Transport Minister S. Iswaran said Singapore wants to eventually allow all travelers to skip quarantine in the country if they are vaccinated.
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, he said: “With more vaccinations and a larger population, and better testing and safer management protocols, I think we’ve now been able to take a number of steps to get travel back on track.”
According to Ishwaran, this means the constant creation of so-called “grafted travel paths”. Singapore has established these lanes with some countries that allow vaccinated travelers to visit them without having to go into quarantine.
“We really want to move on to … as long as the traveler is vaccinated and can prove it, they will be able to enter the country without quarantine,” Ishwaran said.
As of the end of last year, Singapore’s passenger traffic was about 15% of its pre-pandemic volume, and the city-state wants to “build on that momentum,” he added.
Singapore Economic Outlook
Iswaran also told CNBC that the recent energy price shock will hit Singapore hard.
“I think that we, with a small, open economy, are always largely exogenous,” he said, when asked how vulnerable a city-state is to a recession.
“So in this case, the impact of this increase in energy prices is what will cut through the entire economy,” he added.
Oil prices jumped after Russia invaded Ukraine as concerns grow over an already tight supply. The US has banned energy imports from Russia, while the UK and the European Union have also said they will phase out fossil fuel imports into the country.
Russia is the third largest oil producer in the world after the US and Saudi Arabia. It is also the largest exporter of crude oil to world markets and the largest supplier of natural gas to the European Union (about 43%).
However, on Wednesday, oil prices fell more than 10% amid signs that the US may be making progress in increasing oil production from other sources. However, US oil and international benchmark Brent are still up more than 20% since early February.
Analysts warn that a sustained spike in energy prices will lead to skyrocketing inflation, hurting consumers’ wallets.
Learn more about clean energy from CNBC Pro
Iswaran told CNBC that Singapore has accelerated the timeline for moving towards greener transport, such as making charging infrastructure for electric vehicles widely available by 2025. But he pointed out that this initiative is not related to rising energy prices.
“The transition to electric vehicles preceded this energy shock because it’s really about moving towards cleaner energy cars and making them a dominant component in the first place and ultimately taking over the entire fleet of cars that we have in Singapore,” he said.
Iswaran added that despite pushing for electric vehicles, Singapore ultimately wants to prioritize reducing the number of vehicles on the roads.
“Indeed, since we are a small city-state with limited land, our approach has always been to prioritize the passenger car strategy,” he said.