Good morning

Mr. Choo Chiau Beng, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Keppel Offshore & Marine;

Mr. Yap Huat Hin, President of Keppel FELS Employees Union;Ladies and Gentlemen

It is my pleasure to be with you this morning for your National Day Observance Ceremony to mark our 37th National Day. I would like to thank the management of Keppel FELS and Keppel FELS Employees Union for their kind invitation to me.

Recently I met up with some community and union leaders. They told me that this National Day seems different - that there is an air of uncertainty and unease. The challenge of globalisation and the information revolution are now felt more keenly as jobs are lost as the economy restructures.

But I am confident that we will continue to do well. Jobs will be created. Children fed. Parents looked after. One of our greatest strengths as a nation is the adaptability of our people. We have always sought to anticipate changes, position ourselves to make the best of circumstances and then effectively implement our economic strategies.

If you look back at the past 37 years, we have done these strategic changes several times and prospered as a result of them. Take independence in 1965. This was not planned for. The pundits wrote us off as they said it is not possible for us to survive without a hinterland. Unemployment was close to 10%.

Against the conventional wisdom, we embarked on an MNC-led export strategy. We decided that we would make up for our lack of a hinterland by hooking up with the developed world. As a result, growth in the 1970s and 1980s was in double digits.

In 1985, we had a rude shock with our first recession since independence. We had become too dependent on the oil industry. Our response was to diversify our economy into promoting the electronics sector and the financial industry. This has carried us into the 1990s where once again we enjoyed robust economic growth.

Then in 1997, we had the Asian financial crisis. In its aftermath, it drove home to us that we may be too dependent on electronics and that in the face of globalisation, we need to complement our MNC-led development strategy.

Today, we have an Economic Review Committee headed by DPM Lee Hsien Loong. I need not remind you that this is the same man who took us out of recession in 1985. We are looking at reinventing ourselves to have a more vibrant domestic enterprise sector with globally competitive manufacturing and services industries.

This ability to adapt and prosper is also present in your company. Keppel FELS has just celebrated its 35^th Anniversary last Saturday. From its humble beginnings as a small shipyard building barges and tugs in 1967, Keppel FELS today has built more than 60% of the world’s jack-up and is a world class shipyard for the offshore and rig-building industry.

This transformation would not have been possible if not for Keppel FELS’ committed workforce and strong management team which have continuously strive to reinvent and improve the Company’s effectiveness and efficiency in the face of economic changes. I congratulate every one of you here for your ability to adapt and reinvent yourselves to remain competitive, thus enabling Keppel FELS to achieve a high standard for its products and services.

Now, as a nation, we are not only quick to adapt but we do so with a national sense of mission, an acute sense of urgency and a leadership that has never accepted that size is destiny. And we do all these with a deep sense of community. That all Singaporeans are deserving of economic opportunity and the basic complements of a decent life – health, housing and education.

So just as in the past, I am confident that we will today and into the future, not just survive the winds of change that are buffeting the world, but sail with it to a better life for all our people.

We are one people, one nation, one Singapore.

On this note, let me wish all of you a Happy National Day. Thank you.