Grant to IMF's Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for the generosity of time. I hope I do not have to use it. I thank the Members for their support for the three Motions.

Let me try to answer some of the questions raised, starting with Mr Liang Eng Hwa who asked the reason for doing this. I think the simplest reason is we are helping the most vulnerable countries in the world. We are talking about countries like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nepal, Tanzania, Yemen, where the pandemic has really ravaged lives and livelihoods. And so, something like the CCRT will help, through debt relief, free up much-needed resources to tackle the medical, social, economic problems that they are facing.

If we take a step back, the reason is really that we live in an interconnected world. And so, it is in Singapore's interest to be part of this international community where we work together, where we cooperate, where there are rules, there are norms, there are best practices that hold every country into account to ensure that we live peacefully together in a global village.

So, in such a system there will be benefits, there will be obligations. And on balance for a small city-state like us, the benefits far outweigh the obligations and the costs. In fact, it is existential for us to live in such a global international cooperation system. That is why we want to do this.

Is there visibility? Yes, all the funds are subject to the oversight of the IMF Executive Board. Singapore is represented in the Board through the voting group of Southeast Asia. And so, we get an update and from time to time the IMF would publish reports, to update on the progress of all these funds.

I thank Assoc Prof Jamus Lim for supporting this Motion and for giving us this lecture about how for a small country, it is much better for us to help others and make sure that if the region, in poorer countries do well, so will we. And in fact, I think what he has just described, is 50 over years of foreign policy and one of our key tenets – which is we want our neighbours to all do well, we want our region to do well. That way, there is global cooperation that a small country like us, can also do well.

Which is why for so many years, we contribute on various international fora, whatever we can do within our means as a small country. Today, we talked about IMF, but for many years, MFA had the Singapore Cooperation Programme. We do not contribute money per se, but we run so many training programmes and invite government officials, representatives of NGOs and other organisations to come to Singapore. We provide necessary training, they take reference on what we do, we learn from each other. And I think it started in 1992. As of now, we have trained more than 130,000 officials all around the world, at our expense.

Today, I am in MOT. I can see that whether it is ICAO or IMO, we have participated in all kinds of capacity building programmes, contributing to the greater common good. We talked about the Paris Agreement, we had launched the Green Plan and had a long debate on the Motion on climate change. And we too, contribute to the Paris Agreement.

Our contribution is always commensurate with our size. It is not big. But I think it is important for us to contribute and it is beyond money. Often, it is about our know how. We learn by doing, and whatever we have learned, we share with the world. And sometimes, those are the lessons that are priceless. Likewise, we learn those lessons from others and those are priceless.

Assoc Prof Jamus Lim did say we should increase our monetary contribution. In the IMF, it goes by your voting rights and your quota. There is a formula. We go by that formula. But, of course, if you contribute more, the fiscal burden is higher and it has to be funded by tax collections as well. For us, as a small country, our stance is better not to go around to say that we have all these resources, we can give out more money. But instead, we are always struggling for relevance, always fighting to earn a living. And along the way, we learn many lessons and we can share those lessons with the rest of the world. I think this is a better way for Singapore to contribute to the common good and the larger global society.

Ms Mariam Jafaar gave a couple of good suggestions on raising awareness and educating the broader public including businesses on the work that we do internationally and how much Singapore can help. I think these are very good suggestions. When MAS put out our press release on these IMF contributions, it was a little bit disappointing because if you look through the threads, there were quite a few criticisms saying, "Why is Singapore giving out money to other countries?"

Frankly, within MAS, when we reviewed that, we were a little bit disappointed. So, I am quite glad that today, all the Members that stood up and spoke about this, supported this contribution to the IMF grants. It shows that as a small country, we can also be big-hearted, that we can also play our role. I think we also share our concern for the future of humanity and we will do our part. What Ms Mariam Jafaar suggested is a good idea and we will see what we can do to raise awareness of what we can do internationally. Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move.