What are the top challenges faced by businesses in Singapore?

Despite these challenges, 80% of them remain confident in the resiliency of their operations.

Manpower challenges remain the top issue concerning businesses in Singapore, data from the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) showed.

SBF’s National Business survey showed that 96% of businesses face manpower issues.

These issues include rising manpower costs (75%), attracting and/or retaining younger workers (51%), new foreign manpower policies raising costs (48%), limited pool of local high-skilled labour (47%) and stricter policies that restrict the supply of foreign workers (43%).

Apart from manpower issues, another top challenge faced by businesses is increasing costs.

Their top cost challenges are related to wages (79%), logistical
costs (52%), overall cost pass-through (48%), procurement costs (48%), and utilities
(45%).

Despite these challenges, 80% of businesses remain confident in the resiliency of their operations in the next 12 months.

Compared to SMEs (77%), large companies (89%) are somewhat more confident in their businesses.

The overall business sentiment is also improving, rising to 52% in 2022 from 37% in 2021.

In the year ahead, businesses will prioritise growing their revenue (66%), reducing costs (43%) and ensuring positive cash flow (42%).

Companies plan to increase salaries (40%), invest more in new technologies (32%) and staff training (27%), re-engineer business and operational processes (28%), as well as diversify their supply chains to build resiliency (27%).