Just as important as the level of income is: how we produced it, and what resources did we use? •  Output per hour worked has increased considerably. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  o  In 2015, Singaporeans worked 2,300 hours. o  But we are now generating nearly three times as much income as 50 years ago. o  •  This year Singaporeans are expected to work only 1,400 hours. The carbon intensity of our economy has fallen sharply. o  o  In 2015, we emitted 0.2 kilograms of carbon to produce a dollar of output. Today, we emit just 0.05 kilograms. Third, the distribution of income. •  •  Income distribution has become more equal, thanks to heavy investments in building human capital and skills as well as a tax and transfers system that has become more progressive over the years. o  In 2015, the Gini coefficient after taking account of taxes and transfers was 0.41.  o  Today, it is 0.36. Wealth inequality has remained more stubborn though. o  Today, the top 1% and 10% of wealth holders in Singapore own around 20% and 60% of total wealth respectively. o  This is little changed from 30 years ago, when we first started to collect this data. 1965–1984: Export-led industrialisation through multinationals In 1965, when Singapore left the Federation of Malaysia, few expected it to survive let alone prosper.
Therefore, the number of observations in common with an artificially reduced register could be very low or even zero. The path to striking a balance between giving access to the research community to the more interesting databases while ensuring confidentiality and anonymisation could much benefit from the experience of other institutions. To this end, a few years ago several central banks set in motion the so-called INEXDA network. At present this network comprises central banks, including the participation of the ECB Statistical Directorate, and other statistical institutes, like Eurostat. In this forum participants from the statistical areas and datalabs exchange experiences in the management of micro data, the aim being to guarantee the harmonisation of certain procedures and share best practices in this domain. Access to the information in the hands of private sources is also a very interesting field where we can make further progress. INE had a very good experience this year in exploiting data from mobile phones to analyse citizens’ mobility in different cities and regions, easing and lessening the cost of developing such statistics, with the help of new technologies. The need to better understand and organise the transition from customer data, privately used by service corporations, to citizens’ micro data, of interest for public analysis, has to be studied thoroughly. That is why I welcome and congratulate INE on recently launching a Business to Government Working Group (B2G WG), under the name of “WG about the role of official statistics on data stewardship”.