This means playing well as part of a regional, if not global, network,» she said at the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) Practitioners Conference on Thursday.
In particular, the accountancy profession can play an important role in helping their clients overcome complexities arising from the crisis, ISCA president Kon Yin Tong added. «In a way, the pandemic has created more opportunities for the profession to perform their role as trusted advisors to businesses and expand their services to include more advisory work,» Kon said.
Opportunities for Growth
While business is expected to remain subdued for the rest of the year and going into 2021, Yee noted new opportunities for growth and renewal for the accounting profession and industry.
Apart from plugging into a wider regional network as businesses build resilience across borders with Singapore as a key node, firms can use technology to overcome the constraints posed by the declining growth in the local labor force.
«This is a good time to take stock of what are the big challenges that confront us, what they imply for our way of doing our work, and what new strengths we need to build to be ready for the future,» Tan said.
