“The global economy is becoming more interconnected, more diverse and complex,” said Heng. “We must work together to muster our resources, to innovate, to scale up and internationalise.”

The Industry Transformation Programme will “transform our enterprises, transform industries and transform through innovation”, he said.

It will do so by:

– Integrating the different restructuring efforts

– Having measures that are more targeted and sector-focused

– Deepening the partnerships between industry and government and among industry players

– Stressing even harder on technology and innovation.

At company level, Heng outlined four initiatives to help companies build deep capabilities, deploy technology, develop scale and internationalise:

An Automation Support Package will help companies, smaller firms especially, with the huge financial outlay that comes with rolling out or scaling up their business. It involves a grant of up to 50 per cent of project costs, capped at $1 million.

There is also a 100 per cent investment allowance for automation equipment while the Government will improve smaller companies’ access to loans to buy equipment under a Spring Singapore scheme by taking on 70 per cent of the risk from 50 per cent currently. For non-SMES, this will be capped at 50 per cent.

Together, the Automation Support Package will provide support of over $400 million over the next three years, said Heng.

He also announced a set of financial and tax incentives to support smaller businesses to grow that include expanding the existing SME Mezzanine Growth Fund by $50 million to $150 million.

This will be done by the Government matching up to $25 million of new private sector investment. To encourage larger firms to grow even bigger, the mergers & acquisitions allowance will rise to deals worth $40 million, twice the current cap of $20 million. The double tax deduction for internationalisation scheme will be extended till March 31, 2020.

To provide upfront certainty to companies as they restructure, the Government will also extend the non-taxation of companies’ gains on disposal of their equity investments until May 31, 2022.

WHO warns of 50,000 unreachable TB cases

Myanmar is estimated to have about 200,000 tuberculosis patients and is providing treatment for around 150,000 of them while the rest are still unreachable, according to the National TB Programme under the Ministry of Health.

The health ministry set up mobile health-care teams to provide treatment for TB patients in rural areas, workplaces, prisons, refugee camps and mines across the country.

“We found more than 140,000 regular TB patients a year. The WHO [World Health Organisation] estimated about 200,000. It says the current population of 51.4 million has about 50,000 undetectable TB patients. We have set up nine mobile teams and use potable digital X-ray machines to find them across the nation. They need to be found as early as possible,” said Dr Sithu Aung, project manager for the National TB Programme.

Myanmar still has diseases such as TB, TB/HIV and drug-resistant TB at a rate three times higher than the world average, according to the WHO.

The ministry recently announced a five-year national anti-TB plan running until 2020, based on the WHO’s End TB Strategy.