The digital economic system has maintained a 17.7% share of GDP in Singapore, the place small and midsize companies (SMBs) in addition to synthetic intelligence (AI) are predicted to play key roles in fueling progress.
The nation’s digital economic system contributed SG$113 billion ($85.31 billion) to final yr’s GDP, accounting for SG$1 of each SG$6, in accordance with the newest stats launched by trade regulator Infocomm Media Growth Authority (IMDA).
Clocking a compound annual progress charge of 11.2% between 2018 and 2023, Singapore’s digital economic system nearly doubled the nominal GDP progress charge of 5.8% for its complete economic system, IMDA mentioned. Its digital economic system includes the knowledge and communications sector, which contributed about one-third of the pie, whereas non-information and communications sectors accounted for the remaining two-thirds.
Some 94.6% of SMBs have adopted digital applied sciences in a couple of of six key areas, equivalent to AI, cybersecurity, cloud, and knowledge analytics. People who did so underneath the federal government’s Productiveness Options Grant mentioned they noticed value financial savings of fifty% on common between 2018 and 2023, IMDA famous.
The federal government company added that SMBs within the nation have entry to 400 digital options pre-approved for deployment by way of its CTO-as-a-service platform, which have been tapped by 145,000 customers up to now.
SMBs can also undertake AI-enabled functions on the platform, the place 20% of pre-approved options are AI-enabled. IMDA mentioned it plans to extend this determine and encourage an extra 15,000 SMBs to undertake AI options over the following two years.
These trying to take action can also trial generative AI (Gen AI) in a sandbox atmosphere that caters particularly to SMBs. First launched in February 2024, the second iteration of the sandbox is slated for launch in December with a curated checklist of 15 Gen AI options throughout numerous market segments. These embrace Gen AI for expertise acquisition, generative net design, and digital assistants for buyer engagement brokers.
IMDA mentioned greater than 300 SMBs are anticipated to leverage the sandbox, with eligible candidates receiving as much as 50% funding help to trial one of many Gen AI functions for 3 months. Greater than 150 had participated within the first run of the sandbox function, which led to Could, and 80% of those companies are operating the Gen AI functions after the top of the three months.
AI adoption charge amongst SMBs clocked at 4.2% final yr, up from 3.5% in 2018.
IMDA added that bigger enterprises in Singapore even have turned to AI, with 44% rolling out such functions final yr, up from 16.7% in 2018.
The know-how sector is rising at greater than twice the speed of the remainder of the economic system, at barely greater than 11%, which underscores the necessity for all firms, particularly SMBs, to embrace the alternatives of digital as an enabler and for progress, mentioned IMDA chief govt Lew Chuen Hong.
“There’ll all the time be world financial uncertainties pushed by many macro tendencies that typically are out of our management, however know-how as a structural driver will stay the case for the long term,” Lew mentioned. “We are going to proceed to see vital progress so far as digital and the digital economic system is worried.”
“AI has vital potential in the long term and in any tech cycle. We are going to see some exuberance at first, however on the identical time, AI has demonstrated its impression when it comes to reworking fundamentals in all sectors,” he mentioned. “The important thing right here is how will we, as a really small nation, spend money on the precise areas to permit the businesses to maximise some great benefits of this know-how.”
