CECA and other FTAs do not give foreigners 'free rein to come to live and work in Singapore': Ong Ye Kung

Competition between foreign and local professionals, managers and executives (PMEs) is not a zero-sum game, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung told the House on Tuesday, while defending the government's policy on free trade agreements (FTAs).

Specifically, the India-Singapore Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) does not oblige Singapore to unconditionally allow entry to PMEs from India, he stressed: "Our ability to impose requirements for immigration and work pass has never been in question in CECA or any other FTAs that we have signed."

Mr Ong, a former trade negotiator, added that FTAs, including CECA, "are not the cause of the challenges our PMEs face; if anything, they are part of the solution".

That's as he argued that the opposition Progress Singapore Party (PSP) has made FTAs - especially the hot-button CECA, which was signed in 2005 - "political scapegoats" to "discredit the policy" of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP).

"When you attack FTAs - and worse, if your attack succeeds - you are undermining the fundamentals of our existence, of the way we earn a living, of all the sectors FTAs support, and the hundreds of thousands of Singaporean jobs created in these sectors," he said.

CECA, in particular, has emerged as a political flashpoint in Singapore in recent years, with Hong Lim Park playing host to a rally against the FTA in late 2019.

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In his ministerial statement, Mr Ong strenuously rebuffed the claim that CECA gives Indian nationals "free rein to come to live and work in Singapore". Instead, CECA and all of Singapore's other FTAs contain a "strong immigration carve-out", he reiterated.

Mr Ong affirmed that Indian nationals cannot freely come to work in Singapore under CECA, since all foreign PMEs - including intra-corporate transferees - must meet Singapore's qualifying work pass criteria to be employed here.

"In any case, the total number of intra-corporate transferees, from all over the world and not just India, that have come to Singapore to work is very small," he added. He disclosed that there were only about 500 intra-corporate transferees from India in Singapore in 2020, or less than 0.3 per cent of Employment Pass (EP) holders.

While acknowledging that PMEs may face more competition from foreigners at the company level, he said policymakers must balance more jobs and "some competition" - rather than many jobs and strong competition, or no competition but few jobs.

"If someone promises you more jobs, no competition from foreigners, he is selling you snake oil. It is not possible. It cannot be on any government's policy menu," he said.

Mr Ong also acknowledged that another challenge can arise when foreign PMEs are "concentrated in certain sectors, and from certain countries of origin", such as Indian EP holders working in digital technology-related jobs.

The government has heard concerns over such concentration in places like Changi Business Park, and is studying how to lessen the problem, he said.

Yet "dealing with excessive concentration is not a straightforward matter of chopping up the operations of a company here", he added.

"We don't want to unintentionally cause the whole investment to move elsewhere. This will hurt even more Singaporeans."

Lastly, local PMEs may face unfair hiring practices in individual companies, when department heads prefer certain other nationalities. But the Ministry of Manpower and its tripartite partners are actively enforcing measures to tackle such abuses, he added.

"If we mistakenly blame FTAs and CECA for these problems, our responses would be disastrously wrong and we would make our problems worse."

Mr Ong noted that CECA "benefits Singapore in many ways", such as helping to expand bilateral trade with India on the back of reduced tariffs.

Trade between the two countries has grown from S$20 billion when CECA came into force, to S$38 billion in 2019, while Singapore's direct investment in India grew from S$1.3 billion to S$61 billion over the same period, he said.

Mr Ong's statement came in the wake of parliamentary questions on Singapore's FTAs, from PSP Non-Constituency Members of Parliament Leong Mun Wai and Hazel Poa; PAP MPs Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC), Liang Eng Hwa (Bukit Panjang) and Patrick Tay (Pioneer); and Workers' Party MP Jamus Lim (Sengkang GRC).

Mr Leong last month had announced that the PSP would file a motion to debate employment policies and CECA in Parliament, after the party was invited to do so by Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam.

Read more:

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• Concerns about globalisation ‘deserve serious and proper attention’ but must not be exploited politically: Ong Ye Kung