Oil gas digital transformation

SINGAPORE: More than S$500 million of the Fortitude Budget will be allocated to support the digital transformation of businesses, including support for e-payments, adopting digital solutions and deepening digital capabilities, announced Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Tuesday (May 26). “Those who are willing to transform will not be left behind,” said Mr Heng, speaking in Parliament on Tuesday. READ: S$33b Fortitude Budget aimed at providing jobs, supporting workers and firms through 'difficult period' of COVID-19 READ: Fortitude Budget: Additional S$800 million set aside for COVID-19 Support Grant; S$100 one-off utilities credit Noting that the take-up rate of e-payments among businesses has “risen sharply”, with 50,000 more businesses adopting PayNow Corporate since April, Mr Heng said this Budget will support those who have not begun using digital tools. "We will help them to get on board with digital transformation, building on current momentum," he said. … [Read more...] about Fortitude Budget: More than S$500m allocated to support digital transformation of businesses amid COVID-19 outbreak

SINGAPORE: A ministerial committee will be formed to oversee and coordinate Singapore’s digitalisation push which has been ramped up in light of challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Minister for Communications and Information S Iswaran. He will co-chair the new ministerial committee for digital transformation with Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing. Key priorities of the committee include helping people to learn new skills and seize technology-related jobs, as well as getting more small businesses, especially those battered by the pandemic, to go digital. It will also be looking at how to boost digital adoption among hawkers and the elderly – segments in the society which have been seen by some as “the most challenging in terms of digitalisation”, Mr Iswaran said in a virtual interview on Thursday (Jun 11). READ: COVID-19: Singapore to spend S$3.5 billion on information and communications technology to support businesses He noted that this push to go … [Read more...] about Iswaran, Chan Chun Sing to chair new ministerial committee on digital transformation

SINGAPORE: As digital banks look set to make their debut here later this year, observers say it may be an uphill task for them to build a customer base against more established conventional banks. While digital banks may find success in appealing to a digitally savvy customer base, traditional banks - which already have advantages such as a strong brand and an established customer base – have already started their own process of digital transformation, they noted. Last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced it would issue up to five digital banking licences to non-bank players. Of these, up to two of the licences will be for digital retail banking, which will allow firms to provide a range of financial services as well as take deposits from customers. Another three will be issued for digital wholesale banking, which allows licensees to serve small-and-medium enterprises, as well as other non-retail sectors. MAS announced earlier this year that it had … [Read more...] about Companies vying for digital bank licence may face uphill battle, say experts

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries has announced the contours of carving out of its oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business into an independent unit with a USD 25 billion loan from the parent, as it looks to unlock value by selling stakes to global investors like Saudi Aramco. IMAGE: RIL chairman Mukesh Ambani. Photograph: ANI Photo. The reorganisation will enable the focused pursuit of opportunities across the O2C value chain, improve efficiencies through self-sustaining capital structure and a dedicated management team, and attract dedicated pools of investor capital, according to a company presentation filed with the stock exchanges. The O2C business unit holds Reliance's oil refinery and petrochemical assets and retail fuel business but not upstream oil and gas producing fields such as KG-D6 and textiles business. Once completed, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) -- the company founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in the late 1960s -- will house only the upstream oil and gas … [Read more...] about RIL to spin off oil-to-chemical biz into separate arm with $25bn loan

REUTERS: Bermuda and the Bahamas aren’t exactly big players in the oil-and-gas world. They don’t produce any of the fuels at all. Yet the islands are deep wells of profit for European oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc. In 2018 and 2019, Shell earned more than US$2.7 billion - about 7per cent of its total income in those years - tax-free by reporting profits in companies located in Bermuda and the Bahamas that employed just 39 people and generated the bulk of their revenue from other Shell entities, company filings show. If the oil-and-gas major had booked the profits through its headquarters in the Netherlands, it could have faced a tax bill of about US$700 million based on the Dutch corporate tax rate of 25per cent. The bill would have been much steeper if the income were reported in oil-producing countries - some of which levy rates exceeding 80per cent. Shell and other oil majors are avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes in countries where they drill by … [Read more...] about Special Report-How oil majors shift billions in profits to island tax havens