Singapore out to beckon Indian talent?

Take a walk in Central business district or just simply surf the forums , you would always hear Singaporean moaning about the influx of “foreign talents”. Notable of all are the Indians , so being the curious me i decided to Google the word “India Times , Jobs , Singapore.

The first was an Article about how Singapore was out to beckon Indian talent ” The country expects to hire over 3 lakh mid to senior professionals in 2011. Hiring firms say over 20% of this talent will be from india”. Which mean that out of the 300,000 Jobs for hire in Singapore 60, 000 would be from India!. No matter which country you are from , developing or a developed nation 50% of jobs going to foreigner is fairy unacceptable. Yet this also showcase the success and failure of the current ruling government. At a time,  where so many countries are barely surviving the aftershock of a worldwide crisis , Singapore resilience shows the efficiency and effectiveness of its government , Managing growth at a time like this. Yet contrasting with this success was the failure to balance the growth of the nation GDP and the median income of Singaporean.

Which is something paradoxical , as in the rules of economics when demand increase the price of the supply would increase ,Ceteris paribus . Yet somehow despite the large demand of in terms of employment , the price of the supply(salaries) does not rise in accordance to the rules of economics. Which lead to the question of what failed in the process? , are the rampart importation of these Foreign talent led to an artificial deflation of salary?. After all as seen by an article by Channel News Asia(CNA) the median salary growth of Singaporean wages is up only by 4.2% in the year 2010, While inflation rate as shown in a later article was about 5.4%

Which leads to the question , is such methods of growth sustainable , Inflation is generally the result of demand , out growing supply. So when you have more people in a country without adjustment to their needs in terms of housing , food etc. Next would be the solution of such an issue , personally in my opinion it is the ease of entry for foreigners. There is without doubt that we need foreigner especially in regards to “Foreign Worker” as compared to their counterparts “Foreign Talent”.  Where more than often we hear members of the public lamenting that these white collars talent , constantly steal their jobs and undercut their salaries. Rather then the stories of laborer from India stealing those jobs from Singaporean.

So how do we increase the barrier to entry without keeping the real talent out? . In this respect we can look at the United States of America , where companies have to prove that these “Talents” are not undercutting the local salary. After all if a man is of quality he wouldn’t have a need to undercut his rival. Complementing this would be our current solution , which is the workers levy so as to ensure that if all else is equal Singaporean would have an advantage. After all if a foreigner is a lot better than me , it would be foolish for companies not to hire him.  But if everything is the same , Singaporean come first.

End of the day we must recognize the success of our current government in creating these jobs , yet ask ourselves if the current policy is beneficial to Singaporean? Because a growth in the country statistic does not necessarily equate to the growth of the general Singapore populace.  Yet at the same time it is foolish to disregards foreigners , as they do play an integral part in our society and economy . But rather we should managed their inflow and maintain the standards of quality rather than quantity