Singapore Population - August 2014

From the statistic data extracted from Department of Statistics Singapore, it showed that the percentage of citizens over total population in Singapore was dropping since the data was collected from 1960 onward. As of June 2013, the percentage of citizen is around 61.4% from above 90% as of 1960s, making Singapore a truly global city with more than a third are foreigners or Singapore PRs. Even if we take into account Singapaore PR as Singapore residents, the percentage of total citizens and SPR is about 71%. There are two main points here:

• The rate of job creation of Singapore government is faster than population growth of Singapore citizens.
• It is getting lesser or harder for foreign workers to convert to Singapore PRs and citizens.

It is a trend that Singapore government needs more foreign workers to maintain its leadership as regional hub for finance and logistic sectors. As the pace of growth of the citizens is only a mere 1% annually, it is very hard for Singapore government to grow GDP except that to improve the productivity per worker. Singapore government also has changed its key performance indicators by putting lessor emphasis on GDP growth in recent years, that is why we see a lot of pro-citizen policies has been implemented although it may have negative impact on labor-incentive industries such as construction and service industries. 

To reach a population of 6.9 million by year 2030, I foresee a continuing trend of dropping percentage of citizens over total population. It may make Singapore like another Dubai where there are more foreigners than locals. Whether you like it or not, it seems that this trend is inevitable.