$20M invested in media talent and enterprise productivity

Government thinks this will be enough to raise media worker productivity to $119,700 value added from $98,500 by 2013.

By allotting $15 million for upgrading worker skills and another $5 million for enterpise process improvements, the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) said this will assist the industry grow in the long-term rather than as a short-term boost.

"Intellectual property creation, skills upgrading and process improvements are key drivers of productivity growth for the media sector," said MDA in a release.

Said Mr Aubeck Kam, Chief Executive Officer of MDA, “In the media sector, the way to productivity is through ideas. We have to keep developing better ideas because better ideas mean more audiences and more value derived from the same unit of work. We need to help  companies, enterprises and individuals grow competitively in the long term by proceeding on this front. ”

MDA said the $20 million funding will go into three new productivity measures.

First is the training allowance. "Generally, freelancers are not affiliated to any company and as such, are unable to benefit from absentee payroll. The new Training Allowance addresses this gap and encourages freelancers to upgrade and upskill without having to worry about the potential loss of income forgone when attending courses to improvethemselves," said MDA.

Second is for enhanced apprenticeship, which "aims to upskill experienced media practitioners by equipping them with higher skills through work attachments.."

And finally, process improvements that should "help media companies raise efficiency through process improvements, particularly in areas such as content creation, content asset workflow management and automation."