By Fiona Chan & Robin Chan

THE economic crisis has demonstrated how strong Singapore is and how resilient and flexible its people and businesses are, said Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam last night.

The Government's 'full-force fiscal intervention' - introduced in this year's Budget - has helped prevent huge job losses and limited fallout from the global crisis, but has been only one part of the story.

Speaking at the Enterprise 50 Awards gala dinner at the Raffles City Convention Centre, Mr Tharman said: 'Nothing would have worked if everyone had not played his part.'

He noted that companies retained as many workers as they could, with some even creating new jobs. Instead of laying off staff, they reached for help from Government programmes such as the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience, or Spur.

Workers, too, made sacrifices in accepting wage cuts and shorter working weeks, and undergoing retraining, he said.

Banks continued to lend to viable companies with help from the Government-funded risk-sharing initiative, while grassroots and community leaders, volunteers and philanthropists went out of their way to help those in need.

All this pointed to the strength of Singapore's unique tripartite system of collaboration, in which the state, employers and workers all cooperate, said Mr Tharman.

'That was the real strength of Singapore - our flexibility, our ability to shift policies and act quickly when required, and the way our people and companies respond to changes in the world, not by giving up, but by learning something new.'

The Economic Strategies Committee - formed earlier this year to find new ways for Singapore to grow - is creating strategies to help local companies go further, Mr Tharman said.

In an earlier interview with the Financial Times, Mr Tharman had said that Singapore's average growth rate over the next decade would be lower than in the last 10 years, due to changes in the global economy and different circumstances closer to home.

The interview, published yesterday, quoted Mr Tharman as saying that the previous pace of expansion would not be sustainable as Singapore's labour force expanded at a slower pace and it became more difficult to raise productivity.

'We can't keep growing at 5, 7 or 8per cent over the next five to 10 years. It is not advisable to do so either,' he said.

Mr Tharman said growth had averaged 5per cent over the last full economic cycle from 2003 to last year. And, without specifying numbers, he said the long-term trend growth rate would be 'a shade lower than over the last five to 10 years'.

The lower growth was down to Singapore's continuing economic evolution to a more mature, developed economy, he added.

'This is not so much due to the crisis and the very real discontinuities in the global economy, as much as the fact that the Singapore economy is evolving,' Mr Tharman told the FT.

Singapore's per capita income hit $51,739 last year, up 1.3per cent on the previous year. World Bank data shows Singapore had the 10th highest per capita income last year in purchasing power parity terms, slightly ahead of the United States, Switzerland and Hong Kong.

A high-income economy will find it more challenging to maintain high rates of productivity growth, while falling birth rates and slower rates of immigration will affect labour force growth, said Mr Tharman.

'These are stylised facts that describe what happened to Europe beyond the tremendous recovery after the war; what happened to Japan, what happened to every other advanced economy,' he said.

But, Singapore's trend growth rate would still be higher than in advanced economies with similar per capita income levels.

'We think we can still grow at a trend rate that is significantly faster than other countries in the same league,' he said.

Economists said trend growth below 5per cent was realistic. HSBC's Robert Prior-Wandesforde said: 'It is remarkable that Singapore has been growing at those rates in the past. It is a developed country that has been growing at a developing country growth rate.'

He said it would also be hard for Singapore to maintain its investment levels, which have been driving a large part of its growth.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.