Singapore’s digital economy accounted for $113 billion of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, according to a report by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), released on Oct 29. This is the second Singapore digital economy report by the government organization.
This figure accounts for about 17.7% of the share of GDP, surpassing the finance and insurance sector, but on par with the manufacturing sector, the report notes. At a media briefing on Oct 29, IMDA notes that the finance and insurance sector accounts for 13.8%, while the manufacturing sector accounts for 18.65% as at 2023.
The agency’s report finds that the digital economy has grown at a CAGR of 11.2% over the last five years, in which the figure stood at $66.5 billion in 2018.
This signals how integral the digital economy has become, says IMDA. However, the 17.7% of the share of GDP figure is the same in 2022 and 2023. IMDA adds that there is no target share of the digital economy as a percentage of the GDP.
Globally, the technology industry has faced headwinds including layoffs in the last couple of months, IMDA’s deputy CEO Kiren Kumar notes. Despite this, Singapore is in a “healthy space” and still on an upward trajectory compared to last year and five years ago.
He adds that unlike other hubs around the world, what makes Singapore’s ecosystem “unique” is that our economy is well diversified, with digital driving growth across the entire economy.
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The digital economy of Singapore is made up of the information & communications (I&C) sector, which accounts for one third of the industry. The remaining two thirds of the digital economy comes from the impact of digitalisation across non-I&C sectors.
The Singapore Digital Economy report notes that almost 95% of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore have adopted digital in at least one area of the following: cybersecurity, cloud, e-payment, e-commerce, data analytics and AI. This is a 0.5 percentage point increase from 2022.
Since the boom of generative AI in 2022, the Singapore government has been pushing conversations and adoption around the technology. IMDA will now “deepen” its AI ecosystem across three key pillars — enterprises; talent and governance, and as such, launch its GenAI Sandbox 2.0 on Dec 2.
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It targets 300 SMEs across all sectors, and will provide up to 50% of grant support to trial one of the three genAI solutions of IMDA’s choice. This includes generative web design, virtual assistants for customer engagement agents, and genAI for talent acquisition and onboarding.
On technology talent, which IMDA notes is the driver of the digital economy, jobs grew to 208,300 in 2023, a 3.4% y-o-y growth and accounting for over 5% of total employment.
The monthly median wages for technology workers in Singapore stood at $7,000, 1.5 times higher than the overall resident workforce.
