Orient - The Official Magazine of the British Chamber of Commerce Singapore - Issue 72 June 2019
2019 is a significant year for both Singapore and the UK. It marks the Bicentennial of Sir Stamford Raffles arrival in Singapore and the beginning of a new era for the United Kingdom. Recognising our strong historical links and the many opportunities for future collaborations, the SG-UK Partnership for the Future was launched in January 2019 by the UK’s Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan.
The bedrock of this year-long Partnership campaign is our shared beliefs in free trade and international law, and our strong commitment to the rules-based multilateral system that allow our nations to work together to embrace innovation and technology in all sectors and at every level - government to government, business to business, academic to academic and person to person. It does this by spotlighting collaborations in the digital economy, sustainable business and innovation, security and defence as well as opportunities in education, culture and youth-related programmes.
There is a keen understanding in the UK, as in Singapore, that innovation is the lifeblood of national prosperity and both nations have undertaken a ‘whole-of-government’ approach to set gold standards as trade and business hubs. The 2018 Global Innovation Index – jointly published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organisation – ranked the UK and Singapore as the fourth and fifth most innovative economies in the world. And the SG-UK Partnership was created to help both nations share their expertise and experience in a world of fast-changing audiences, challenges and business models.
Since its launch, the campaign has supported 13 Memorandums of Understandings (MOUs) signed between key establishments in the UK and Singapore across the sectors and including R&D, education, healthcare, business, public infrastructure and the arts. From corporates such as iamYiam, a UK-based healthcare solutions provider partnering with Singapore’s Fullerton Health to bring sustainable digital solutions to the healthcare sector across APAC, to the Coventry and Birmingham Universities initiating joint programmes with Singapore schools, corporate labs and private companies; the first quarter of the campaign has been a busy one. With more than 30 partners coming on board, both in Singapore as well as in the UK, the campaign has supported over 100 events that showcased the best of Singapore and UK partnerships.
Singaporean companies are seizing the opportunity that the campaign creates to grow their business. Cynopsis Solutions, a fintech and regtech disrupter from Singapore, not only actively used the campaign to publicise their participation in Scotland’s DataFest 2019 and later, the UK FinTech Week under but also attributed the Partnership for helping them tap into growing global interest in anti-money laundering and eKYC solutions.