Rising wage bills not caused by foreign worker levy hike

Tight labour market is the cause of rising wage bills, said Finance Minister Tharman.

According to OCBC, Finance Minister Tharman stated, "rising wage bills are due to tight labour market, and not the FW levy hike."

In his recent round-up speech, Finance Minister Tharman said, "We want to make a quantum leap in productivity. Ten years from now, we want to be in a very different place from where we are now. And we know we will not get there if we continue to rely extensively on low-skilled foreign labour."

"We introduced one round of foreign worker levy increases last year, and we extended and accentuated the increases this year. But the foreign worker levy increases are not the fundamental driver for the business upgrading that has to take place."

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia