SMU, JP Morgan suggest 3 tasks to ease Singapore's skills shortage

Singapore

SINGAPORE needs to do three things to tackle its skills shortage - cut its dependence on foreign workers by even more, ease the pace of change in industry policy and focus on soft and cross-job skills.

These three areas were identified by Singapore Management University and J P Morgan in a 155-page report titled "Managing Skills Challenges in Asean 5". In the part of the report focusing on Singapore, the local university and the global financial services firm noted that the number of foreign workers in the Republic has continued rising although their inflow was tightened five years ago. This reliance on foreign workers and the low productivity achieved "signal a lack of strong indigenous production capacity", they said.