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SINGAPORE – Parliament is slated to debate proposed changes to political salaries, including those of ministers, when it sits this week.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing will make statements on the issue on Sept 8, according to the agenda for the sitting released on Sept 7.<\/p>\n
They will provide the Government\u2019s response to the recommendations from a committee reviewing political salaries. The House will debate the matter on Sept 10.<\/p>\n
This comes four months after the Government said it would defer its consideration of the recommendations<\/span><\/a>, pending greater clarity on the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on Singapore.<\/p>\n Chan had said in May that the conflict, which began in February, caused economic uncertainties and clouded the outlook for Singapore.<\/p>\n He added then that the committee\u2019s report and the Government\u2019s response will be shared \u201cat the appropriate time\u201d, and MPs will be able to review both items \u201cfor a more meaningful debate\u201d.<\/p>\n In January, the Government said a committee had been formed<\/span><\/a> to review the salaries of Singapore\u2019s political appointment holders, who include all ministers, and MPs. Ministerial salaries have not been adjusted since 2012. The changes were backdated to 2011, when the new term of government started.<\/p>\n This was the second time in recent years that global instability affected a review of political salaries.<\/p>\n The Government deferred such a review in 2023, citing more pressing issues that it had to deal with. These included a more uncertain geopolitical situation with conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine; heightened political contestation; and significant uncertainties in the global economy.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The framework covers the salaries of all political appointment holders, including Non-Constituency MPs and Nominated MPs.<\/p>\n Currently, an entry-level minister receives a norm annual salary of $1.1 million, including bonuses.<\/p>\n Ministerial salaries were last adjusted in 2012, when the Government accepted a review committee\u2019s recommendations that set the current salary framework, which cut the annual pay of entry-level ministers by over a third.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The changes passed by Parliament in 2012 included having an independent committee appointed every five years to review the salaries.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A minister\u2019s annual salary is made up of a fixed component and a variable pay component.<\/p>\n The fixed component comprises the minister\u2019s monthly pay and a 13th month bonus.<\/p>\n The variable component consists of a performance bonus determined by the Prime Minister, an annual variable component based on Singapore\u2019s economic performance, and a national bonus.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE – Parliament is slated to debate proposed changes to political salaries, including those of ministers, when it sits this week. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/82935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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