Social protection in ASEAN: employer perspectives and recommendations
This report focuses on the business case for social protection, and summarizes employers’ views on social protection policies with reference to four countries: Cambodia and Indonesia, which are in the process of developing their social protection systems; Malaysia and Singapore, which have already established relatively advanced social protection systems.
Overall, the report finds that employers’ across the four countries recognize the importance of social protection for their business mandates. They are keen to engage in effective national and regional discourse promoting the development of social protection systems in their respective countries, but want to ensure these systems also incentivize private sector growth. The employers’ emphasize that economic growth and an enabling environment for businesses represent essential pre-requisites for effective social protection policies. They believe that social protection policies should include provisions for the private sector, including measures to improve competitiveness and productivity, thereby compensating businesses for concomitant cost increases.