Singapore Parliament to debate political salaries changes

The committee tasked with the current review is chaired by Gan Seow Kee, chairman of the Singapore LNG Corporation and an alternate member of the Council of Presidential Advisers.

It was asked to recommend the appropriate salary levels based on the current salary framework, and propose refinements where necessary so that the framework stays relevant.

The framework covers the salaries of all political appointment holders, including Non-Constituency MPs and Nominated MPs.

Currently, an entry-level minister receives a norm annual salary of $1.1 million, including bonuses.

Ministerial salaries were last adjusted in 2012, when the Government accepted a review committee’s recommendations that set the current salary framework, which cut the annual pay of entry-level ministers by over a third.

A debate in Parliament then on the proposals spanned two-and-a-half days, with speeches by 29 MPs from both sides of the aisle.

The WP, which had eight MPs at the time, agreed during the debate to the basic principles by which ministerial salaries would be determined, but ultimately voted against the proposals and stood by its own pay formula.

The changes passed by Parliament in 2012 included having an independent committee appointed every five years to review the salaries.

When the next review was due, a committee recommended in 2018 to adjust political salaries annually in line with the movement of benchmark salaries, which it noted had gone up by 9 per cent since 2011.

However, the Government declined the proposed tweaks to political salaries then. It said the existing salary structure remained valid and there were economic uncertainties in the previous few years.

Ministerial salaries are benchmarked to the median income of the top 1,000 earners who are Singapore citizens, with a 40 per cent discount to reflect the ethos of public service.

The top 1,000 earners include those in senior management positions such as chief executives, chief operating officers, chief financial officers, people working in the financial services and professionals like lawyers, doctors and accountants.

A minister’s annual salary is made up of a fixed component and a variable pay component.

The fixed component comprises the minister’s monthly pay and a 13th month bonus.

The variable component consists of a performance bonus determined by the Prime Minister, an annual variable component based on Singapore’s economic performance, and a national bonus.

The national bonus is set at three months if targets across these four indicators are met: the real median income growth rate, real growth rate of the lowest 20th percentile income, unemployment rate and real gross domestic product growth rate.