DPM Heng, S’pore’s economic czar through the Covid-19 pandemic, to retire from politics (2025)

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SINGAPORE – Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, who guided Singapore through the Covid-19 pandemic as finance minister, is retiring from politics after 14 years.

Mr Heng, 64, who is also the current chairman of the PAP, was not on any constituency’s slate on Nomination Day on April 23, ending months of speculation over whether he would contest the 2025 General Election.

In a Facebook post after nomination proceedings concluded, he said: “I believe now is the right time to make way for a new team of capable individuals who are well placed to serve Singapore.”

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong will succeed DPM Heng as the anchor minister in East Coast GRC. Mr Heng said he was confident that the new team would serve with heart and strength, urging East Coast residents to give them their strong support.

DPM Heng entered politics in 2011 in Tampines GRC, as part of a cohort that would form the core of the PAP’s fourth-generation (4G) leadership. Other candidates introduced in the general election that year included Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and three Cabinet ministers – Mr Chan Chun Sing, Mr Desmond Lee and Mr Ong Ye Kung.

A Singapore Police Force overseas scholarship holder, Mr Heng joined the police force after graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in economics and rose to the rank of assistant commissioner.

He joined the Administrative Service in 1995, and was principal private secretary to then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew between 1997 and 2000.

Mr Lee later called Mr Heng “one of the best” principal private secretaries he ever had. “He’s the man who saw Singapore through the financial crisis and we recovered faster than other countries,” he also said.

From economics student to czar

Before politics, Mr Heng honed his policymaking chops as permanent secretary at the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), and later as managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore from 2005 to 2011.

He was credited with successfully steering Singapore’s monetary policy through the 2008 financial crisis, ensuring the Singapore dollar remained stable and the financial sector resilient.

Two key measures the Government rolled out then to support businesses were the Special Risk-Sharing Initiative, which saw the state absorb most of the risk of loans so that there would not be a liquidity crunch, and a Jobs Credit scheme that subsidised wage costs and incentivised firms to retain their workers.

These would become critical policy tools when Mr Heng faced down the Covid-19 pandemic as finance minister.

At MTI, he skilfully wrangled benefits as Singapore’s chief negotiator in putting together free trade agreements, especially the ground-breaking 2005 pact with India that was notable for its complexity and range.

Mr Heng said he had been asked to stand for election on a few occasions. The first time was when he was in his 30s, and he declined.

After the global financial crisis, then Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong and Mr Lee, who was Minister Mentor then, had long sessions with him that spurred his entry into politics in 2011.

“They convinced me that there were changes I could effect as a politician that I could not as a civil servant, and winning public support for doing the right things for Singapore was critical. This is why I agreed to enter politics, and why I continued to serve after my stroke nine years ago, in 2016,” he said.

Within days of being elected in 2011, Mr Heng was made a full minister with the education portfolio.

A major move early in his tenure as education minister was to cease the banding of secondary schools, ending a 20-year practice of spotlighting academic performance ahead of other indicators.

In 2012, he also did away with naming the top scorers in the Primary School Leaving Examination. A year later, the ministry went a step further by not disclosing the highest and lowest scores, which had been listed on every pupil’s result slip since 1982.

The policy of not naming the top scorers also extended to other national examinations: the N levels, O levels and A levels.

Mr Heng came to be associated with the slogan “Every school a good school”, which reflected his vision for every school to be good in its own way, and to bring out the best in each child.

After the 2015 General Election, he relinquished the education portfolio and became finance minister, a position he held till 2021, when he handed it over to now PM Wong.

During his term as finance minister, Mr Heng announced in 2018 that the Government would be raising the goods and services tax rate from 7 per cent to 9 per cent some time between 2021 and 2025.

This was later executed in two stages, in 2024 and 2025, after PM Wong took over the finance portfolio.

Harnessing reserves in crisis

The high-water mark of Mr Heng’s tenure as finance minister was the unprecedented five Budgets that he delivered in 2020 that together deployed some $100 billion – a fifth of Singapore’s gross domestic product – in fiscal firepower to support Singaporeans and businesses through the Covid-19 pandemic.

Five weeks after he first went to Parliament to deliver Budget 2020, dubbed the Unity Budget, with $6.4 billion in economic measures, Mr Heng returned to the House on March 26, 2020, to deliver the $48.4 billion Resilience Budget. This was followed by the $5.1 billion Solidarity Budget in April – a day before circuit breaker measures kicked in – and the $33 billion Fortitude Budget in May that year.

This was followed by two ministerial statements in August and October 2020 that added another $8 billion in support measures, such as an extension to the Jobs Support Scheme, so that hard-hit sectors like aviation and tourism would benefit from co-payment of workers’ salaries for longer. The two statements are together regarded as 2020’s fifth Budget.

Within a year, Mr Heng had addressed Parliament nine times to deliver the five Budgets, spending more than 12 hours at the rostrum.

In a December 2020 interview with The Straits Times for a book that chronicled the first two years of Singapore’s battle against the pandemic, Mr Heng said each of the five Budgets was exceptional, given that his team was working on an extremely compressed timeline to roll out necessary support in the face of severe demand and supply shocks.

But the most intense of them was the Resilience Budget, given that it was the largest in size, and involved a $17 billion draw on the reserves, he said.

“We knew that this (pandemic) was going to have a very deep impact, in particular on jobs,” he said.

“We also realised that we would need to support businesses – because if businesses closed, however much we supported workers and the retention of jobs, there would be a problem.”

Once-presumptive leader of 4G team

In November 2018, Mr Heng was picked to be first assistant secretary-general of the PAP.

The promotion was supposed to answer the pressing question of who would take over from then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who said days after the 2015 General Election that political succession was at the top of his mind.

The process appeared to be on track when Mr Heng was promoted to deputy prime minister in April 2019.

With the prospect of him being Singapore’s fourth prime minister, he made a surprise move at GE2020 to East Coast GRC from Tampines GRC, in anticipation of a fierce fight against the Workers’ Party.

The PAP won East Coast with 53.4 per cent of the vote.

In April 2021, DPM Heng announced that he had decided to step aside as leader of the PAP’s 4G team, a move that upended the PAP’s customarily uneventful handover of power.

At a press conference, he said the pandemic was likely to be a prolonged crisis, which meant he would be close to his mid-60s by the time he would take over as prime minister.

In contrast, Singapore’s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew was 35 when he took on the job, his successor Goh Chok Tong was 49, and Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong was 52.

“It is in the best interests of the nation for someone who is younger to tackle the huge challenges ahead,” he said.

“After careful deliberation and discussions with my family, I have decided to step aside as leader of the 4G team so that a younger leader who will have a longer runway can take over.”

SM Lee said Mr Heng had done exceptional work as minister for finance, and thanked him for his selfless decision to step aside.

The withdrawal kicked off an extensive exercise within the PAP to relook its 4G succession plan, and in April 2022, the ruling party picked now PM Wong as successor.

Architect of S’pore’s long-range plans

Given his economic grounding and technocratic roots, DPM Heng was often tapped by Singapore’s leadership to chart the country’s next bound of growth and transformation so that it could stay ahead as the world changed.

During the pandemic, he set up the Emerging Stronger Taskforce that comprised leaders from businesses, trade associations and the unions.

Besides pioneering a model for the public and private sectors to rapidly implement solutions to ground problems, the task force identified key shifts in a post-pandemic world, such as reconfigured supply chains, changes in consumer preferences and an increased focus on sustainability.

It then recommended specific investment areas for Singapore – including agri-tech, medtech and robotics – which the Future Economy Council (FEC) accepted.

The FEC, which Mr Heng chaired from 2017 to 2023, oversees Singapore’s ongoing economic restructuring through the implementation of sector-specific transformation road maps.

Mr Heng’s other roles are coordinating minister for economic policies from 2020 to 2024, and chairman of the National Research Foundation since 2018.

Known for his consultative leadership style, Mr Heng also led multiple national engagement exercises and sought to get more Singaporeans to partner the Government.

These included the 2012 Our Singapore Conversation that engaged over 47,000 Singaporeans on their desired future for the nation, and the Emerging Stronger Conversations (ESC) that took in the pandemic reflections of some 17,000 Singaporeans.

In 2022, the 4G leadership initiated Forward Singapore, a new public consultation exercise that built on the ESC.

Among its outcomes was the establishment of the Singapore Government Partnerships Office, which continues Mr Heng’s vision of encouraging more people to come forward to co-create solutions with the Government.

On April 23, PM Wong said he saw first-hand how Mr Heng embraced the ethos of service above self when he worked under Mr Heng in the Education and Finance ministries.

In his tribute to DPM Heng and Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean, who is also retiring, PM Wong said both men had served Singapore with distinction.

“Without Swee Keat and Chee Hean, Singapore would not have been able to achieve all that it has over these years,” he said.

“If I am able to take Singapore forward from here, it is because of leaders like them – who worked tirelessly to lay such strong and enduring foundations.”

SM Lee also expressed his gratitude to DPM Heng, who he said has a natural empathy for others and exemplifies the spirit of public service.

He added that DPM Heng made the “selfless decision” to step aside as leader of the 4G team, but continued to contribute actively in Cabinet.

“For that, I will long be grateful,” said SM Lee.

Mr Heng is among 20 PAP MPs who are retiring at this election.

• Goh Yan Han is political correspondent at The Straits Times. She writes Unpacked, a weekly newsletter on Singapore politics and policy.

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