Daily Briefing: Singapore ramps up investments on AI; What you need to know about green bonds in Singapore

And more first-time buyers turn to the resale market.

From CNBC: Singapore is ramping up investments and initiatives in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and data science — two key frontiers of technology —in its bid to become both a smart nation and an innovation capital. On Wednesday, the city-state's Minister for Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim, announced two initiatives launched by Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF), in collaboration with various local agencies.

From Zuu Online Singapore: From June 2017, the government of Singapore will introduce a grant scheme for green bonds. The scheme is hoped to incite the use of green bonds as an asset class in the country, following global acceleration and growth of the climate bond market in the last four years. The recent explosion in environmental interest and awareness led to last year’s global green bond market being valued at $112 billion – and it’s set to grow in the foreseeable future.

From PropertyGuru: Despite the top priority given to them for new flats, one in five first-time buyers of Housing Board homes preferred a resale unit over a Build-To-Order (BTO) unit last year, reported The Straits Times citing HDB data. HDB figures showed that 3,441 Singaporean families purchased a resale flat with a housing grant in 2016, accounting for 19 percent of all flat acquisitions made by first-time buyers using government subsidies or grants. The other 14,273 opted for subsidised BTO units.