Your Excellency

Distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for joining us today at the welcome reception of the second Port Management Programme, or PMP in short. I am delighted to welcome you to our new MPA Academy dedicated premise which started operating less than a month ago.

Let me also extend a warm welcome to the 2nd PMP participants, many of whom have come from afar to attend this programme. I am delighted to note that PMP is well-received, even though the programme was launched less than a year ago in December last year. This year, we welcome 17 participants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Middle East and Oceania.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE PORT OF SINGAPORE

Just last week, Singapore celebrated our golden jubilee. As we mark 50 years of nationhood, it would be timely for us to reflect on the transformation of Maritime Singapore. Back in 1966, under the leadership of our late founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, we made a bold move to build our first container terminal at Tanjong Pagar. This decision was taken just a year after independence when resources were extremely tight, and when containerisation trade had yet to take off globally, let alone in this region. For this, we must thank our pioneer leaders for their visionary leadership and foresight. That bold decision paved the way for the transformation of our port into a leading global hub port and international maritime centre.

Today, Maritime Singapore is a key pillar of Singapore's economy which contributes about 7% of Singapore's GDP, employing more than 170,000 people.

EMPHASIS ON SAFETY

Home to one of the world's busiest ports, we receive about 130,000 ship calls at our port every year. At any one time, there are about 1,000 vessels in our port. With such a high volume of sea traffic, ensuring the safety of Singapore port waters is of utmost importance. We will continue to work with our stakeholders to keep our safety policies and measures current and relevant.

Just this morning, you witnessed the launch of the newly formed National Maritime Safety at Sea Council held in conjunction with the Safety@Sea Week. Comprising professionals across a wide spectrum of the Singapore maritime industry, the council will help to ensure the sustainability of maritime safety efforts on a national level, through public-private partnership.

EMPHASIS ON TRAINING

On a similar note, to ensure sustained growth of our port, Singapore also places strong emphasis on human capital development.

While we prepare Singapore's maritime workforce to meet the industry's current and future needs, we also believe that developing maritime human capital is a common objective that cuts across different maritime nations. This is because we face common issues such as navigational safety, growing maritime regulations and the need to be ready to manage incidents in the maritime industry.

Since 1998, we have been providing training to the international maritime community under the Singapore-International Maritime Organization Third Country Training Programme, which was the first-of-its-kind at that time. To date, we have shared our experiences with more than 1,600 officials from over 80 countries under this programme.

Taking our training efforts to the next level, MPA Academy has also repositioned itself as a full-fledged academy with a focus on global maritime leadership training. We believe that more can be done for the international maritime community to hone the skills of our maritime leaders as well as groom emerging leaders.

In April this year, MPA Academy successfully conducted the inaugural Advanced Maritime Leaders Programme (or AMLP) for senior maritime officials heading the maritime or port administration in their respective countries. An apex programme for the academy, the inaugural run was attended by 13 senior officials from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Middle East and Oceania. We have received good feedback and will organise the next run in 2017.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PORT MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

Today's PMP is another flagship programme of MPA Academy. Uniquely designed for port masters, harbour masters, and middle management personnel from maritime administrations or port authorities, PMP covers a broad range of issues facing the maritime industry. Participants will gain insights into what makes the Port of Singapore; building and operating a world-class container port; and safety management in our busy port. The classroom lessons will also be supplemented by site visits to PSA terminals, our Port Operations Control Centre, and the Integrated Simulation Centre.

Following good feedback from the PMP pioneer batch last year, we have also included a session on crisis communications management in the programme. This subject is important and relevant to many of us who may have to deal with crisis and incidents. We are thankful to have Mr Viswa Sadasivan, CEO of Strategic Moves, to conduct this session. Mr Sadasivan is highly sought after and experienced in the field of strategic media management and I am confident our participants will have a fruitful session.

For the first time, we are also pleased to invite our PMP participants to attend our annual Ferry Rescue Exercise in conjunction with the Safety @ Sea Week. MPA organises such ferry rescue exercises as part of our on-going efforts to validate and update our emergency preparedness plans and operations. We hope our PMP participants will gain a better appreciation of the emergency preparedness in Singapore Port waters, through first-hand experience of this year's full deployment exercise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In closing, I would like to thank MPA Academy and all our partners and trainers for putting together the 2nd PMP.

I wish our participants a rewarding learning experience and that you will have a memorable stay in Singapore as well as the chance to strike new friendships with your counterparts from across the world.

Thank you.