Minister-in-charge of Muslim affairs Yaacob Ibrahim had some good news to announce about the Malay community in Singapore.

Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, March 8 during the Committee of Supply debate, he said that improving education standards in the Malay community have led to to a upward trend of Malay Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs).

Moving on up

Citing Ministry of Manpower figures, Yaacob said the proportion of PMETs in the Malay community has increased from one in four in 2007, to one in three in 2017.

A majority of these Malay PMETs work in the education, social service, health and public administration sectors.

Minister Yaacob added that Malays had a higher-than-proportional share of placements in the Adapt and Grow initiative, including career centres run by Workforce Singapore and NTUC's Employment and Employability Institute.

Also, about two-thirds of these Malay PMETs are associate professionals and technicians.

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Businesses too

But it wasn't just Malay professionals who were doing well for themselves. Malay/Muslim SMEs are stepping up to the plate too.

The minister gave examples of two such companies, frozen yogurt purveyors Frozi and security company Spear Security Force, who made use of digital solutions to increase productivity and revenue.

The Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SMCCI) are taking the lead by encouraging their members to tap into the SMEs Go Digital programme.

And the SMCCI are also planning to hold business missions to at least eight countries overseas in 2018, with the first to Manila scheduled for later this month.

For Malays thinking about starting their own businesses, this could be a good year to kickstart something.

You can see a summary of announcements shared by Minister Yaacob here:

Top image from SMCCI's Facebook page.