It was such a pleasure to once again host Mr. Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore yesterday. We all learned a lot from his speech and from our dialogue with him.

How do we innovate for growth and progress when the era of cheap money, cheap labour and cheap carbon is over? The only course of action is to focus on technology and innovation to increase productivity and growth. Foundational digital infrastructure is best supported by experimentation, learning from failures and enabled by private-public partnerships. Public-private co-creation does not happen enough in Singapore because businesses tend to rely too heavily on government. This needs to change. Businesses need to initiate more ideas and collaborate with each other and government to help themselves and society progress.

Sustainability is a crying imperative for all businesses and countries. There are key competitive advantages to be won by being able to measure, verify and report.

Though interest rates may not continue to remain high, they will not go back to pre-Covid levels. The labour market remains very tight in many countries and some shifts are cyclical while others are structural in nature and more permanent. For example, working from home is not something employees will give up easily. It is time for labour to be priced more accurately to reflect its scarcity and this requires adjustments in the mindset of business leaders.

Many thanks to Mr. Menon for his candour, insights and time, to our Chairman Dr. Bicky Bhangu for moderating the dialogue and to our audience for posing meaningful and relevant questions.