January 12, 2010
For the second time in two days, another PAP leader has stepped forward to espouse the “virtues” of the ruling party’s pro-foreigner policy.
Two days ago, Mayor of South East CDC and PAP MP was quoted by Channel News Asia as saying that “Singaporeans must welcome everybody, just as Singapore welcomed our own forefathers.”
This time, it was Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong who boasted that “Singapore has established a strong reputation as a great place to do business due to its successful strategy on talent.”
“Besides local talent, overseas investors are attracted to Singapore as they know we have a strong pool of global talent which further enhances Singapore’s competitive edge,” he added.
Mr Gan also pointed out that “there are now about 100,000 foreign professionals working and living in Singapore”. However he did not elaborate more on his definition of “talent”.
Due to the ruling party’s liberal immigration policy, large numbers of foreigners have flocked to Singapore to study, work and live in recent years.
Foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up from 14 per cent in 1990.
According to the Home Affairs Ministry, there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens in 2008. Two out of every three PR applicants are successful, a astonishingly high success rate for a developed country.
Even cleaners, masseurs and construction workers are able to obtain Singapore PR and citizenship relatively easily. It is not sure if Mr Gan considers them as “global talent” as well.
Speaking at the official opening of the Employment Pass Services Centre, Mr Gan noted that more overseas Singaporeans are also returning to work in Singapore, attracted by the opportunities back home without providing any figures.
“The global downturn has further accentuated the attractiveness of Asia. We should capitalise on this to make Singapore an even more attractive Home for Talent – both local and global,” he said.
Singapore has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world at only 18 per cent, but what makes Singapore really attractive to MNCs and foreigners is the staunchly pro-business ruling party, an educated workforce and the absence of “troublesome” trade unions.
The bottomline of all businesses is to keep the profit margin as high as possible and this will necessitate them to keep labor costs to a minimum.
In any other countries, the trade unions are responsible for fighting for higher wages and better working conditions for their workers.
Some of them, like those in France and Germany are powerful enough to even shut down entire industries through strikes.
In Singapore, there is only one recognized trade union, or rather an amalgamation of various government-approved unions under a umbrella organization – NTUC which is always headed by a PAP minister.
The wages of Singapore workers are adjusted by the National Wages Council which has American, German and Japanese business representatives sitting on it, an unique phenomenon not seen in any other countries in the world.
The monthly median wage of an average Singapore worker is only $2,600 compared to over $180,000 for Minister Gan which is further depressed by the relentless influx of cheap foreign workers, or “global talents”.
Though Singapore is the second richest country in Asia after Japan, there are few social welfare benefits for its citizens. Its income gap between the rich and the poor is the highest among developed countries after Hong Kong. A UBS report last year ranked Singaporeans as having a purchasing power similar to that of Russia.
Despite the increased competition faced by Singaporeans from foreigners in every sphere of life, the ruling party does not appear to care much as long as Singapore’s economy continues to grow. (A substantial portion of the PAP ministers’ multi-million pay package is pegged to Singapore’s GDP growth).
In a recent interview with National Geographic magazine, Singapore’s paramount leader Lee Kuan Yew said it is a “good idea” that Singapore has welcomed so many Chinese immigrants as they are more “hard-driving” and “hard-striving” than the locals.
“If native Singaporeans are falling behind because “the spurs are not stuck into the hide,” that is their problem,” he was quoted as saying in the article “The Singapore Solution.”
[Source: National Geographic]