Opening Remarks by Minister of State for Energy, Trade and Industry Foo Cexiang at the Business Forum on the Occasion of the Visit of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to Singapore

Mr Johannes Steiniger, Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy,

Dr Claus Trenner, President, Singaporean-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce,

Distinguished business leaders from Germany and Singapore,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Introduction

1. A very good afternoon. Thank you, Dr Trenner, for your warm welcome. It is my pleasure to join our friends from Germany today, particularly the distinguished business delegation accompanying Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz on his Official Visit to Singapore.

2. I would also like to thank the German Embassy and the Singaporean-German Chamber of Industry and Commerce for bringing our business communities together today.

A Piano, and a Lesson about Innovation

3. When I was young, I learnt the piano.

4. I was not a particularly gifted student. But I remember the music. And one composer I especially enjoyed was Beethoven.

5. Many of you will know Mr Alexander Melchers, who sits on the Advisory Council of SGC and is also a Vice-President of the Singapore National Employers Federation. He told me a story recently about a Steinway piano. It stayed on my mind.

6. Many of us know Steinway & Sons for something very traditional: extraordinary craftsmanship, and some of the finest music in the world.

7. Yet even a piano built on more than a century and a half of tradition can keep reinventing itself.

8. Steinway developed the Spirio system, which can capture the nuances of a pianist's performance and reproduce them with remarkable fidelity.

9. The concert pianist Lang Lang tried to test its limits. He deliberately played tiny nuances to see whether the piano could catch them.

10. It did.

11. He said he had once thought such faithful reproduction was impossible. At the launch of Spirio in China, he described the combination of Steinway craftsmanship and technology as a 'major leap' and a 'milestone'. But what fewer people know is that Alex told me that Lang Lang cried when he sat in the audience, hearing the piano reproduce his playing – it was the first time ever that he could hear his own playing from the audience's seat, live. It may not occur to us, but it was the first time ever that he could see himself playing from the audience and it moved him to tears.

12. I like this story because, in a small way, it captures something I have always admired about German industry.

13. Take something you have spent generations perfecting. Respect the tradition. And then use technology to make it even better.

14. And there is another reason I like it.

15. This tradition did not remain in Germany. It came to Singapore.

16. Melchers established itself in Singapore decades ago and represents Steinway & Sons here.

17. I think that journey, from Germany to Singapore, and from tradition to innovation, tells us something about where our economic partnership can go next.

From Gateway to Innovation Hub

18. For decades, Singapore has helped connect German businesses with opportunities in Asia.

19. Today, more than 2,900 German companies operate in Singapore. Germany is Singapore's largest goods trading partner in the European Union, while Singapore is Germany's largest trading partner in ASEAN.

20. Many German companies have put down roots here, built capabilities here, and grown with us.

21. But at this point, I would like to suggest that the next chapter should be more ambitious.

22. Singapore has long been a gateway for German business into Asia. I believe Singapore can increasingly also become Germany's innovation hub in Asia, for Asia.

23. A place where German companies can develop, test and scale the next generation of technologies.

24. And a place from which these technologies and solutions can reach the growing markets of Southeast Asia and the wider region.

25. Why Singapore?

26. There is a strong complementarity between what Germany does exceptionally well, and what Singapore is building.

27. Germany has tremendous depth in engineering, advanced manufacturing, industrial technology and the specialised capabilities of the Mittelstand.

28. Singapore too offers a sophisticated manufacturing base, strong research institutions, digital capabilities, trusted intellectual-property protection and connections across Asia.

29. And we are investing further.

30. Singapore will invest S$37 billion under our RIE2030, which is our research plan from 2026 to 2030. This is 32 per cent more than under RIE2025. Areas of focus include industrial AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing and semiconductors, which align well with many of Germany's strengths and I also understand were the focus of the discussion with DPM Gan Kim Yong.

31. The opportunity is not theoretical.

32. It is already happening.

33. Siltronic inaugurated its S$2.9 billion 300mm wafer fab in Singapore, making Singapore its largest production site globally.

34. Siemens announced around S$290 million for a new high-tech factory in Singapore, involving technologies including digital twins and highly automated manufacturing.

35. German Mittelstand companies such as Rohde & Schwarz, MANN+HUMMEL, tesa, ifm electronic and Pepperl+Fuchs have also established R&D or sophisticated industrial capabilities here.

36. These are not simply investments in Singapore.

37. They demonstrate what is possible when German engineering collides with Singapore's innovation ecosystem.

Building for Asia

38. This matters especially now.

39. The global economic environment is becoming more uncertain. Supply chains are being reorganised. New technologies are disrupting industries. Businesses everywhere are asking where they should make their next investment and where their next source of growth will come from.

40. For Germany and Singapore, the answer cannot be to turn inward.

41. Both our countries have prospered by being connected to the world.

42. And ASEAN represents an important part of the opportunity ahead.

43. Singapore will assume the ASEAN Chairmanship in 2027.

44. Our ambition is to keep ASEAN open, integrated and connected to the global economy.

45. Singapore can therefore offer German companies something quite distinctive.

46. Not simply a market of six million people, but a platform from which you can build for a much larger region.

47. We have German industrial know-how.

48. We have Singapore's innovation ecosystem.

49. And we have opportunities across a growing Asian region.

50. Put the three together.

An Invitation to German Business

51. So my message to our German business leaders today is simple.

52. Don't regard Singapore only as the place from which you sell to Asia.

53. Use Singapore as the place where you build your next solution for Asia.

54. Bring your engineering expertise.

55. Work with our researchers and companies.

56. Develop it here. Test it here. Prove it here.

57. And when it works, scale it across ASEAN and beyond.

58. I would particularly extend this invitation to Germany's Mittelstand.

59. Singapore welcomes the great German names that everyone in this room knows.

60. But we also welcome the specialised companies that may be less familiar to the general public, but possess world-leading technology in a particular machine, component or industrial process.

61. Indeed, some of these capabilities may be exactly what companies in Singapore and across ASEAN will need as they digitalise, decarbonise and transform.

62. And Singapore can be their partner in this journey.

63. Not only a place to establish an office.

64. But a place to find partners, work with researchers, build technology, and take it into a much larger region.

Conclusion

65. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me return to the piano with which I began.

66. What struck me about the Steinway story was not simply that someone had put new technology into an old instrument.

67. It was that the technology did not diminish the craftsmanship.

68. It allowed the craftsmanship to do something new. It touched the heart of a craftsman like Lang Lang.

69. I think there is a lesson there for the German-Singapore partnership as well.

70. Germany and Singapore have built something valuable together over many decades: trust, commercial ties, and a shared belief in staying open and connected to the world.

71. We should preserve that.

72. But, like that Steinway, we should also ask what else it can do.

73. For the next chapter, let us also make Singapore Germany's innovation hub for Asia.

74. A place where German engineering and Singaporean innovation come together.

75. Where our companies do not simply trade with one another, but invent together, test together and scale together.

76. And perhaps, like a great piece of music, what comes next will draw on themes that we already know, but take us somewhere new.

77. Thank you.