Opening Remarks by Minister Josephine Teo at EDB-Temasek Business Leaders Gathering Lunch in Davos on 22 Jan 2026

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here, and I want to thank EDB and Temasek for bringing us together.

As friends of Singapore would be well aware, last year was the 60th year since Singapore’s independence. There were a number of notable events that took place.

The most notable event was that for a country where trade is more than three times of our GDP, we closed the year with a GDP growth of 4.8%.

• Given our high base, that is remarkable in any year – much less in a year where there was so much uncertainty in the global trade environment.

The second notable event was that we had our General Elections. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong led the party to the polls, and his vision that was articulated, as well as our plans for Singapore, received strong endorsement. So, here we are today.

But on a separate note, there was one other notable event for my ministry and I – it was the publication of something we call the Albatross File.

• Now you may be wondering, what on earth is the Albatross File? It turns out that in the year leading up to Singapore's independence, Dr Goh Keng Swee, who was the chief negotiator for the separation agreement, started to compile a series of documents relating to the separation.

• In the Albatross File, you can find notes of his meeting with key personalities. I think it's not difficult to then have an appreciation of the feelings that the individuals had, as well as the dynamics between them. And I think more importantly, particularly for younger Singaporeans, including myself, we have a deeper appreciation of what the founding leaders believed Singapore ought to be, and why the separation was necessary for us to achieve that.

So that, for me, was significant because later on, Dr Goh became the architect of the modern Singapore economy. Many of the things that we take for granted, for example, a strong currency and the predictability of our business environment – all of those things started when he was our deputy prime minister and played a role in shaping Singapore’s economic and defence policies.

Now, let me just say one more thing why I think the Albatross File is significant. The Albatross File was notable because it was about secret documents. And there are actually very few secrets in Singapore.

It's no secret, for example, that we believe in the rule of law being much more important than rule of man. It's no secret that we prefer to be friends to everyone and enemies to none. It's also no secret that we are staunch supporters of multilateralism; however hard it is to uphold.

It's no secret too, that we embrace technology. We do what we can to capture its upsides, and we deal with the downsides seriously, sensibly and where possible, pre-emptively.

Now this approach has been reflected somewhat in my week at Davos, where discussions on what the current cyber landscape means were top of the agenda.

There was also a recognition that this calls for more public-private partnerships to deal effectively with the advanced persistent threat actors.

Two exciting things are coming up. First, the National AI R&D Plan, which I will launch on Saturday.

The other is an acceleration of AI activities. Against this backdrop of accelerating AI adoption, we will continue to build capabilities in AI safety and governance.

In fact, it was at Davos in 2019 that Singapore became one of the first countries to present an AI governance framework.

In 2024, we updated this framework to be relevant in the age of Generative AI.

Today, the landscape has shifted. It is now agentic AI that has captured our imaginations, and this is why we are presenting a new framework for the Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI, again, at Davos.

You will see that our approach is a pragmatic one, where guardrails are not meant to stand in the way of innovation, but really to embolden our ambitions.

On this note, I hope that by sharing these recent developments with you – about Singapore and also about our AI scene, we can entice you to come visit us and do more with Singapore.

Thank you once again, to Temasek and to EDB for having me. I wish everyone a very pleasant afternoon ahead.