Our President Nalla attended SGX Group's Silver Jubilee Celeberation at SGX Centre to much fanfare on 2nd Jan 2025.

SGX Group was established on 1st Dec 1999 through the merger of the Stock Exchange of Singapore, Singapore International Monetary Exchange & the Securities Clearing and Computer Services.

The Guest of Honour was Mr Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister for Trade and Industry & Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). In his keynote speech he highlighted that Asia is in a bright spot and Singapore being a global financial centre is poised to serve as a trusted and efficient market place for growth enterprises to raise capital & further enhance their growth prospects.

The Government has established the Equities Market Review Group with effect from 2nd Aug 2024. It has been a good 5 months since it's formation & the markets are eagerly looking forward to effective measures being implemented to revitalize our Equity Markets which is an important catalyst & barometer for our economy.

The Society of Remisiers (Singapore) (SRS) Executive Committee Members have made several suggestions to MAS in the Focus Group Session held about a month ago together with other stakeholders in the industry.

Two of our key suggestions would be to have a Big Bang Approach to jumpstart our markets as it had been lacklustre for quite some time and sadly many investors, both local and foreign, have moved on to other exciting overseas markets.

The 1st key suggestion would be for the Government to seriously consider listing one of our bigger & more successful Government-linked companies in the likes of Port of Singapore Authority, Changi Airports International, Jurong Town Corporation, Income Insurance, NTUC FairPrice etc. As Singapore will be celebrating SG60 this year, it would be an opportune time to give some shares to Singaporeans to share the fruits of Singapore's phenomenal success over the past 60 years just like what it did in 1993 when Singtel was listed which gave a tremendous boost to our markets.

The 2nd key suggestion is for Temasek to invest more in the Singapore market. It presently has about 27% of it's S$389 billion portfolio invested in Singapore, many of which are legacy investments like DBS, Singtel, SIA, Keppel Corp, Sembawang Corp, Seatrium etc. It would be good to increase it's portfolio exposure to Singapore by about 6% to say one-third i.e. 33% & invest mainly in the mid to small cap companies which are presently suffering from pretty low valuations due to a dearth of liquidity. It makes great investment sense as well as the fundamentals are pretty good, be it in terms of PE multiples, Dividend Yields & Price to Book Values.

A good example is to look at Japan. The Japanese market was in the doldrums for more than 2 decades since the property bubble burst in the late 1980s. Many commentators have said that Japan is a goner with a rapidly ageing society. With the expansionary Abenomic Economic Policy introduced in 2013 to buy Nikkei 225 Index Exchange Traded Funds, it has purchased a whopping S$500 billion worth of investments in their stock market and it has done wonders to the Japanese market & which is now trading near it's historical highs. Even the World's Most Prolific Investor like Warren Buffet has invested more in the Japanese market thereby lending further confidence to the local and foreign investment community to follow suit. Liquidity begets confidence & what follows confidence would be further liquidity.

Our very own state institutions must show increased confidence in our own market & only then can we have more local & foreign investors taking a keen interest in our market.

The present GIC mandate need to be updated as well to allow it to invest in Singapore, say 10% of it's portfolio. We need to show to the world that Singapore has good quality companies and put our money where our mouth is.

Among other suggestions, if we could implement at least the above 2 suggestions first, SRS is confident that it would create a tremendous spark & jumpstart our markets.

Due to better valuations accorded, more companies, both local and foreign would then consider listing in the Singapore bourse once again just like it's once glory days in the 1990s.

Singapore as a nation has survived and thrived against all odds and our Singapore stock market should be no different if we set our Hearts & Minds together.
Majulah Singapura