SMEs hope for pickings in 2018, but are still dogged by challenges

Singapore

The Singapore economy may have performed much better than expected last year, but many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still waiting to reap the gains from that.

This year, they are hoping that the spillover from the improved environment will finally trickle down to them - and 2018 looks a lot more promising than the gloom that hung over the start of 2017.

But SMEs still face a considerable number of challenges that pose obstacles to their growth.

The perennial gripes about cost and manpower have not disappeared, although they have lessened somewhat in the face of other more urgent issues that will preside as hot-button topics in the new year.

One is the lack of collaborative opportunities with larger local players - the government-linked companies (GLCs) in particular - to ventur…