Singapore on allowing vaccinated travelers without quarantine
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S. Iswaran, the Transport Minister of Singapore said that Singapore would eventually permit all travellers to bypass quarantine within its country as long they have been vaccinated.
CNBC interviewed him on Thursday. He said that “With more vaccination and boosting populations, along with better testing and safety management protocols, we’ve been able put into place a variety of measures to resume travel.”
Iswaran stated that this has led to a steady increase in so-called “vaccinated travel lanes”. Singapore has established these lanes in conjunction with some countries, which allow travelers who are vaccinated to enter the country without needing to be quarantined.
“We do want to pivot to … as long as the traveler is vaccinated and can prove that, they should be able to enter the country without quarantine,” Iswaran said.
He said that Singapore’s passenger traffic had reached 15% as of the end last year. And the city-state is keen to build on this momentum.
Economic outlook for Singapore
CNBC was also informed by Iswaran, that Singapore’s recent shock in energy prices will have a severe impact.
He said that a small, open economy is always vulnerable to an exogenous effect, in response to questions about how susceptible the city-state was to recession.
He added that “In this case, the effects of these increases in energy prices are something that will impact the entire economy.”
As concerns grow about tight supply, oil prices have risen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian imports of energy were stopped by the U.S., while the U.K. (and the European Union) announced that they would eliminate the country’s imports of fossil fuels.
Russia the world’s third-largest oil producer after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It also serves as the biggest exporter of crude oil to global markets and the top supplier of natural gas to the European Union, about 43%.
But crude prices fell over 10%The U.S. made some progress on increasing its oil production through other sources, which led to Wednesday’s rise. However, U.S. crude and Brent International benchmark oil are both up by more than 20% from February 1st.
Analysts warn of a steady rise in energy prices would send inflation soaringConsumer wallets are impacted.
CNBC spoke with Iswaran about Singapore’s acceleration of its transition to greener transport. He said Singapore will make charging infrastructure available for electric cars by 2025. However, he said the initiative is independent of rising energy costs.
He stated that the transition to EVs was not about the energy shock. It is more about shifting towards cleaner-energy vehicles, making them the predominant component in the first instance and then eventually taking over all the vehicle fleet in Singapore.
Iswaran said that, despite all the hype for electric cars, Singapore wants to reduce the number of vehicles on the roads.
He said, “Really. As a small town-state, with scarce land, our approach was to fundamentally prioritize car-light strategy.”
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